https://c2cjournal.ca/2021/07/progressi ... nosticism/
... Our modern-day Gnostic’s identity is an irreducible and immutable essence. If one is born Black or Indigenous or female, one has certain characteristics that are like imperishable stigmata. Thus the gay liberation movement has banned use of the phrase “sexual preference” in favour of “sexual orientation,” presuming that homosexuality is an innate and immutable characteristic, not a choice that can be made or unmade.
Perhaps even more obvious is the case of transgender ideologists, who speak of a female (or male) person trapped inside a male (or female) body. They advocate allowing children to demand hormonal treatment or even surgery to begin the outward revelation of their true identity. This is eerily reminiscent of the Gnostic pneuma trapped within the human being, unlike the common-sense view of the self as involving biological maturation and experiential growth within a genetically inherited framework.
Pneuma and gnosis also appear in other branches of Progressive identity politics. Feminists celebrate “women’s ways of knowing,” and Indigenous advocates speak of their “traditional knowledge” not accessible to outsiders. Similarly, Progressives denounce science and scholarship for being White – see the recent attack on the Whiteness of astronomy for its use of the term “black holes.”
The common thread in these positions is to see knowledge not as the result of processes of study, learning, and discovery that are accessible to anyone willing to make the effort, but as the special enlightenment of an elect, what Thomas Sowell called the “vision of the anointed.” They have received insight that others cannot share or appreciate; to try is to be guilty of “cultural appropriation.” And, as Sowell memorably pointed out, Progressives also tend to see other opinions not just as different but immoral. Opinion and morality are easily conflated when you think of knowledge as resulting from “lived experience” rather than logical reasoning.
