Empathy – the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
Empathy-wise, I am a white, educated, married, male in his 60s. I understand, even if it has not been explicitly explained to me, things about other white, educated, married males in their 60s.
Thus I can say, plainly, that there are things we do, and do not, never will, understand about women, both in general and in their demographic subsets, including Latina. I, personally, am on record, long since, as saying that men and women are so completely different that it is astonishing that we can occupy the same general physical form. (You white men, if you are nodding, that's okay.) My wife, Karen, and I, have frequent, lively, discussions, including a humdinger yesterday, based on those differences. Empathy tells me, without it being explicitly explained to me, that this is the reality in practically all marriages.
It is from this empathy base that I have followed the Sotomayor hearings and occasionally heard a voice screaming under its breath. It is my voice, and this morning it is screaming at Sen. John Cornyn. I am not proud of it, but I fear that many white, educated males in their 60s scream under their breath while watching Sen. John Cornyn on TV, though I have no objective citation for this feeling.
Sen. Cornyn is talking to Judge Sotomayor again about her remark that a wise Latina can make better decisions than a white male. He is saying this like it is a bad thing, in a judge. My empathetic while male voice, with its awareness of the difference between men and women, is silently screaming something like, you idiot, it very well could be a bad thing, or it may be a good thing (depending on whose ox is getting gored), but it is most definitely a THING. Many times a woman's decision will be better than a man's, and vice versa. The point is, that dynamic is ALWAYS ON THE TABLE. I feel strongly that that's where it should be, between women and men, because negotiating the decision starts to develop an empathy for the negotiation.
My feeling is that Sen. Cornyn knows something about this. He is married, and if he is not aware that Sandy, his wife of 29 years, knows things about Sonia Sotomayor that he could never, ever, know, then he will never, ever, understand why Sandy starts yelling at him, when he gets home, about why he asks such stupid questions on television. But 29 years is a long time not to kick a total blockhead out the door, so I feel he must be smarter at home than he is in public, and he has figured out it is better to check his brain at the door of the Capitol. I wish that brought some relief to my empathetic self.
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