A middle-finger salute to the angry, immovable ideologues

Gender activists are opposed the simple concept that biology determines sex

Last week a Kingston City Council youth worker in Melbourne ordered white male Christian students at Parkdale Secondary College to stand during her talk about pronouns, intersectionality, and privilege, labelling the boys “oppressors”. Perhaps in response a senior school official could give a follow-up speech along the following lines.

Good morning and thank you for this opportunity. Today I will talk about pronouns, intersectionality, and privilege. It is vital you understand them as they will assist you in interacting with others.

Correct pronouns are essential. So too are correct nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions, but that discussion is for another day.

The phrase “my pronouns” may be fashionable, but it is a misnomer. You do not “own” pronouns any more than you own the nouns “man” or “woman” or the adjectives “tall” or “intelligent”. What pronouns you use to refer to yourself is your decision. What pronouns others use to refer to you is theirs, although one usually in accordance with linguistic convention and logic.

When referring to others, you may at times come across instances that warrant the use of a different pronoun from what those rules specify. That is a matter of judgment, discretion, and tact. Tolerance is important, but unbridled tolerance is indulgence, and excessive indulgence, appeasement. To mandate terminology that has no factual basis is to crave power over others and control how they think.

Do not allow activists to browbeat you into disavowing that biology determines sex. Rare exceptions aside, one is born either male or female. To require people to detail their “preferred pronouns” when they introduce themselves is a subtle way of undermining that fact. If convenors insist on you providing this information, tell them your pronouns are obvious to all who possess eyes, ears, and half a brain. If you really want to annoy these gender commissars, do your best Julie Andrews impression and sing “Me, a name I call myself”.

Now to intersectionality. To me that indicates a convergence of lines, otherwise known as geometry. Studying this, unlike much of the subjects taught at university today, will greatly increase your knowledge of the surrounding world.

Lest you think I am unfairly criticising tertiary institutions, just consider the case of Sheffield University in the UK and its treatment of a famous mathematician. Until now, it has enjoyed a reputation for academic excellence. Now in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, it has announced it will “decolonise” its engineering faculty. This is said to involve “challenging long-standing conscious and unconscious biases” to address “Eurocentric” and “white saviour” perspectives of science and mathematics.

This revisionist lunacy is such that even Sir Isaac Newton, mathematics pioneer and possibly the greatest scientist of all time, has been accused of benefiting from “colonial-era activity”. In defending its decision, the university stated: “Decolonising the curriculum is an ongoing process which prompts us to incorporate historically marginalised or suppressed knowledge into all disciplines … so all our students have the opportunity to see themselves reflected in what they are being taught.”

You need not be a scholar of Greek mythology to know the story of a young man whose sole desire was to see his reflection. Likewise, you need not be a psychologist to know the condition of those who incessantly and noisily demand the world be adjusted to suit their wants and needs.

Sir Isaac Newton is the latest victim of an attempt to rewrite history.

For those activists intent on expunging Newton from science texts, let me say for argument’s sake I agree with you. His theory on gravity is patriarchal, white-centric and thus flawed. To disprove it, and thus discredit this beneficiary of colonial-era activity, I propose throwing certain bodies, including your own, from the roof of the Sheffield Town Hall. Which of you will be the first to volunteer for this experiment?

But back to intersectionality, this time as defined by a Victorian government website, which “recognises that individual characteristics that inform our social identity do not exist independently of each other”. What follows is an orgy of absolutes and the arbitrary subsuming of individuals into tribes. “Rather they often intersect to create complex forms of oppression as a result of systems and structures that devalue certain population groups or people with specific characteristics,” the guide says.

I do not dismiss this out of hand. If you possess certain characteristics, you will find you are disadvantaged, especially if those traits are compounded. Say for example you are the type to blame others for your mistakes and setbacks. And say this is complemented by your tendency towards self-pity and victimhood. Lastly, say you fervently believe those who benefit outside your tribe do so to your detriment. That is the reality of intersectionality. It is parasitic, divisive, and hateful, and those who suffer from it are best treated not by being cosseted, but by a hefty kick in the posterior.

I now turn to privilege. Apparently white people are blinded by it. It magically opens doors, so to speak, it puts them ahead in the queue, it shortlists their job applications, and it extends the length of their lives. It ensures white people are better educated; that they are paid more than anyone else; and that they enjoy better quality of life. The response to this is to agitate against whiteness in the name of “equality” and “inclusivity”. The activists who do so recognise no distinction between equal opportunity and equal outcome.

Last week a youth worker from your local council – an institution formerly responsible for disposing of garbage, not disseminating it – ordered all white male Christian boys in the Year 11 grade to stand in class, telling them they were “oppressors” who “held all the power and privilege in society”.

The Anzac Day march in Sydney on Sunday. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

Let me give you an example of students who are privileged. Around the time you were being berated by this woman, students at the NSW Central Coast hosted War II veteran Alfred Carpenter, age 104, at the 65th Newcastle and Hunter Combined Schools Anzac Commemorative Event.

Presumably, Mr Carpenter is an example of the white male privilege your previous speaker railed against. This former lieutenant fought in Syria, Libya, Italy, Greece, and Crete, where he lost an eye. He saw his best friend killed by artillery fire. At the time the war ended, he was in a Bougainville medical centre, laid low with malaria and dengue fever after his launch was blown out of the water by Japanese guns.

Those students will likely never forget the humbling experience of being in the presence of that man. Conversely, you were belittled by an activist funded by the taxes your parents pay. I will leave it to you to decide which one is qualified to talk about fighting oppression.

Your previous speaker also singled out heterosexual men in her diatribe. What a pity she is not here, for I would like to hear her views on this case of bigotry. Last week Sircuit Bar, a gay nightclub in Fitzroy, joined the rest of Melbourne in honouring the four police officers killed in last year’s Eastern Freeway tragedy. It had a heartfelt reason for doing so. One of those who died, Constable Glen Humphris, was a gay man and a regular at the bar.

In response, Sircuit was attacked on its Facebook page by gay activists. “Absolutely abhorrent statement to make,” said one. “Why not stand in the fight to stop black deaths in custody instead of supporting oppressors? The queer community will never stand with cops.”

The backlash was so severe that management issued a grovelling apology and agreed to donate to an indigenous support group.

Chris Driscoll, the owner of Sircuit Bar and Mollies Dinner on Smith Street in Melbourne, has been forced to offer an apology after the venue was lit up in blue to honour Victoria Police officers who died in a fatal crash last year. https://t.co/0axwpkP5TU

— Star Observer (@star_observer) April 27, 2021

According to an incensed Star Observer, the club’s managers “had failed to read the room” in honouring the fallen officers. “In 2021, minorities who continue to be persecuted should stand together in solidarity, not be acting divisively, with little to no thought about the consequence of our actions,” said the LGBTI publication. Irony, anyone?

That concludes my talk about pronouns, intersectionality, and privilege. I ask you to do only one thing when you leave here, and that is to hold to account those ideologues who angrily declare their assertions are immutable truths which must never be challenged.

To quote George Orwell – “How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?” Your response to those who subject you to their hate-filled mantra begins with a universal gesture. You extend a middle finger to them.