When subsequently challenged, Mr Yates invoked “discrimination” and insisted that he is entitled to use “any bathroom.” The school is currently weighing the views of parents against the prospect of legal action and accusations of “transphobia,” with another meeting on the matter scheduled for September. Mr Yates is, he says, “completely overwhelmed with how the community is coming out and supporting me.”

At which point, readers may wonder whether such overwhelming support, largely from progressive women, is actually part of the problem.

It’s interesting to see how Mr Yates’ supporters – again, largely progressive women – will merrily elevate themselves with the airing of modish views, their displays of compassion and inclusivity, while in effect screwing over the girls. Girls, who, by disapproving, even politely, become low-status.

Because when you look at a sixteenth-century mirror salvaged from a warship belonging to Henry VIII, the first thing you want to know is how it might induce psychological crises in the sexually dysmorphic.

We’re also told, “A gendered spin on the character can open up more potential for exploring Bond’s individuality.” And this exploration of the character’s individuality will apparently be achieved by erasing a rather fundamental aspect of the character – his maleness – and replacing him with an entirely different person of a different sex.

Readers are invited to ponder whether similar transitions might enrich the character of, say, Miss Marple, who, via similar logic, could be depicted as male, and as always having been male. Thereby exploring her individuality. Answers on a postcard, please.

We do seem to be witnessing an upsurge in such sly provocations, and almost always from the same kinds of people with the same kinds of views – an eerie uniformity. And so, Narcissistic Glitter Bint can invade someone’s personal space and shower them, and their children, with some substance – in this case, glitter – and do it repeatedly, against their wishes, while saying, rather triumphantly, “I’m not touching him.”

The dynamic is basically, “You, unlike me, have some self-restraint, which gives me an advantage, therefore I shall test it and see how far I can go.” It’s the psychology of a child unaccustomed to consequences. 

I think we can assume that madam’s professed “time blindness” – which apparently precludes the use of the reminder function on her phone – doesn’t result in her turning up for work early, or accidentally working extra hours. Or being in any way more useful or helpful, or less self-involved.

I think we can assume that with some confidence.

Punctuality is, among other things, a gesture of recognition, of empathy. You’re acknowledging the other person as mattering, as someone whose time is as finite as your own and no less valuable. And if someone exempts themselves from such reciprocal expectations – having been encouraged to do so by supposedly grown-up educators – then it seems likely they will do less well in life, whether socially or materially.

To pick a humdrum example – if a schoolfriend’s mom invites you to join them for tea, and you turn up an hour late, unapologetic, and still expecting to be fed, this is not an obvious basis for congratulation. Or a second invitation.

From this childhood example, you can, I think, extrapolate.

It turns out that the reckless visibility of a wedding photo may be crushing the self-esteem out of the touchily unwed. You see, the mere sight of a photo of someone’s happy day can “crowd out the experiences of people with minoritized social identities,” albeit in ways never quite explained. Other taboos include references to “simple activities like family dance parties,” which are apparently a thing, and “gardening with a spouse.”

Curiously, given the stated importance of “sensitivity” and being mindful of what things might mean, we aren’t invited to ponder the kind of person who would resent someone else’s wedding photo. And then complain about it. Or whether such neurotic affectations, these unhappy mental habits, are something to be actively encouraged. In the name of progress. At a university.

Dr Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a lecturer in Italian Studies, is of course on-message: “I’m very upset that there are in fact Trump supporters and I have zero sympathy towards them.” This is followed by pointed references to Hitler and Mussolini – because hey, why not? – and whisperings of a cowed and fearful media: “Many people in the news media are afraid to really engage the fact that Trump is an authoritarian because if they do so then reality becomes too threatening, and therefore they would have to take a different stance publicly.”

Readers are invited to take a moment to reflect on Mr Trump’s famously warm and not at all fractious relationship with the mainstream media, which never, ever calls him names. Like “proto-fascist,” for instance. Or when MSNBC’s Niccole Wallace breathlessly announced that the President was genocidal and, for reasons left to the imagination, clearly bent on “exterminating Latinos.” Or when the same broadcaster’s Frank Figliuzzi suggested that Trump’s lowering of flags following a shooting tragedy was actually a coded salute to Adolf Hitler.

