A couple of incidents have got me musing about life in these Con-Lib Dem days (I'm sorry my yellow friends, but the Conservatives really should come first in the coalition's title.)
Strolling to the pub to dine with the heroic couple who have hosted me in London for the last few weeks, I happened upon an ugly scene. A man was arguing very aggressively with a woman, who slapped him. I may not be an impressive physical specimen as such but I am a large one, and I feel duty-bound on these occasions to ask the woman if she is OK if I am in any doubt.
I don't particularly relish doing it. At best it is embarrassing. But hitherto the woman has always been grateful, and the guy usually has the decency to calm down. Yet it is emasculating for a bloke to be challenged, albeit indirectly (I never speak to the chap, addressing the lady exclusively), and last night the man (sic) in question indicated his displeasure and adopted a threatening tone.
It wasn't nice to be reminded so rudely that I need to lose some weight about the mid-section, but worse things happen at sea. He didn't produce a weapon. And (sorry to be all macho about this) if he had attacked me physically, my first call would not have been to the police but to the ambulance service.
So it didn't spoil the evening; I was glad I stepped in and spoke up. I once neglected to do so when I saw a man shouting at a woman and afterwards she told me, in tears, that she didn't understand why no-one had intervened. She hadn't known the man at all. It was a painful lesson.
Today I did chicken out of speaking up. I applied for a job I want a lot, and because I want it a lot I didn't raise an objection when my conscience was telling me to do so.
It was a hassle to fill out my work history (which is very long, as I have been a freelancer for several years) when I could have just attached a CV. But it was positively objectionable to be asked to state my race, religion and sexuality. Actually it wasn't a request. The information was asterisked as essential.
I can see how it could be well-motivated. A case can be made for keeping a record of such things in order to assess whether certain people are being discriminated against. However, it is not ultimately a good case.
We are all of us infinitely complex. Sexuality, faith and even race may be fluid or complex matters (as may be gender - I was additionally asked what gender I "consider" myself to be). I wasn't sure how to answer one question (the religious one, for those of you who are curious!). Our complexity can't be reduced to a handful of categories. And why stop at those ones? Being overweight has had a much more profound effect on my working life than has my agnosticism.
But more importantly, this stuff is no-one else's business. We have become fixated on these issues as a society.
I'm all for political correctness as defined by Stewart Lee (the left wing comedian rightly identified as brilliant by Resident Leftie in the comment thread of my last CentreRight post). He calls it "institutionalised politeness". But when it morphs into an outright obsession over sex, race, sexuality or whatever, then surely it is defeating the object that we should all hold dear - that we might reach a nirvana where everyone understands that such things matter but that they are irrelevant in assessing a person's worth.
Some people think we can get there through ticking boxes, diversity training and organisations like the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I think that there are laws against discrimination already and that we need to find a way of making basic decency more endemic than these expensive talking shops have ever managed to do.
That way I won't feel pressured into answering some personal questions that are wholly irrelevant to my ability to do a job, and I won't be faced with the tedious prospect of having to knock out some ghastly misogynist to protect myself and a damsel in distress.
