Postmodern biology and the confused child

I doubt that there could be many within our society who remain unfamiliar with the lexical playground of transgender terminology. It is a playground in which bullying is rife and a refusal to play the game can lead to social and professional exclusion at best or a criminal record at worst. Phrases such as ‘her penis’ and ‘his bonus hole’ may seem like playful and inventive ways of promoting inclusivity and tolerance but the truth is that coercion, backed up with a threat of societal oppression, lies at the heart of the matter. Those amongst us who are outraged by the violence done to the dictionary by transgender activists would do well to reflect upon the far greater damage we do to our own society when we take liberties with scientifically established realities and replace them with a postmodern subjectivity that ascribes primacy to self-identification. It is a damage that threatens to divide society but, moreover, it is a damage that manifests itself in the societal endorsement of physical, emotional and psychological abuse of our children in the name of medical intervention.

The postmodernist foundations for the transgender movement can be easily discerned when one consults the glossaries that have been produced to promote ‘correct’ speech. Take, for example, the glossary produced by Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, in partnership with the LGBT Foundation. Billed as the ‘Language to use when supporting trans men and/or non-binary people’, we find the following key definitions. For ‘Gender Identity’ we read:

“There are lots of societal and cultural expectations about how people of different genders should behave, but gender is often an innate sense of self and personal identity. This is sometimes referred to as gender identity.”

And for ‘Sex’ we read:

“A label assigned at birth that is based on a person’s sex traits or characteristics.”

Note here that an ‘innate sense’ is being contrasted with a mere ‘label’. Scientific details such as sex traits or characteristics are downgraded in importance since they do nothing more than justify a labelling. Biological reality is portrayed as a superficial designation and there is no mention of anything here being innate. For that, one has to refer instead to a ‘sense of self’ held by the individual. However, this is not a harmless shift of ontology but a profoundly dangerous change of priorities that leads to the abandonment of the precepts of evidence-based medicine. Anticipating the release of the recent Cass Review, retired professor of political philosophy and social theory, Heather Brunskell-Evans, wrote in ‘The Violence of Postmodern “Gender Identity” Medicine’:

The GIDS [Portman Hospital Trust Gender Identity Development Service] dogged commitment to “thinking postmodern” but claiming to practice evidence-based medicine is a contradiction in terms. Firstly, sex is not “assigned” but is a biological fact. Secondly, science cannot be applied to a phenomenon for which there is no objective test, and where the diagnosis is not provided by the clinician but by listening to the voice of the child.

But the real tragedy is that such postmodern logic is then used to justify the adjustment of sex traits and characteristics to fall in line with the supposed primacy of self-identification. And this is not a benign alignment process, involving as it does transformative and broadly irreversible medical interventions performed upon the most vulnerable of our society – our children and young adults. According to Brunskell-Evans:

The postmodern paradigm has brought about a concomitant shift in the classification of the patient from a child who suffers “gender dysphoria” to a child who is “transgender”. Yet the practice of putting children on a medical pathway brings severe, life-long consequences including bone/skeletal impairment, cardiovascular and surgical complications, reduced sexual functioning, and infertility.

We as adults are at liberty to indulge in whatever wordplay we desire, and engage in whatever culture wars we see fit. But when the mutilation of our children becomes a metric of our success there can be no justification. Postmodernism may be upheld by some as an intellectual ideal, but it is an idealism that cannot be allowed to harm the vulnerable. The alacrity with which transgenderism sacrifices our next generation on the altar of postmodernism is quite shocking. But transgenderism is by no means the most shocking example.

Postmodern climatology and the confused child

Irrespective of the extent to which climatology is based upon established scientific fact, there remains the important issue as to whether there is sufficient uncertainty to challenge the taking of high stake decisions with an assumed imperative for urgency. This uncertainty, combined with a backdrop of disputed values, places climatology firmly within the province of post-normal science. As such, climatology requires that the traditional scientific ideal of ‘truth’ be replaced with a relativism that reflects the subjectivity of epistemic uncertainty and the differing perspectives of stakeholders. A more democratic attitude towards the science is therefore appropriate in which the risk appetite of stakeholders bears upon their acceptance or otherwise of arguments for and against the various courses of action proposed. In this respect, practical climatology, as played out in a political arena, has more than an element of postmodernism about it.

