[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

He can feck right off.

We're meant to be against reducing people to their demographic traits and acting like they define them.

To be fair he's not saying "we don't want to heard from white men" but when you're operating in a limited time frame and you can't literally hear everyone's point of view, it's important to make sure you have a broad spectrum of perspectives, and a 5th middle class white bloke's POV is of limited utility when you already have the other 4. For example in my organisation (because full disclosure - it's full of middle class white folks) when I'm adding a perspective to a discussion I like to come at it from the angle of a parent/full time carer of a child with additional needs, because that's a perspective I can offer that others can't, rather than just another generic "working age male" perspective. The team already has that.

So yeah in short, I don't think there's anything wrong with seeking diverse perspectives. Demographic traits don't "define people" in their entirety but it would be foolish to try to claim that people have full understandings of other people's issues... to use my example again; a layperson's thoughts on the things that might affect the parent of a disabled child mean precisely jack **** to be completely blunt about it. And likewise it would be ludicrous for me to suggest that I can offer a full perspective on issues affecting an ethnic minority or a female.