Jordan Peterson: Gender Pronouns and Free Speech War

[Mikey]

What inspires me most with Peterson is not his discussion of -isms, nor the gender issue. It's a messy area IMO, and we know from Lobaczewski that the contents behind names change. What stands out for me are the more fundamental statements that he arrived at. Some paraphrased, from the videos shared in this thread:

- Conclusions of thinking or argumentation are determined by a priori assumptions about reality, i.e. are a function of being. This explains why people living on the same planet, in the same reality, can reach vastly different conclusions colored by their own being. For example, it is as easy to explain away consciousness as it is easy to explain consciousness, depending on who does the explaining. In an argument, people often try to reduce and steer matters to just one principle where they can be a master. In an argumentation, it is therefore as important to understand the other's point of view as well as one's own.

- In a pragmatic sense, it doesn't matter what is real because people act according to beliefs and make them real. This turns people into agents who manifest ideas - creative or destructive. This is why being is fundamental to reality. (This reminds me of the C's "belief center" which needs more investigation IMO.)

- It doesn't matter what you say you believe, it only matters how you act.

- "Part of your responsibility is to live your own life, and to live it honestly, and to pay attention to your own experience, and not take the easy way out that ideological systems offer you. They are destined to transform themselves into rigid and murderous pathologies. And you offload your responsibility for thinking and acting to them." Instead, "[r]ely on your perceptions and your capacities for accurate representation [of matters], communicate that, and take your chances".

 

[Joe]

I find it interesting that what this whole Gender Pronouns nonsense uncovers deeper issues with culture and society, as well as with the psychological makeup of the individuals identifying with such phenomena. Recent events such as Political Correctness (thought control) and "Fake News" (like a list of authorized books) reveal a zealous authoritarianism.

I also thought that it's very interesting that he has 'appeared on the scene' right now over this transgender pronoun issue. You could look at that as a single issue and think not much of it, but Peterson has taken the opportunity to use it to address the much larger issue (to which it's directly linked, or of which it's a symptom) of the current state of human society and where it is headed.

 

[Mikey]

Peterson has taken the opportunity to use it to address the much larger issue (to which it's directly linked, or of which it's a symptom) of the current state of human society and where it is headed.

It shows once more that one can make use of destructive forces to further ones own purposes, and that every attack has the inherent potential of weakness and failure. Very much like martial arts!

He says: "The lesson of the 20th century: The choice that each individual makes is potentially so powerful in relation to pathological behavior - or honest and thoughful behavior - that a single individual, properly developed, can stand up against a tyrrany and win."

 

[Voyageur]

Have caught up on many of his video interviews; his ideas, his struggles, and as you say below mkrnhr, of his vulnerabilities. In this aspect, could not help in thinking back to what Lobaczewski said of the changes within his university. It is not the exactly the same thing, the same era, and Lobaczewski was a student then, yet still, in Canada there are a number of witch hunts going on against professors who don't tow the line, even though people need to hear their messages.

I think he's intellectually aware that he has a bias in the sense where he defines what is "truth" from the "darwinian" perspective as he interprets it (which is different from social darwinism as interpreted by others): If it preserves life and has a utility, it is true because it is congruent with the evolution of the universe, otherwise it is at odds with the universe and therefore false.
I've watched his "maps of the mind" lectures a couple of years ago I think and my memory on how he sees things is a little blurry but it seems that he acknowledges that there is no strictly rational (or reductionist) reason for empathy and cooperation (or benevolence according to Nietzsche - last time I read Nietzsche was 15 years ago so I could be using the wrong word) unless it is rooted in a successful strategy for the preservation of life (from the strictly materialist point of view, psychopaths are right and we all are delusional because there is no meaning nor value).
He's in a very vulnerable position not only because society is becoming more and more crazy and polarized, but also because academia is corrupt to the core and very rigid in its dogma. He was okay as long as his thinking was all theoretical but as soon as his views become public, he becomes a moving target for the establishment. On the other hand the establishment may not want to make a martyr out of him, which gives him a slight chance to navigate the troubled waters more or less safely. Only time will tell.