It is interesting to note that when one searches online for a recognition of such postmodernism, it can be found but only because people are concerned that it gives rise to an unhelpful level of climate change ‘denial’. There is concern that the severity of crisis has not been universally accepted, and yet there is little concern that postmodern thinking can lead to an exaggeration of the threat. Furthermore, there is little concern that the exaggeration is all too often aimed at an impressionable audience that is ill-equipped to deal with the anxieties that accompany a crisis narrative. Indeed, when it comes to our children, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that such anxieties have been cynically promoted in order to sow the seeds of attitudinal change and to place greater pressure upon society as a whole. As such, one cannot accept childhood eco-anxiety as a natural and unavoidable consequence of the environmental threats we confront. It should instead be seen as the result of an abuse of trust placed in adults.

A troubling insight into how this plays out can be found in a recent news report issued by the charity, Save the Children. In that report, chief executive Gwen Hines states:

The level of anxiety children feel about the world they are growing up in is alarming but warranted. Children should be excited about the future but instead they are carrying the weight of huge global issues which they had no part in creating. We need to listen to children and start taking serious action on the climate crisis and growing inequality. 

Caroline Hickman, a lecturer at the University of Bath, psychotherapist and climate anxiety expert, is quoted as saying:

Why wouldn’t children worry when they look at the state the world is currently in? An increase in climate disasters, on track to become worse, and deepening inequality. They are aware this is the world they are growing up in, and it seems no one is taking their concern seriously.

The children themselves are quoted as saying:

We feel powerless and scared. The government must do more.

Throughout the report, the same message is maintained – we did nothing as adults to inculcate this anxiety, the children worked it all out for themselves. But now we must look to them for our leadership.

So not only are children scared for their future, they are also burdened with the expectation of encouraging behavioural change, and if they fail in that endeavour, who is to blame? By feeding them with the climate crisis narrative, and then feigning humility in the face of juvenile wisdom, we have not only robbed them of their sense of security and well-being, we have robbed them of their childhood. Climate sceptics are accused of being ridiculous when they refer to this as child abuse, but I struggle to find a better term for it.

The protected child

We as adults create the environment in which our children are nurtured. It should be an environment in which free access to societal wisdom is a given. However, when we substitute wisdom with ideology and encourage our children to value subjectivity over objectivity we do them no favours. There is nothing more calculated to imbue a child with a sense of fear and confusion than to prematurely place upon that child the responsibilities and freedoms associated with adulthood. Taking the view that the prerogatives of postmodernism apply just as much to the immature mind as they do to the worldly wise has led us to a world in which childhood mutilation and crippling anxiety are deemed understandable and acceptable. This should be a clear red flag that something has gone horribly wrong, and we must be prepared to question whether a postmodern world really is a world we should keep away from our children.

36 Comments

  1. But people’s fear of the environment in which they are growing is nothing new and from my perspective is somewhat milder than it used to be. I can still vividly remember totally giving up, believing there was no point in doing anything for our futures because we were likely not to have any. On the day Russian ships carrying nuclear missiles to Cuba were to be intercepted by American warships, we stopped going to lectures and played cards all day. We contemplated being wiped from the face of the earth by ballistic missiles. We didn’t quite believe it when we had survived and went back to attending lectures the next day. Today’s fears are trivial by comparison.

    My wife (she who must be listened to) came back from watching sport that same afternoon wondering if London would still be there or would be a glowing pile of rubble. Everyone of my vintage is likely to have similar mental scars. Today’s yoof have it easy.

