This morning, I read Christopher Rufo’s corrective column on the latest instance of influential Queer Theorist Judith Butler’s almost inveterate aversion to honest intellectual engagement. And I must confess, even writing that last sentence strikes me as something Butler herself would smile at. Given that “honest intellectual engagement,” in a paradigm she’d argue is controlled by the meta-discourses of a patriarchy that counts among its dullard legion those who believe that such hopelessly outdated ideas as “honesty” and reciprocal “intellectual engagement” are desirable, much less possible — and this includes both “constructed” men and women gulled by patriarchal discourse into a false consciousness — is for her just one of a number of competing epistemological impulses (and a supremely flawed one at that), she’d likely gild the accusation and place it on her mantle, giving it pride of place.

But just because Butler revels in her vicious “play” doesn’t mean we need take her seriously. And indeed, though for the last 40 or so years to do so is to situate oneself among the academic vogue, it is long past time we find the not only the courage, but the unabashed will, to declare this particular hoary Emperor of Queer naked as an aged Donskoy.