The second bolded part is also a good point. And perhaps they, the establishment, really don't have to push as self-censorship (just listen to him talk about his students fear of speaking out) seems to be ready to be notched up. England, Germany and Canada (very coordinated) are poised to enact sweeping interned laws and personal data collection methods that will drive the ability to speak freely (or the fear of it) further into the ground. I don't know, as you say, will have to wait and see, however, things are not looking promising.

As an aside, Peterson would make a very interesting SoTT Talk guest.

One other thing, is that Jordan was interviewed on Canada's 'The Rebel' (video from a few pages back) which is a conservative Ezra Levant alternative news program (Levant was instrumental going back to pre election times in Alberta when the ex PM, Harper, was a rising star). I have to admit that I was surprised that Ezra featured Peterson. I'm not saying this Rebel is not a valid news platform, he can make sense, and interviewing Peterson showed its mantel on the PC questions. I mention this (digressing here) only in that Ezra has an interesting early background, as said, particularly with an extremely close relationship to our ex PM's wife, Laureen Harper. There were somethings written about these two in the past, so will have to look harder. However, while just checking and going back to April of 2015, the MSN had an article concerning Mike Duffy (related to the Senate expense scandal in Canada) and this particular thing caught my attention from within Duffy's diary that involves Ezra. If read a month ago, it would not have even registered, and it may mean exactly what it says: http://globalnews.ca/news/1929196/10-things-we-learned-about-mike-duffy-from-his-diaries/

5. He {Duffy} pizza-partied at 24 Sussex. Duffy attended several private events at the prime minister’s official residence, the documents say. “H&M Pizza @ 24 Sussex – Laureen for Ezra Levant,” he wrote on Feb. 8, 2010.

 

[anartist]

Wow great video, thanks for sharing.

Political correctness has always made me sick in my stomach.

I love how Jordan describes how you can feel yourself coming apart when you are telling lies and feel whole when telling the truth. Very good description of disintegration IMO.

I also second having him on an interview for a behind the headlines show.

I second the desire to have him interviewed on SOTT, although I think the "Health and wellness" folks could do it, or co-host it, as I think Jordans ideas definately come under the Health and Wellness rubric.

 

[luc]

About the gender issue and the pronouns, I remembered that all this 'gender studies' nonsense really took off with one 'philosopher': Judith Butler (wiki).

You can find a good critique of Butler's work here: http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Nussbaum-Butler-Critique-NR-2-99.pdf - the paper shows just what a complete fraud this Butler is, and yet she is the one who has justified a lot of all this gender nonsense and gave it an 'academic air', basically by just clouding her nonsense in complicated academic jargon, which many people then took as 'advanced philosophy', when in fact she isn't recognized or even read in philosophy departments at all.

If I understand correctly, Butler maintains that the differences between men and women don't reflect anything eternal in nature, but are a mere social construct. She apparently doesn't offer any arguments for this though. Also, this thought is nothing new. As Martha Nussbaum, the author of the article linked to above, writes:

So what does Butler's work add to this copious body of writing? Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter contain no detailed argument against biological claims of "natural" difference, no account of mechanisms of gender replication, and no account of the legal shaping of the family; nor do they contain any detailed focus on possibilities for legal change. What, then, does Butler offer that we might not find more fully done in earlier feminist writings? One relatively original claim is that when we recognize the artificiality of gender distinctions, and refrain from thinking of them as expressing an independent natural reality, we will also understand that there is no compelling reason why the gender types should have been two (correlated with the two biological sexes), rather than three or five or indefinitely many. "When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice," she writes.