    Liked by 3 people

  2. A competent and interesting read – I’m a firm believer and practitioner of empirical science, in any science – I don’t subscribe to the climate crisis nonsense, or that CO2 is evil, or that net zero is required, or that gender usurps biological sex
    I read the Cass Review and thought it a superb, empirical science based, analytical report, whose recommendations should act as a lighthouse in a rough sea of progressive ideology – biological science is based on nature, facts and truths and the fact institutions like the NHS, whose very existence depends upon scientific reality and truths, we’re getting embroiled in woke nonsense, shows how infected our institutions have become with the Marxist madness
    As with all things based on science, understanding, knowledge and competence, they must remain rooted in empirical rigour, otherwise, they become fantasy, nothing more

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  3. Bravo, John, especially this:

    “We as adults are at liberty to indulge in whatever wordplay we desire, and engage in whatever culture wars we see fit. But when the mutilation of our children becomes a metric of our success there can be no justification. Postmodernism may be upheld by some as an intellectual ideal, but it is an idealism that cannot be allowed to harm the vulnerable. The alacrity with which transgenderism sacrifices our next generation on the altar of postmodernism is quite shocking”.

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  5. Well said John – I particularly liked this:

    So not only are children scared for their future, they are also burdened with the expectation of encouraging behavioural change, and if they fail in that endeavour, who is to blame? By feeding them with the climate crisis narrative, and then feigning humility in the face of juvenile wisdom, we have not only robbed them of their sense of security and well-being, we have robbed them of their childhood. Climate sceptics are accused of being ridiculous when they refer to this as child abuse, but I struggle to find a better term for it.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. The fact they even had to do this is a sad indictment of the state of our Marxist riddled institutions – I was looking forward to the day some halfwit in the NHS asked me, as a man, if there’s any chance I could be pregnant!

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  7. You were lucky – we had to get up 2 hours before we went to bed, in’t street, in a cardboard box……………………

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    1. There is an objective truth that we search for together
    2. I have my own personal subjective truth based on feelings
    3. Everyone must pretend to agree with my subjective truth
    4. The plane crashes

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Yep, that’s a vital ‘resource’ catweazle, that JK Rowling has been using on X.

    The misogyny has been extreme, as I noticed from June 2015 when I was alerted to trans ideology. (Which at once felt way too late.)

    But the abuse of children has been even worse.

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  12. John – great post – I wonder if some parents, pandering to the child needing to be “different” is a problem.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. dfhunter,

    Yes, I’m sure you are right. Each generation seems committed to a more liberal parenting than the previous one and we run the risk of killing our children with kindness. We also ply them with smart phones and leave them to get on with it. That’s not helping.

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  14. dfhunter, John,

    ‘Transhausen syndrome by proxy’ is probably quite an accurate description of many of these ‘liberal’ parents, perhaps even some ‘progressive’ teachers who are encouraging their impressionable pupils to question their biological sex.

    Liked by 2 people

  16. I live in my own little cocoon. I have seen the occasional reference to the trans phenomena but until now had no idea how large they had become. Why? How? What have I missed? 

    I cannot recall a single instance of this happening in my youth but do vaguely remember one boy who dressed in a frock and was cruelly mocked. Now I suppose he would be deluged with drug therapies and offered counselling. I now do wonder if back then if there were many desperately unhappy people who half recognized they might have been in the wrong bodies. Or am I reading the current situation wrongly?

    I also recall a fellow undergraduate, transferred from another university, who definitely had homosexual leanings and was somewhat effeminate. But would he count? I must have led a very sheltered life and, with regard to this topic, feel very out of touch. Perhaps I’m happier that way.

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  18. Alan:

    I have seen the occasional reference to the trans phenomena but until now had no idea how large they had become. Why? How? What have I missed?

    I’m tempted to say that you’ve been watching too much BBC. It has given a very skewed view of the news, with the points of view of gender critical feminists and caring therapists (of both sexes) largely blanked out. Not unliked the situation with Jimmy Savile, there was a woman on the Newsnight team who had done a valiant investigation of what was going wrong with young people at the GIDS unit at the Tavistock. And that was effectively hushed up. Hannah Barnes is the name to google. Her book is worth reading. The Spectator’s interview with her two days after the Cass Review came out – ‘The word “gender” was a magic cloak’ – How the NHS got away with puberty blockers – explains more. And Helen Joyce’s 2021 book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality I’d recommend the most for a newcomer. I like the then Times columnist David Aaronovitch’s reaction having read it: “Person with testicles comes off the fence“. A lot of the media elite were on the fence, for too many years.

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  22. In my experience John our children seize their truths for themselves. Our grandchildren do this from birth and I dread to think what great grandchildren will be capable of.

