The XX Factor: What women really think.

To the Black Woman Who Says We Aren't Sisters

Now, that does make me feel sort of rejected—I feel like her sister and she doesn't feel like mine -- but it's interesting, too: Why is it that I'm imagining I'd feel kinship with women from Jupiter, and she doesn't see the female experience as all that formative? Donna Brazile told me the answer once, I think. This was when I was just starting to work on my book on how women make electoral decisions. (Short answer: Other-than-rationally, just like men do. Not unlike decisions in dating, really. Which is why our dutiful, "Oh, my top issue is health care,' answers to pollsters don't always mean that much.) Anyway, what Donna said was, you know, women don't vote as a block because we never had to go through something like the slave experience together. So the biological and cultural deal that I consider such a sealing bond just doesn't compare. (Does it?) My son who is mad for movies had us watch Sixth Sense for I think it was the 234^th time this last weekend, and you know how the ghosts go away after the little boy finally listens to them? Cheesy, OK. But on race and gender, I do think there's a lot more we have to hear from one another.