So the madness starts there. Another of her ideas is that gender is merely a repeated 'performance', i.e. it is reinforced since early childhood by 'performances' that are then repeated over and over again (giving a girl a girl's name, referring to her as a girl etc.). It follows then that this can be changed by changing language - by practising a different performance. I guess that is part of the thought process behind this gender pronouns madness, although their proponents probably don't even remember or care about that anymore. Another author writes about Butler:

While [queer theory and post-structuralist] feminism differs from [identity-politics-focused/cultural] feminism in many ways, it shares its predecessor’s tendency to artificialize gender expression. This is often accomplished via gender performativity, a concept developed by Judith Butler to describe the way in which built-in expectations about maleness and femaleness, straightness and queerness, are constantly imposed on all of us. Butler uses the term “performativity” to highlight how feminine and masculine norms must constantly be cited. She uses the example of the child who becomes “girled” by others at birth: She is given a female name, referred to with female pronouns, given girl toys, and will, throughout her life, have her “girlness” cited by others in society. Butler argues that this sort of reiteration “produces” gender, making it appear “natural.” However, many other [queer theorists and post-structuralist] feminists have interpreted Butler’s writings to mean that one’s gender is merely a “performance.” According to this latter view, if gender itself is merely a “performance,” then one can challenge sexism by simply “performing” one’s gender in ways that call the binary gender system into question; the most often cited example of this is a drag queen whose “performance” supposedly reveals the way in which femaleness and femininity are merely a “performance.”

I'd say fair enough: start using your pronouns, then, and see what happens. Good luck.

The problem though is, as Peterson points out, that such language is made part of obligatory trainings, of political correctness, and is even enforced by law. This has nothing to do with the natural evolution of language, and even if this 'performance theory' is right, prescribing and enforcing completely unusual 'performances' in an ill-guided attempt to change society can only be called totalitarian.

To see how such pathological theories can lead to pathological action by other pathologicals as described in PP, consider this article about professor Bryson that 'teaches' at the same university as Peterson and actually was one of the panelists at the discussion featuring him at the university of Torronto and one of his defamers. Sick-bag warning!!

Christie Blatchford: UBC prof who denounced U of T colleague in gender debate has skeletons in her own classroom


A University of British Columbia professor who last week denounced a Toronto colleague for inciting hatred against a “precarious minority” of transgender people now stands accused of bullying heterosexual and bisexual students in her classroom.

Dr. Mary Bryson was speaking at a University of Toronto forum last Saturday about recent amendments that add “gender identity” and “gender expression” as protected grounds to the Canadian Human Rights Code and the Criminal Code.

In September, U of T psychology Professor Jordan Peterson spoke out against these amendments — they recently passed in the House of Commons — and vowed not to use the genderless pronouns they in effect mandate, saying such language rules are an assault on objectivity and biology.

Bryson compared him to the notorious Philippe Rushton, a Western University professor who years ago linked brain size to the alleged intellectual capacity of the races, and suggested Peterson had distributed “totally bogus claims” and was in “total dereliction of academic responsibility.”

But a former student of Bryson’s “Women’s Studies 425” course at UBC in 1991 says Bryson forced the students to declare their sexual orientation, liked to “spring violent pornography” on them and taught that “all sex with men is inherently violent.”

Thursday, through a letter from her lawyer, Lisa Martz, Bryson denied some of the specifics of what the woman says, in particular that she forced students to declare their sexual orientation or that she said all sex with men was violent.

But Bryson acknowledged other incidents did occur.

Among the pornography Bryson showed, the woman says, was “Butch/Femme in Paradise,” a short video that contains graphic “fisting.” Bryson agreed the film was screened, but said it is “an art film” and that the activities in it were “entirely consensual.”

The former student describes classes that were harrowing, especially for a young woman, then 21, from a small Ontario town.

On one occasion, she says, a guest speaker suddenly dropped her pants, stood before the class naked from the waist down, “and showed us her black satin strap-on penis.”

“Yes, this really happened.

“The students sat there in stunned, awkward silence. We had no idea what to say, what to do or where to look.”

Bryson confirmed the incident but said “the presenter unexpectedly showed a dildo” while demonstrating the correct way to use condoms. “Dr. Bryson had no advance knowledge” the presenter would do that, her lawyer says, “and intervened as quickly as possible to stop the demonstration.”

