Another fallacy of progressive ideology is the belief that complex problems of ethics and society are amenable to theoretically-elaborated solutions (based on discursive reason). Strangely, even feminist thinking – typically (and irrationally) hostile to science and mathematics – often falls into this trap. Though core feminist ideas are anti-rationalistic in certain ways, they are presented nonetheless as “theory”.

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The errors of progressivism have been compounded and exacerbated by the notion that objective knowledge of the world is not possible. This idea has deep roots in radical social thought and philosophical pragmatism. But it is self-defeating; and perhaps it is the realization of this fact which lies behind the attempt to present traditional – and commonsense – views of objectivity and truth as being not simply in error but also as somehow morally or politically tainted.

Feminism, like other kinds of identity politics, relies heavily on this kind of rhetorical moralizing. We are dealing here with emotional manipulation, ploys designed to promote or prop up ideas which cannot sustain themselves in the absence of a particular kind of value-laden belief system.

If truth is socially constructed then science and rigorous scholarship should not be privileged over the pseudo-intellectual effusions of feminists, critical theorists, et al.. How convenient.

All these various virtue-signalling discourses are not about intellectual inquiry at all – and never have been. For most of the participants, it has always been a power game, pure and simple.