The Anti-Woke Case for Not Banning Gender Studies
A piece for Skeptic
“Among critics of “wokeness,” an increasingly heated debate has emerged about what should be done about university disciplines shaped by postmodern-derived Critical Social Justice theories—most notably Gender Studies. Some argue that these fields should be dismantled entirely. Others believe they should be reformed to operate under the normal standards of academic inquiry.”
For Skeptic, I argue that the best way to abolish bad ideas is not to ban them but open them up to genuine multidisciplinary critique.
Find the full essay here.
I still don't understand *how* these disciplines are supposed to be opened up to proper inquiry.
"Either way, the result would be the same: ideas about sex and gender would be evaluated through evidence and argument rather than protected through ideological insulation. " - they have been. Not only in gender studies, but in many similar fields, the conclusions that they start from have long been disproved, sometimes after their delusions were published and sometimes before they ever learned to read.
You certainly know better than I do, and even say so in the text, that those fields do not use or care for evidence. If you take away the mechanisms that they use to cut off feedback from reality (which are not exclusive to the radical fields but a huge issue across the humanities), they can't exist.
I fail to see how suggesting open debate and evidence-based methodology and examining their ideas for what they really are is not exactly what you and others have been doing for years now.
I'm not even sure if falls under censorship. Maybe it just doesn't belong in universities because its important to have some criteria for what does. A bare minimum of caring about reality is a good start. Banning it from a place where it doesn't belong doesn't stop people from talking about it.