Re Renée Loth’s “A defining election for women’’ (Opinion, June 27): As a leftist myself, I normally look forward to reading Loth’s opinion pieces. However, I was surprised and fairly upset that her latest appeal to rally voters against Donald Trump comes from the inflammatory and backward world of identity politics. We are told that women, by virtue of simply being women, must necessarily vote against Trump. The implication is quite clear: If you are a woman, you must vote in a certain way. Because if you don’t, you’re voting against your own interests. The unasked but heavily implied question being, “What sort of woman would vote the other way?’’

What is so troubling about this opinion piece is that Trump’s railing against identity politics as a long-held Democratic strategy is part of what made him so popular in the first place. By adopting this needlessly divisive, and frankly condescending, strategy, Loth is playing directly into the Trump playbook. A woman who wasn’t convinced to vote against him before will hardly be convinced by Loth’s argument to vote against him because she is a woman. And if that argument is the best Loth can do, then maybe we have a lot more to worry about.

David Keener

Needham