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  23. Alan,

    I would agree that one should respect that a child will form their own beliefs, opinions and experiences, but I object to the use of the term ‘personal truths’. That’s where I believe the postmodernism creeps in. Children should be taught the difference between an opinion and truth, and I’m not sure that terms like ‘personal truth’ are helpful in that regard.

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  24. John as I grow older and more decrepit I discover that ever more of my personal beliefs turn out to be opinions. How then can I judge my various offspring? Anyway their beliefs are judged to be more correct than my opinions (mostly) especially because they are now financially independent. Furthermore my granddaughter can fix our TV when we cannot. That earns enormous brownie points.

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  25. Does anyone out there think that this could possibly become part of the teaching we give to our children?

    Young people are terrified that climate change will destroy Earth by the time they grow up, but the world is not actually ending, argues Cambridge professor Mike Hulme. Humanity is not teetering on a cliff’s edge, he says, at risk of imminent catastrophe if we don’t reach net-zero carbon emissions by a certain date. And he has made it his mission to call out the people who claim we are.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13347247/climatism-dangerous-obsession-climate-change-Mike-Hulme.html

    Liked by 2 people

  26. And he has made it his mission to call out the people who claim we are

    You can’t ask more of a climate scientist than that. Hulme has been on worthwhile journey.

    As for the ‘answer’ for young people well, it’s nuanced.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. Richard. I believe Mike Hulme had “travelled” some time ago. When he was at UEA he was already mild and I used to wonder how he got on with CRU. His interests have always concerned the implications of climate change on societies rather than climate science itself. So he was more a Social Scientist than participating in “the Science”. I wish I had had more contact with him, but often he was away from UEA. At the end of his time with us he became head of the Tyndall Centre and became even more peripatetic. 

    The topic and tone of his book therefore come as no surprise.

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  28. Alan: While your view of the history has first-hand value mine is more radical.

    As of 2024 Hulme is a climate scientist. (And it’s a big compliment.)

    —

    Of the people featuring in the Mann-Steyn trial in New York

    Mann isn’t a climate scientist.

    McIntyre is a climate scientist (though he felt forced to say he wasn’t and was visibly annoyed about this).

    Judith Curry is (of course) a climate scientist.

    —

    Going more widely than UEA or a NYC courtroom

    Nic Lewis is a climate scientist. (Note that Tamsin Edwards and others have called him an independent climate scientist in The Guardian, no less. Interesting. What did that mean?)

    John Tyndall was a climate scientist (to give further help with Hulme’s case).

    Guy Callendar was a climate scientist. (Rather independent, though, like Nic.)

    —

    Anyone who hasn’t had the courage to stick their neck out on what has really mattered since around 1988 (especially the fear being fed into children) is dubious. Mann’s a clear-cut no.

    —

    And then, in the transgenderist child abuse area, is DanielRadcliffe an actor?

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  29. Richard,

    It strikes me that any academic who is prepared to speak out against climate scepticism will earn the epithet ‘climate scientist’. How else could John Cook get to be referred to as such? But are these labels that important? Is the Pope a catholic? He certainly exhibits catholic traits and characteristics, but what is his innate sense of identity?

    And let us not forget that I still haven’t answered Willard’s question as to whether political scientist Bjorn Lomborg is actually a scientist. I could have done so, but it was such an obvious attempt by Willard to deflect from his own ignorance regarding the nature of black swans that I couldn’t see anything to be gained by it. But I will answer it now: In a postmodern world, it doesn’t matter what we think Lomborg is, all that matters is his opinion of himself. In the same vein, we have to accept that Radcliffe is a supporter of LGBTQ rights because he has said so and he has nothing further to say. So there!

    Liked by 1 person

  30. John: The good news for you is that made me laugh, especially the ending. The bad news is that you mentioned the Pope and Bjorn Lomborg in the same breath and that, as they say, triggered me. This comment of mine in January 2016 came flooding back. Context to follow.

    I’m okay with whatever gets approved by Matz.

    Agreed, almost by definition 🙂

    I like Jeremy’s version better if it’s acceptable for others.

    It’s acceptable to me.