Apparently, these things never happened, are not in fact bizarrely routine, and the pundits at CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, NBC, Salon, etc., are just too terrified and deferential to admit, as Dr Ben-Ghiat puts it, that “they are living in the middle of a fascist, authoritarian takeover.”

For those who may be confounded by the profundity of the piece, a handy walk-through guide is available. Said guide points out that the performance will encourage among onlookers “a deeper level of critical thought.” Of the many ruminations that will doubtless be inspired is the following: “After seeing someone wrap their head in meat twice, does it still hold the same weight as it did the first time?”

The guide notes, rather earnestly, that the first attempt, by Mr Carvalho – to envelop his head in bread, string, and assorted meat products – prompted more amusement from the tiny audience than the subsequent repetition of it by Ms Cochrane. This is presented as an invitation to “a fundamental shift in paradigm” and some allegedly profound insight into gender politics. Or, how “different actions are read on different bodies.” Our artistic deep thinkers are seemingly unaware of the concepts of novelty and diminishing returns. 

[Mao] tampered around with agriculture too and came to the perfectly ignorant but quintessentially Marxist conclusion that household vermin are agents of capitalism. Yes, like capitalists, they exploit the labour of the proletariat and therefore must be totally eradicated. And by far the worst of all these bourgeoisie oppressors was, naturally, that most vile and heinous creature, the sparrow…

As part of the “Smash Sparrow Campaign,” children were enlisted to bang pots and pans around, chasing the sparrows out of their nests. Later, adults knocked the nests out of the trees and crushed the eggs underneath their sandals, until there were almost no sparrows left in all of China…

Within a year of the “Smash Sparrow Campaign,” itself part of the larger “Four Pests Campaign,” the locust population exploded and did what locusts do best. The Communists had played God and literally created a Biblical plague.

It seems we’ve gone from “The aboriginal population is primitive and unable to think rationally about things,” which is a sentiment to be denounced, especially in academia, and progressed to “We must treat the aboriginal population as if it were primitive and unable to think rationally about things.” Which, apparently, is something to be applauded. Especially in academia. 

Readers with a taste for “anti-hierarchical collective working” and “defeating uber-capitalism” may benefit from watching Vanessa Engle’s excellent documentary series Lefties, particularly the second episode, titled Angry Wimmin, which follows the adventures and frustrations of the ladies involved in such endeavours. And in which, incidentally, Ms Bindel can be seen insisting that heterosexual feminists are a contradiction in terms and that lesbianism is an ideological duty. You see, any woman can be a lesbian if she just tries hard enough and embraces the right kind of politics. Given her intense political commitment, one presumes that Ms Bindel would have selflessly facilitated any such transformation.

Ms Leung airs her distaste for “white men ideas” – as if they had been uniform across continents and throughout history – while reminiscing about attending a “white AF conference” two years earlier. I was unsure what the “AF” might refer to and searched for some literary or scholarly explanation. It then occurred to me that a “white AF conference” is, to borrow the woke vernacular, a white as fuck conference. Which is how not-at-all-racist academic librarians convey their thoughts, apparently. […]

Having dismissed as tiresome the entire breadth and history of “white men ideas” – from Ptolemy to Babbage, Tesla to Solzhenitsyn, Turing to Shakespeare – these “white dudes” and their “so-called ‘knowledge’” – Ms Leung then makes clear the kinds of feedback she is willing to entertain: “I still have some thinking to do around this topic, but curious to hear what others think. I’m less interested in hearing that you don’t buy it, so don’t bother with those types of comments.”

The general theme of the replies, and the air of annoyance, reminded me of Ms Claudia Balducci, a woman responsible for Seattle’s public transport network. Faced with evidence that up to 70% of passengers are now freeloading with impunity, Ms Balducci replied: “People are feeling more welcome on our system and less afraid to use it because there’s less of a fear of fare enforcement.” Which is progress, apparently. An achievement unlocked. 

Well, not everyone is happy trusting their recovery to healing songs and delusions of aboriginal sorcery, and there’s only so much you can achieve by pushing crushed witchetty grubs into a person’s ear. Likewise, the restorative properties of bush dung, as used in many of the practices invoked by Ms Ngaree Blow – those “ways of knowing” – are somewhat unclear.

