Gender Balance in Congress

Robert S. McElvaine’s proposal is self-negating (“Feminizing Congress in One Sweep,” Commentary, Dec. 22). If “women think and speak in a different voice” and “tend to have different perspectives on a whole host of matters” and few congressmen “could really imagine themselves in Prof. Anita Hill’s situation,” how can he as a psychologically alien male pretend to understand the frustrations and obstacles of would-be women Congress members, much less presume to lead their charge for lawmaker liberation?

A close look at his proposal shows it to be undemocratic and served up as neo-Marxist succotash. In this case gender is all determinative and men, not greedy capitalists, are the self-serving ruling elite. Congress is nothing but a “system that was set up by and for men,” inherently unresponsive to other interests. It embodies the social engineer’s impatience with evolutionary democratic outcomes: “trying to elect more women to the Senate and House is unlikely to solve the problem.” To realize his Utopia, McElvaine, like many untethered intellectuals, is all too ready to resort to the sweeping political purge.

McElvaine gives the game away with the qualifier that it’s not so much women as “female values” that need to infuse Congress. No doubt these are to be found on the left. It’s not a sexual reconstitution of our government he really wants, but an ideological one.

MARC WILLIAMS

Ventura