    What constitutes ‘personal attacks and disparaging personal remarks’ then becomes the issue, over time. I would continue to advocate that, as is made explicit in the Postgres CoC, focus is confined narrowly to Ruby-related interactions.

    Elia saying on Twitter that some groups are not facing reality – it was always more than trans people, and not in the Opal context – should never have been considered harassment that should lead to him being banned from Opal.

    Why?

    Because the structure of so many important arguments about social, scientific and political issues is precisely that both sides think the other is not facing reality. People taking part in an open source community must be free to debate such matters honestly and vigorously without have to resort to a (different) pseudonym.

    Here’s another example. The leader of Elia’s church last year issued an encyclical about the environment. I agree with the criticism made of that statement here:

    http://nypost.com/2015/09/23/on-climate-change-pope-francis-isnt-listening-to-the-worlds-poor/

    Lomborg believes the Pope is not facing reality on what the poor want and need. Those who disagree with Lomborg believe he’s not facing reality about the potentially catastrophic effect of CO2 emissions.

    That’s the very essence of the argument – and of many other types of argument.

    There must be no fear of being able to express oneself on these issues outside of the Ruby context.

    As far as expressions within the Ruby context are concerned, here’s my favourite on this thread:

    I bring up the case of _why, he was weird, and you know what? We loved him to pieces.

    More of that, please.

    — https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004#note-136

    Matz was and is the inventor of Ruby, the open-source programming language.

    Postgres is an open-source database.

    CoC is short for Code of Conduct.

    Elia is Elia Schito, then the main developer of an Ruby open-source (sub)project called Opal, a lovely guy and a devoted Catholic, based with his family in Milan.

    _why was one of the most famous Ruby developers and, for me, deserved his stellar reputation. (He sadly disappeared and tried to delete many of his beautiful writings and codings explaining Ruby. Others have tried to retrieve them.)

    My contributions supporting Elia in this thread in Jan 16, and indeed since June 15, could well have cost me in terms of my earnings since.

    Coraline, who was proposing that Ruby adopted his CoC, had tried to wreck Elia’s reputation and career in my view. Matz (at that time, anyway) took a strong stand against.

    The extent of the buy-in to gender ideology, with all its obvious irrationality, from talented coders was part of a massive shock to my system.

    But I’m glad I dragged the Pope and Lomborg – and thus climate irrationality – into it here!

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  31. For me anyone who works upon climatic data (+ averages, massages or does unmentionable things to temperature, precipitation figures or obtains these data using other means) is potentially a bona fide climate scientist. Anyone who takes such information and applies it is not a climate scientist per se even though they, like Mike Hulme, may work with such people. In Mike Hulme’s case he applies climate change estimates (as he used to from CRU) and applies them to social settings. What is more difficult to evaluate is whether his belief that climate change will not be catastrophic is based upon his own work or not. My guess is that he has chosen to side with those scientists who do not predict major changes.

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  32. Richard,

    You should consider it a blessing that you have led a life rich enough to be triggered by the mere mention of Lomborg and the Pope in the same breath. 🙂

    Your experience of intolerance within the coder community highlights a strange phenomenon – human beings can become so astonishingly affronted upon meeting someone who just happens not to share a particular view on a point of ideology. I think we have discussed this before when noting the importance of being able to compartmentalise.

    Take Radcliffe, for example. When it comes to JK, there must be surely no woman on Earth, apart from his biological mother, to whom he owes more for his existence. And yet, he now cannot allow himself to maintain any relationship with her, professional or personal, because he disagrees on a point of sexual politics. Is his innate sense of importance so great that he is absolved when it comes to matters of gratitude and common decency?

    Also, he thinks a bland gesture of virtue signalling can justify his stance. Yet we all know it is more complicated than that. Perhaps he could answer the following for me:

    If defending gay rights is so important to him, why can he not bring himself to grant people the right to have a same sex relationship? Why must it be same gender? Does he even know what a homosexual would want in his partners?

    Liked by 1 person

  33. John:

    Richard,

    You should consider it a blessing that you have led a life rich enough to be triggered by the mere mention of Lomborg and the Pope in the same breath.

