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Jordan Peterson interview fallout: It's little wonder men don't know where they stand

TheAndredal

February 3, 2018

52 upvotes

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Post Information

Title	Jordan Peterson interview fallout: It's little wonder men don't know where they stand
Author	TheAndredal
Upvotes	52
Comments	25
Date	February 3, 2018 6:17 PM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/7v0zu5/jordan_peterson_interview_fallout_its_little/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/jordan-peterson-interview-fallout-its-little.1179693 https://theredarchive.com/post/1179693

Comments

[–]IronJohnMRA 10 points11 points12 points 8 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]thrway_1000 15 points16 points17 points 8 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]IronJohnMRA 4 points5 points6 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]TheAndredal[S] 5 points6 points7 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

"Possibly you have never heard of Jordan B. Peterson, but don’t worry, soon you will. He has written a book and he is coming to Australia in March to promote it, and if you’re missing Christopher Hitchens, you’re going to love him.

Peterson is a professor of psychology, previously at Harvard, now at the University of Toronto. He is 54, he has a gentle manner and — I hope it’s still OK to say this — he is easy on the eye.

Peterson’s latest book, his second, is called 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, but books aren’t why he’s getting attention. Peterson is famous for what he says on his YouTube channel, particularly about the role of men in modern society. He says men in the West are suffering a crisis of masculinity because they are encouraged from birth by an apologetic culture to believe that traditionally masculine qualities — strength, aggression, self-reliance — are negative and destructive, while feminine qualities — willingness to co-operate, for example — are the way forward for the human race.

This, he says, is so stupid “it’s hard to know where to begin”. Forcing men to become more agreeable, less competitive, will be the death of them, and all of us.

That’s not all he says. Peterson touches every button: he thinks social justice warriors are mostly faking it, and he can’t abide virtue-signallers. He thinks intellectuals are mainly arrogant.

Jordan B. Peterson kept his cool. The same could not be said about his female interviewer. Jordan B. Peterson kept his cool. The same could not be said about his female interviewer. He is not fond of humanities courses. He blames left-wing academics for the mumbo-jumbo that infects public life. He can’t see the point of women’s studies, and he believes that universities are obsessed not with “intelligent conversation … instead, we are having an ideological conversation”.

He’s also Christian. He takes seriously the idea that God made the rules and that human beings are programmed to feel wretched when they break them.

There is hunger for his message. Peterson’s YouTube channel has 600,000 subscribers. As of last week, he had 10 of the top 10 higher education podcasts on iTunes. He makes $40,000 a month from the crowdsourcing website Patreon and reckons his audience is 90 per cent male.

The left is naturally furious with him, which brings us to the interview he did last week, as part of his book tour, with Cathy Newman on Britain’s Channel 4.

Again, it’s hard to do it justice because it was long, but in short, she totally lost her cool while he cheerfully kept his. She needled him, hectored and ridiculed him, but worse: she twisted what he said. Here is a sample: Newman kept going on about how the gender pay gap is unfair, and Peterson said he didn’t disagree, but said there were reasons beyond the patriarchy — the personal choice of some women, especially mothers, for example, to seek low-paid, less taxing jobs — that explain why some women earn less than men.

“But you’re saying basically it doesn’t matter if women aren’t getting to the top,” Newman said.

“No, I’m not saying it doesn’t matter. I’m saying there are multiple reasons for it,” he said.

“But why should women put up with those reasons?”

“I’m not saying that they should put up with it.”

On it went, spawning many memes in its wake, including one where he says: “I had bacon and eggs for breakfast” and she replies: “So what you’re saying is, kill all vegans.”

The topic then turned to free speech. Peterson had previously said he doesn’t want to use made-up words like “ze” instead of “he” because, as a citizen of a democracy, he won’t be told what pronouns he can or can’t use, especially not if he thinks they’re stupid.

Newman wanted to know how his “right to free speech” trumped a transgender person’s right not to be offended.

“Because,” Peterson explained, “in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive. You’re exercising your freedom of speech to risk offending me (in this interview) and that’s fine. More power to you, as far as I’m concerned.”

It’s been called the “gotcha” moment. Newman could barely speak for her own confusion in the face of Peterson’s reasonableness, but the world being what it is today, the story has now been recast to one in which she was merely doing her job as a fearless, probing journalist who has since been targeted by his army of online trolls to the point where she now needs personal security, and that’s what happens when a woman stands up for herself.

But that isn’t what happened.

She did a really poor interview, which is a shame because it meant people didn’t get to hear what Peterson says in his book.

I can help with that. It’s aimed at young men. He encourages them to free themselves, as quickly as possible, of the burdens of their childhood, to accept the failings of their parents, who probably did their best, and take control of their lives, because when you’re carrying a burden or living a lie, you’re suppressing who you really are, and so much of what you could be will never be forced to come forward.

Everyone’s favourite line has to do with how life is going to kill you, so you might as well go do the most magnificent thing you can think of.

Why any of this should be controversial is beyond me, but Peterson has faced the usual revolt: campaigns to stop him speaking publicly; campaigns to stop him getting university funding, and so on. And here’s something truly bizarre: the same week that his book came out to howls of outrage, pretty much every English-language newspaper in the world published at least a summary of a cruel account by an anonymous woman of a private sexual encounter she didn’t enjoy with US comedian Aziz Ansari.

