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Questions of gender and wiener preferences are the garnish on US exceptionalism.
When I clicked on the website of the Washington Nationals baseball team, I was asked to take an online survey about buying food at the team’s stadium. I was willing and, as usual, the survey began with demographic questions.
The first asked my age. The second asked, “Which of the following best describes your gender identity? 1) Non-binary or third gender 2) Male 3) Female 4) I prefer not to say.” I puzzled over the question.
Do the Nationals really want to know the percentage of non-binary baseball fans who like onions on their wieners? Was the team’s business unit anticipating the answers would reveal that males and females do not like long queues for food but third-gender folk do? Why, they just love to stand in line for hours.
The giveaway that the question was more to do with political correctness than marketing data was asking which option best described my gender identity. Not just my gender, because that would be so last century, but the gender with which I identified.
Presumably, that allows a male the option of identifying as female, or vice versa, or any other permutation. But the Nationals will not know that subtlety when they try to figure out if people who identify as female would prefer to order hot dogs online from their stadium seats, instead of going to the concession stands.
The more I think about it, the more irrelevant the gender question becomes. That is not because of the four options, but because even if all 40,000 patrons at the ballpark identified as third gender or female, hot dogs and beer would still be on the menu.
Last time I went to the baseball, I was on the concourse with hundreds of people when the national anthem began playing. Immediately, most people around me turned to face the big screen and many put their hands on their hearts.
Partly, I want to laugh when Americans wear their hearts on their sleeves, yet I also find it strangely moving. Of course, I, too, believe in liberty and democracy but, like many New Zealanders, I rarely express it. It would be naff, forced and almost embarrassing for Kiwis to be demonstrative, unless we were at a rugby test match, especially against Australia.
I stand up for any country’s national anthem yet there is no one I admire more in the US than the footballer with no team, Colin Kaepernick, who has been dropped since “taking the knee” in a symbolic protest against racism during the playing of the anthem. He has possibly thought more than many of his fellow Americans about what pride in their country means, and what the flag represents.
Understanding the concept of US exceptionalism takes time. With the country’s terrible history, especially slavery and the physical and cultural annihilation of indigenous Americans, an honest reckoning would not be pretty.
All of us are our own worst enemies and America is no different. It appears to value freedom above fairness, allows the lost and broken to live without hope and considers parts of the Constitution belong to a world that is untouchable. Yet it has built a successful nation by believing in, championing and fighting for noble, human ideals that most of us share yet do not talk about. “We, the people …”
The US is held together by a shared faith that it can form that more perfect union that its Constitution references. It is a unique country. Even if we do not put our hands on our hearts, we should all hope it continues to succeed.
There is no one I admire more in the US than the footballer with no team, Colin Kaepernick.