With a glorious lack of irony, Ms Blow then denounces “outdated approaches to health” and insists that medical treatment must be “culturally appropriate.” If not, one assumes, optimal or even efficacious. Still, if patients aren’t recovering as rapidly as one might hope, or indeed recovering at all, at least those Western paradigms will be “decolonised” and righteously disrupted: “There has never been a more exciting time to be disruptive,” says she. A term Ms Blow deploys no fewer than eleven times. Possibly hinting at her priorities.

“Whiteness,” an allegedly deplorable yet oddly nebulous phenomenon, is apparently rooted in the “destruction of the environment” and the “total demolition of value,” including, we’re told, the destruction of “integrity, honesty… common sense.” Our theatrically agonised academic insists that “whiteness” has “no nature, no culture, no essence… no value or intrinsic meaning,” and yet it supposedly corrupts and befouls everything it touches and must therefore “dissolve into oblivion.”

It scarcely needs saying that allowing one’s children to be exposed to the unhappy mental contortions of Professor Barrett would not be the wisest way to spend tens of thousands of dollars. Though conceivably one might use him as an illustration of how minds can come undone.

“The personal is political,” says she. Well, so I hear. But it’s also worth considering just how often the political, or allegedly political, is a function of personality and a self-flattering rationalisation for personal shortcomings and sub-optimal choices. Not least among the kinds of people who loudly announce that the personal is political.

It occurs to me that if you start demanding that small children be allowed to vote in general elections – largely because you assume that their choices, their politics, will tend to mirror your own – then perhaps it’s time to ponder why your own politics correspond with the imagined preferences of children, who are, by definition, unworldly and irresponsible. Such that you grudgingly concede that, “Enfranchising everyone [i.e., including small children] will make the electorate less informed on average.” The rest of us, meanwhile, may wish to ponder whether a leftist’s desire to exploit the ignorance of small children in order to further her own socialist vanities is not only farcical, but degenerate.

We’ve been here before, of course, when Professor David Runciman claimed that not allowing primary school children to vote alongside adults amounts to “an inbuilt bias against governments that plan for the future.” As if small children are renowned for their selflessness and conscientious forethought.

Dr Cremin doesn’t seem to grasp, or isn’t willing to admit, that his craving for public transgression – to, as he puts it, “sow gender confusion in kids” – by which he means young people over whom he has leverage – reveals quite a lot about his character. And his fitness to teach.

I hate to sound prim, but if I were – God help me – a sociology student, I doubt I’d be reassured by the fact that my lecturer felt entitled to use the classroom as a venue for his transvestite fetish. It does rather suggest a pathological level of self-involvement and raises a suspicion that students may find themselves playing captive audience to – or being reluctant participants in – some personal psychodrama. A kind of power game. Some variation of, “I can do this, and you can’t stop me without being accused of bigotry.”

And so, we find a seemingly endless parade of preening, pretentious dolts telling us that poverty, and staying in poverty, never has anything to do with bad choices, including the choices that they themselves encourage. As, for instance, when telling us, emphatically, that “a couple cannot raise a child better than one [person] can.” And that the “diffusion” of the family unit – which is to say, absent fathers, hardship, and subsequent dependence on the state – “is one of the most exciting things to happen to the American social pattern since sexual liberation.”

Yes, divorce, estrangement, and sudden-onset poverty. It’s all terribly exciting. 

When not using the word “whiteness” as a modish pejorative, and “questioning Eurocentric ideas surrounding mental health,” Mr Soto plans to “challenge the historically-dominant whiteness” of the campus and thereby “create a more open environment for students.” This heavenly state of openness and resurgent mental wellbeing will be rendered upon the Earth by telling students at an upscale and statusful liberal arts college how oppressed they are and by invoking racial conspiracy theories, the aforementioned “whiteness” and “white supremacy,” as the root of all distress.

Readers will recall that Middlebury College is where students suitably gorged on “inclusivity” and “social justice” display their righteousness and mental stability by physically menacing elderly scholars, trying to trample them underfoot, and assaulting female staff, such that they require a hospital visit and, subsequently, a neck brace.

Mr Andersson tells us that during three months of, er, research, and 30 notebook entries, his mind often wandered to thoughts of other gentlemen doing much the same thing with the same publications, including the copies he’d acquired second-hand. This is described as a “feeling of intimacy.” Dozing off afterwards is described as “self-care,” which is apparently important. And we’re informed that the Cellophane wrappers of his pornography collection “signalled luxury and investment in myself.”