Michael Fane, the hero of Compton Mackenzie’s bildungsroman Sinister Street describes the idea of the gentleman.

“Every day more and more loudly the opinion goes up thar these gentlemen are accidental ornaments, rather useless, rather irritating ornaments of contemporary society. Every day brings another sneer at public schools and universities. Every new writer who commands any attention drags out the old idol of the Noble Savage and invites us to worship him. Only now the Noble Savage has been out into corduroy trousers [Update this to “blue jeans.” –JDZ]. My theory is that a gentleman leavens the great popular mass of humanity, and however superficially useless he seems, his existence is a pledge of the immanence of the idea. Popular education has fired thousands to prove themselves not gentlemen in the present meaning of the term, but something much finer than any gentleman we know anything about. And they are not, they simply and solidly are not. The first instinct of the gentleman is respect for the past with all it connotes of art and religion and thought. The first instinct of the educated unfit is to hate and destroy the past. Now I maintain that the average gentleman, whatever situation he is called upon to face, will deal with it more effectively than these noble savages who have been armed with weapons they don’t know how to ue and are therefore so much the more dangerous, since every weapon to the primitive mind is a weapon of offense.”

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Meanwhile, today, at the same Oxford Michael Fane once attended, the noble savages, now called Social Justice Warriors, are in full and open revolt against, not only the Past, but against Nature itself.

Daily Mail:

Oxford University has told colleges and academic departments to remove gender-specific titles such as Mr and Mrs from their websites and leaflets.

The guidance, contained in a document from the Equality and Diversity Unit, suggests only academic terms like Dr and Prof should be retained.

It advised that while the process of removing gender-specific titles is underway, people should be given the option of appearing without any prefix. …

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell supported the University’s stance on gender specific titles.

He told MailOnline: ‘A person’s name is usually sufficient to identify their gender if an identification is required for some good, practical reason.

The guidance suggests only academic terms like Dr and Prof should be retained.

‘It is a positive thing to not always emphasise gender. We are all human. Why does our gender matter so much and why should it be constantly highlighted by titles?

‘In an age when more people are defining themselves as transgender or gender-fluid, using gender-based titles ignores the new reality and could cause needless offence.’

The cultural legacy of 1968 has turned every elite university, on both sides of the Atlantic, into a lunatic asylum.