This paper explores the consequences of the socio-historical exclusion of women, and of young people, from public life. It is based upon an empirical study in which depth-interviews were conducted with 96 Britons, male and female, and of a younger and an older generation, concerning their private and public lives. Self-proclaimed ignorance is significantly more likely to be found in the interviews of the women rather than the men, and in those of the younger rather than the older generation. Qualitative analysis reveals that self-proclaimed ignorance is associated with a sense of distance from public affairs. The various manifestations of distance are discussed in terms of exposure to knowledge, the individualistic society's expectations concerning the knowing "l", the privatized market economy and the effects of modernity itself.