PhDeac
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[h=1]Danica Roem Is Really, Really Boring[/h]
Last week Danica Roem made history, winning election to Virginia’s House of Delegates as an openly transgender woman. She’ll be the only openly transgender person in a state legislature anywhere in America. And the man she defeated had held his seat for more than a quarter-century.
So when I was watching CNN a few days later and she popped up, I perked up. I realized that I somehow hadn’t caught her other media appearances since her sign-of-the-times triumph.
The CNN anchor, Kate Bolduan, invited her to reflect on it.
And Roem talked about … traffic.
Before using the word transgender, without draping herself in the glory of a trailblazer, she mentioned the awful congestion on Route 28 in Fairfax County, especially “through Centreville and part of Yorkshire,” and her determination to follow through on her central campaign promise “to replace traffic lights with overpasses where possible.”
Traffic lights. Overpasses. My jaw hit the ground, because she knew full well that Bolduan was after something juicier than a local-infrastructure tutorial. Then my eyes gleamed with admiration, because she had nonetheless delivered that tutorial — and with it, a crucial message:
Being transgender isn’t the whole of her identity, the extent of her purpose or the crux of her mission. The obstacles in her life are particular, but the hell of rush hour is universal. And her job as a lawmaker is to attend to the nitty-gritty that has an immediate, measurable impact on all of her constituents. When circumstances warrant it, she can be every bit as boring as the next politician.
This approach wouldn’t be praiseworthy if Roem seemed in any way to be hiding a part of herself or ashamed of it. But that’s not the case at all.
Last week Danica Roem made history, winning election to Virginia’s House of Delegates as an openly transgender woman. She’ll be the only openly transgender person in a state legislature anywhere in America. And the man she defeated had held his seat for more than a quarter-century.
So when I was watching CNN a few days later and she popped up, I perked up. I realized that I somehow hadn’t caught her other media appearances since her sign-of-the-times triumph.
The CNN anchor, Kate Bolduan, invited her to reflect on it.
And Roem talked about … traffic.
Before using the word transgender, without draping herself in the glory of a trailblazer, she mentioned the awful congestion on Route 28 in Fairfax County, especially “through Centreville and part of Yorkshire,” and her determination to follow through on her central campaign promise “to replace traffic lights with overpasses where possible.”
Traffic lights. Overpasses. My jaw hit the ground, because she knew full well that Bolduan was after something juicier than a local-infrastructure tutorial. Then my eyes gleamed with admiration, because she had nonetheless delivered that tutorial — and with it, a crucial message:
Being transgender isn’t the whole of her identity, the extent of her purpose or the crux of her mission. The obstacles in her life are particular, but the hell of rush hour is universal. And her job as a lawmaker is to attend to the nitty-gritty that has an immediate, measurable impact on all of her constituents. When circumstances warrant it, she can be every bit as boring as the next politician.
This approach wouldn’t be praiseworthy if Roem seemed in any way to be hiding a part of herself or ashamed of it. But that’s not the case at all.