In case you missed it, she met Aziz at a party and made a beeline for him. He took her number. She had a text message from him before she even made it home. They flirted on the phone for a week. He asked her out for dinner and paid for the meal. He asked her back to his apartment. She agreed to go upstairs, where so-called “bad sex” happened.

He popped her up on the kitchen bench and took her knickers off. He gave her oral sex, and she reciprocated. They moved around a bit — to the couch, then over to the big mirror — and played around a bit more, but she wasn’t up for sex. He put on an episode of Seinfeld, poured some wine, eventually called a car to take her home. He texted her the next day to say how much he enjoyed her company and she replied angrily, saying she’d felt pressured. He apologised.

It’s hard to know for certain, but from her vicious description it seems like she didn’t want to be his one-night stand, she wanted to be his girlfriend; and she seems to believe that her hurt feelings justify his public shaming. They don’t. What she has done is revenge porn — in words, not pictures. It is an unforgivable breach of trust to share private, intimate moments, especially under circumstances in which she gets to stay anonymous, and which for him must be excruciating.

She’s OK to do that, but our visiting professor is not OK to say that men could do with a little manning up? No wonder so many are hankering for his world and not hers."

[–]WillMeatLover 2 points3 points4 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]baconit4eva 1 point2 points3 points 8 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

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[+]DoubleWatson[🍰] -21 points-20 points-19 points 8 years ago (16 children) | Copy Link

[–]TheAndredal[S] 11 points12 points13 points 8 years ago (14 children) | Copy Link

[+]DoubleWatson[🍰] -16 points-15 points-14 points 8 years ago (13 children) | Copy Link

[–]TheAndredal[S] 11 points12 points13 points 8 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

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[–]TheAndredal[S] 2 points3 points4 points 8 years ago* (1 child) | Copy Link

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[+]DoubleWatson[🍰] -2 points-1 points0 points 8 years ago* (5 children) | Copy Link

That's not exactly what I meant. Excuse me if it seemed that way. Typically one wants to use the principal of charity when arguing.

Typically we defer to experts when talking about things we dont know.

I defer to scientific journals when I want to know science, for example.

He can talk about what he wants, it's when he claims to have expertise on something that he so far has not shown expetise that I take issue with.

When I talk about biology, for example, I tend to lead or end with a " but i don't really know I'm not a biologist."

Peterson should do the same if he hasn't yet proven expertise in a field(publishing). It seems really unhumble not to.

And a lot of times he does end up being wrong about those things anyway. But people aren't well informed enough(and I get it, some people study buisness or work a trade or whatever) about philosphy or feminism to get why he's strawmaning all of these people.

[–]goodbeertimes 5 points6 points7 points 8 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[+]DoubleWatson[🍰] 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]nforne 3 points4 points5 points 8 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[+]DoubleWatson[🍰] -1 points0 points1 point 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Actually yes, or at least more of us should become those ourselves so that we can actually have some ground.

Now mabye if you want to critique one specific gender studies paper, all you need to have done is read the seminal texts+ that paper. It seems hard to be fair to a lot of what feminist papers are saying without doing so. One just lacks too much context. To critique whole field when one hasn't yet proven expertise on a field seems really disingenuous, and quite an act of hubris to me.

Now, that doesn't mean we can't have political opinion because we need to be as informed as possible in a democracy. However, none of us really have much grounds to say our opinions are tons better than another. Again, that seems to me like an act of hubris.

We can say why we don't see others make sense and why we think are, but to be so sure as to be angry seems wrong to me. The disclaimer "but idk, I'm no gender studies expert" on alot of what we say seems appropriate.

[–]goodbeertimes 4 points5 points6 points 8 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[+]DoubleWatson[🍰] -1 points0 points1 point 8 years ago* (0 children) | Copy Link

I am ok with people who have proven they have requisite knowledge an expertise in a certain field saying that they do.

So feminists with a research backround can talk statistics (and if you think it only proves their bias, then critique their experimental methods. Some scholars would say it's impossible to not have some bais come in no matter who is doing the experiment.) Feminists who have philosphy backround can talk philosophy. (When. I say backround I mean published in that area) and then they can claim some level of expertise. Until then, they probably should say "I don't know, research methods/heavy theory/ etc. Is not my specialty."

A gender studies degree probably isn't enough in most cases. Someone with that typically hasn't been published/gone through peer reveiw.

I don't see your issue with the penis projectile one. It seems reasonable to state that men physiology could make them have better intuitions about projectile physics, and of that is the case, that is something women have an innate disadvantage at. If there is an innate disadvantage a people have at something, mabye we should do something try to make things equitable.

Now, you may disagree with any one of their points (due to lack of enough evidence on their part or evidence you have for your own) but certainly stating that line of thinking is something worth saying to start some kind of a conversation. Anx who knows it isn't true? No feminist worth their salt should say that this more than "is something intresting to explore further. They wouldn't claim that as capital t truth. And you might be able to start making a similar point with men(which I'm sure we have no trouble stating those sorts of things.)