September 7, 2025

I remember a story William Woodson told to illustrate the postmodern notion of truth. It was a story about a first grade class who 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. A number of names were suggested and they talked about which one suited the rabbit best. During the discussion one of the children said 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 ether. 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. There 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 very light hearted story and we can all understand the teacher’s dilemma. But 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? Philosopher Steven Hicks has well argued that in fact what the founders of postmodern thought were trying to do was salvage socialism since it had historically failed so miserably every time it was instituted. How could we ignore empirical evidence and continue to cling to an ideology that only works in the imagination of its advocates? Develop a system of thought which minimized the value of empirical evidence. 

There may however be another reason at least some of the postmodern thinkers sought to abandon overarching truth. Dr. Woodson’s story may have a deeper application than he made of it. Today we understand that rejecting truth has been specifically and militantly applied to gender. With the mainstream thinking seeming to be that we would need to ask the rabbit for it’s pronouns and  only in that way could we arrive at a definitive answer. This phenomenon likely plays a key role in at least the thinking of Michel Foucault was deeply sexually depraved. Foucault is the most cited scholar of modern times his influence on postmodern thought and cultural Marxism (Critical Theory) is deep and pervasive. 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? 

Despite the known science describing physiological, mental, emotional, and psychological differences between boys and girls across cultures and even species we are told gender and sex are to be differentiated and further that the expression of these is a social construct. Dr. Woodson described many areas in which postmodernism had moved many even among the lords people away from truth. He suggested a good response to postmodernism was a return to a biblical worldview. No doubt including a biblical understanding of gender and sexuality.

~ Kevin Cleary