I remember a story William Woodson told to illustrate the postmodern notion of truth. It was a story about a first-grade class that decided to adopt a rabbit as the class pet. They got the new rabbit and all the children were excited and happy to care for and play with the new class member. One of the first things the children wanted to do was give their pet a name. Several were suggested, and they talked about which one suited the rabbit best. During the discussion one of the children asked, “shouldn’t we know if the rabbit is a boy or girl?” The teacher, at this point stepped in and offered to help. She examined the rabbit closely and could not identify the sex. Then they called the pet shop and asked them, but they didn’t know the sex either. Finally, the teacher decided it was not that important, and she would just have the children vote to decide the gender of the new pet. This was no problem since the children didn’t care, and their joy from the pet would not be affected in any way by what gender it was.
This is a lighthearted story and we can all understand the teacher’s dilemma. However, this way of thinking is not only applied to classroom pets. In fact, the intent of Postmodern Philosophers and Academics was to deny the existence of truth as a category.
Jean-Francis Lyotard defined postmodernism as “incredulity toward metanarratives.” That is, any claim to universal/widely applicable objective truth is to be rejected. We might ask why take issue with metanarratives and truth?
The initial advocates of Postmodern thinking would tie it back to Marx saying metanarratives are used to oppress and so if liberation is to be achieved, metanarratives must go. It is true that truth often restricts. Consider, that because gravity exists as an objective reality, I can’t lift many of the things I might want to. But pretending that the 20 pounds that I can lift is the same as the 200 that I can’t, is no solution and has lost any meaningful relationship to reality.
Philosopher Steven Hicks has argued that, in fact, what the founders of postmodern thought were trying to do, was to salvage socialism. Touted as the modern scientific way to plan an economy, it had nevertheless failed historically, every time it was instituted. How then to ignore empirical evidence and cling to an ideology that only works in the imagination of its advocates? The answer: develop a system of thought which minimizes the value of empirical evidence and objective truth. Thus the rise and appeal of Postmodernism. On a popular level, many are in love with the idea of being able to prescribe reality rather then merely describing it.
Nowhere is this freedom more celebrated than in the area of sexual morality and the rejection of biological norms. In Dr. Woodson’s story they should have asked the rabbit for its pronouns. Postmodernism empowers the normalization of sexual perversion, by creating ‘new realities’ with words alone. If we can ‘speak new realities into existence’, then absolutely anything goes.
The academic work of two members of the Frankfurt school (a group of German Marxist scholars who fled the Nazi’s for the United States) formed the foundation for most of modern sociology.
Theador Adorno and Herbert Marcuse wrote on human sexuality. Adorno wrote “The Authoritarian Personality” in which he described those with heterosexual and family desires – as potential fascists. In a similar vein, Marcuse’s “Eros and Civilization” (a response to Freud’s Civilization and it’s Discontents) argued that sexual repression was one of the limits that needed to be removed. He believed this was necessary to achieve the Marxist utopia, which he believed, society was destined to become (Marcuse did warn that sex could also distract from the rebellion and so had to be approached with some care).
Another key thinker and contributor to legitimizing perversion was French Postmodernist Michel Foucault. Foucault is the most cited scholar of modern times. His influence on postmodern thought and cultural Marxism (Critical Theory) is deep and pervasive. Foucault was also deeply sexually depraved. Jordan Peterson once commented that Foucault was highly intelligent and that he turned that powerful intellect to one primary goal, satisfying his depraved sexual desires (I have changed the wording to be more appropriate). Is it any wonder then that Foucault’s intellectual descendants have specifically targeted sexuality?
It is well established scientifically that men and women are different; physiologically, mentally, emotionally, and psychologically. These differences have been demonstrated across cultures. Yet we are told that gender is a spectrum and different from sex. We can admit that some expressions of sexuality are cultural and these are not considered primary factors by any reasonable person. No one thinks that wearing a dress instead of pants has anything to do with someone’s core identity. Dr. Woodson described many areas in which postmodernism had moved many, even among the lord’s people away from truth. He suggested that the best response to postmodernism was a return to a biblical worldview, including a biblical understanding of gender and sexuality.
Dr. Woodson could not have known (although perhaps would not be surprised to learn) that sex and gender would become such prominent political and social issues. His illustration is even more apt because the response it initiates in its hearers is the same response we naturally have, to being told that sexuality is self-determined. Just as the class is not in a place to determine the gender of the rabbit no person is in a position to determine their own sex. Furthermore, it should come as a surprise to no one, that when humans are told that there is no such things as right and wrong, the first and most frequent way they will act out is sexually. Sadly, like all sin this is to their own detriment and we are living with the fallout of fifty years of sexual misconduct.
As Dr. Woodson would have advocated, we need to point people back to a better way, to God’s way of approaching all of life. May God help us in this effort
Barrie ON