    As words of comfort go that’s up there with “May you live in interesting times.” 😉

    Alan: I’ve finally googled Mike Hulme and found his Wikipedia page. His 12 years at CRU must surely have made him a climate scientist? Do you lose the badge after a whlle? I see he is also called an “evangelical Christian”. Labels huh? As for how the term evangelical originated, as a modifier, it’s not unconnected in my mind to ‘independent’ applied to ‘climate scientist’ as for Nic Lewis. At the risk of further alienating Cliscep’s Catholic contingent, and my dear friend Elia Schito, it goes back to the renowned Sir Thomas More wanting to identify the chaps he was determined to burn like William Tyndale. (No relation.) So maybe my troubles haven’t been so bad.

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  34. Also John:

    Take Radcliffe, for example. When it comes to JK, there must be surely no woman on Earth, apart from his biological mother, to whom he owes more for his existence. And yet, he now cannot allow himself to maintain any relationship with her, professional or personal, because he disagrees on a point of sexual politics. Is his innate sense of importance so great that he is absolved when it comes to matters of gratitude and common decency?

    Also, he thinks a bland gesture of virtue signalling can justify his stance.

    That’s well said. The blandness is part of what is so infuriating – the lack of humour contrasting with the wit of the woman to whom he owes so much, writing now for the rest of us for free on X. This morning, for example, JKR had this pretend spat with a parody trans person:

    through to

    “The Clownfish and Fiddle” is hilarious, given the claims that the clownfish’s strange changeable sexuality is “The Science” that proves all the latest human transgender claims are substantiated.

    I’ve never met JKR but I did run into Julie Bindel during a break in the first Venice Allan organised meeting I went to, in Bristol, in April 2018. Julie had gone public about the trans issue in the UK press around 2004 and paid a great price for it. I knew some of that and as I went out for a breath of fresh air I saw she was having a fag so we got chatting. She asked me what had got me interested in this area. (I was in a small minority of men at the place, not counting trans-identifying males like the glamorous Munroe Bergdorf sitting right next to me.) So I told Julie the story of my Italian coder friend and how they tried to wreck his life and career three years before. I probably didn’t mention Elia’s stance on abortion as Bindel wouldn’t have been in the same boat on that, nor would most of the women there. But she expressed genuine concern for my friend – and exasperation at what trans activists felt able to get away with at that time.

    At that time. That is changing. And that gives me hope about climate activism too.

    Liked by 1 person

  35. We can, if we push back hard enough, end the climate scam… but we would all have to spread the word to our representatives and demand that they end this charade.

    The AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming, due to CO2) and CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, due to CO2) hypotheses have been disproved… they do not reflect reality. They’ve been disproved via multiple avenues in the paper at the bottom of the linked page below.

    https://www.patriotaction.us/showthread.php?tid=2711

    The takeaways:

    1) The climatologists have conflated their purported “greenhouse effect” with the Kelvin-Helmholtz Gravitational Auto-Compression Effect (aka the lapse rate).

    2) The climatologists claim the causative agent for their purported “greenhouse effect” to be “backradiation”.

    3) The Kelvin-Helmholtz Gravitational Auto-Compression Effect’s causative agent is, of course, gravity.

    4) “Backradiation” is physically impossible because energy cannot spontaneously flow up an energy density gradient.

    5) The climatologists misuse the Stefan-Boltzmann (S-B) equation, using the idealized blackbody form of the equation upon graybody objects, which manufactures out of thin air their purported “backradiation”, which is only a mathematical artifact due to that aforementioned misuse of the S-B equation. “Backradiation” does not and cannot actually exist. Its existence would imply rampant violations of the fundamental physical laws.

    6) Polyatomic molecules are net atmospheric radiative coolants, not “global warming” gases. Far from the ‘global warming gas’ claimed by the climatologists, water acts as a literal refrigerant (in the strict ‘refrigeration cycle‘ sense) below the tropopause. CO2 is the most prevalent atmospheric radiative coolant above the tropopause and the second-most prevalent (behind water vapor) below the tropopause.

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  36. LOL, hot things emit radiation, and so do cold things. If you put a hot thing near a cold thing, both emit radiation towards one another. The hot thing emits more radiation, by S-B. Energy does not “spontaneously flow up an energy density gradient” because the cold thing is emitting radiation at the hot thing.

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