Science doesn't (or at least shouldn't) be a popularity contest as to how many proponents and opponents it attracts. The problem you're identifying is that dominant philosophies and ways of viewing the world change with time, but this is no more true for 'gender studies' as it is for any other field (of science, technology, or anything else) in which the philosophical foundation upon which it is built is so heavily involved in the results. I think a good analogy here might be interpretations of quantum mechanics, which similar to the philosophy of essentialism (for instance) can gain or lose popularity.
Nevertheless, the discussion then becomes a matter of which philosophical underpinning makes the most sense or fits the empirical data. The fact this discussion is occurring does not make a whole field of study 'implausible' as a parent comment said; on the contrary, it makes it richer. It's fine for opponents and proponents to have equally reasonable arguments, but it's unclear as to how this makes a particular science untenable or equivalent to the old scientific racism, phlogiston, or phrenology.
(Or is it possible that the endeavor of science is actually a slow and flawed but nonetheless unrelenting movement towards objective truth?)
In general, epistemology is about the root of human knowledge, and why some statement of knowledge represents a justified belief, but those roots never terminate because as Feynman said the Why question never stops recurring, as we dig deeper. In other words, there is no objective truth or any thing for that matter (no pun intended) apart from what we observe (the idea of "primacy of consciousness over matter" per E. Schrödinger et al, a neurophenomenologist view of reality) which means that our justified beliefs depend on how we observe and what we can and cannot conceive of given our finite mental model.
I don't think epistemic relativism is the way to go about life as it basically puts a barrier to further inquiry and pursuit of a truth that we feel is there, and it's the act of digging that allows us to progress, and not the transient truths we derive along the way, as we dig deeper. It's almost as if the truth is a magnet with infinite power and infinite distance that keeps our consciousness in motion or that it sits behind the barrier between being and not being, life and death, etc.
In the wise words of Manuel, I know nothing.
Also, see Bohm's final paper on Hidden Variables and the Implicate Order, the most sane of all metaphysical thoughts that I've come across.
The rhetoric is particularly galling because it is self-reinforcing willful ignorance - refusing to learn and then saying "We cannot possibly know!" instead of trying to stretch our limits.
Once attention is drawn to it, yes. But in our real time behaviours and thoughts, at the low level detail of how the human mind works, do we sometimes ~forget? Does man sometimes suffer from hubris or other imperfections?
> The rhetoric is particularly galling because it is self-reinforcing willful ignorance
That is but one of many possible interpretations of my words, as is often the case, but not always realized.
> refusing to learn and then saying "We cannot possibly know!" instead of trying to stretch our limits.
I've made no such claim (but to be clear, I'm not sure if you were making that assertion). I've noticed that the human mind is often able to "see" things that aren't there (something else that seems to be often overlooked, particularly when convenient for the person doing the looking) - it is an incredibly powerful entity.
If you reread the post, you'll note that it is actually also attacking "20th century" global warming science by analogizing it to "19th century" racism.
This thread was completely derailed by the written version of this: https://youtu.be/b0e-omnsukM?t=82