NOBODY Expects the Woquisition!

(…And, I did not expect to find this word completely absent from Google and Twitter, so I hereby claim having coined it — along with the alternate spelling, Wokequisition.)

NOBODY expects the Woquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise!… Surprise and fear… fear and surprise… Our two weapons are fear and surprise… and ruthless efficiency! Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency… and an almost fanatical devotion to binary thinking.

But I am cursed with an almost fanatical devotion to non-binary thinking. In todays climate, that makes me fearful of fanatical reactions from both sides of “the” spectrum. I put that in quotes, because there are many categorical spectra, and most of them seem to be reaching extreme levels of polarization: racial, political, economic, intellectual, religious, etc.

There have been many occasions to reflect on this. I ventured to comment on one a year ago, and today’s NYTimes triggered another (which led me to the idea for this new word).

I don’t really want to get into any flame wars (a term that seems to have become passé — maybe because fish don’t talk about being in water?)

I simply ask rhetorically:

• Is it really a problem for a writer of one race to write about a character of another race? another gender? another nationality? another religion? another neighborhood? a twin?
• If yes to any of those, what if they collaborate in the writing, funding, production, etc.?
• If yes to any of those, can we write anything but memoirs? Can actors portray anyone but themselves?

This is not to suggest that crossing categories may not result in the expression of inaccurate or biased representations. It is always the job of a writer to have empathy and compassion, and to seek to respect the limits of their understanding and compensate for their biases. We are all human, different, and in more or less the same boat.