Now 46 and a writer living in the United States, the former student was watching the U of T debate online last Saturday, and says she almost fell out of her chair when Bryson was introduced as one of the panellists.

The woman asked that her name not be published, but the university and Bryson have been told who she is.

Twenty-five years ago, the woman says, she complained about Bryson to the then-education dean, and believes that several other students did as well.

“We told them (the university) everything that was happening,” she told Postmedia in telephone and email interviews this week. “I assumed … that Bryson wouldn’t be permitted to teach at UBC any more.”

But Bryson’s career continued its upward trajectory such that she is a respected academic and senior administrator.

After securing tenure at UBC, she became the director of the school’s Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice and this summer was named senior associate dean of the education faculty.

The course the former student took ran only a half-term and was formally called “From the Margins: Lesbian Subjects Matter.”

To confirm her memory of those long-ago days, the woman had her mother, who still lives in Ontario, this week dig out her syllabus and notes.

She eventually graduated from UBC with her Master’s in Religious Studies. She earned her undergraduate degree at York University.

Postmedia first contacted Bryson and education dean Blye Frank early Wednesday with an email laying out in detail the student’s allegations.

Dr. Angela Redish, provost and acting academic vice-president, responded the same day, saying, “We take seriously any concerns raised by past or current students about their learning experiences at UBC.”

But, she said, the university needs “some time to look through our files as this involves a course taught 25 years ago.”

Thursday, Postmedia received the letter from the lawyer Martz, who said Bryson would participate “in whatever appropriate process UBC might offer” to deal with the allegations, and expressed concern about my commentary reflecting “a homophobic, transphobic, anti-feminist bias.”

Yet no one can categorically deny the course content because Bryson herself wrote about it, confirming some of what the former student describes, in 1993.

In an article called “Queer Pedagogy: Praxis Makes Im/Perfect” published that year in the Canadian Journal of Education, Bryson and co-author Suzanne de Castell describe a course they say they co-taught in 1991.

(The former student doesn’t know de Castell, though she said in class Bryson was always accompanied by a woman, who was never introduced.)

In the scholarly piece, Bryson and de Castell say they co-taught the course at an unidentified “major urban Canadian university” and envisioned it as “an amalgam of ‘performative acts’.”

The authors said they structured it around a series of presentations by local lesbians, such as the Kiss & Tell Collective, a trio of Vancouver-based performance artists.

Bryson and de Castell wrote that they told the heterosexual and white students they would have to “function and circulate differently in a lesbian-identified space.”

They suggested that students “chose either to remain silent about their sexual identification or to present themselves as ‘out lesbians.’”

But the paper is filled with descriptions of students such as “white bisexually-identified,” “heterosexually-identified,” “white working-class lesbian” and “lesbian of colour”: It’s certainly clear the professors knew the sexual orientation of everyone in class.

The authors were adamant they had created a class where the “unsayable could be uttered, where so-called deviant images could be represented … within the oppressive confines of the always-already heterosexualized classroom.”

The woman says she had taken women’s studies courses at York, but never before been in a class “where misandry (hatred of men) was taught to you.”

Heterosexuals were deemed the enemy, she says, and “those of us who liked men, who had intimate relationships with men” were mocked for habits such as shaving their legs or for wearing skirts.

“We were scared every day,” she says.

“Imagine a male professor forcing female students to watch violent pornography. Imagine a male prof inviting a male guest speaker to drop his pants and expose himself to students. Imagine this prof telling students how to dress for his class and forcing them to publicly announce their personal grooming habits and their sexual orientation, and then proceed to shame students on that basis.

“It would be a national scandal,” she says.

Ironically, UBC is already at the centre of that sort of a scandal, involving the firing this summer of another professor, Steven Galloway.

He was suspended with pay in 2015, then fired after a lengthy investigation. In his first public statement, Galloway said this week that only one allegation against him was substantiated by the probe — that he had an affair with a married student.

_http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchford-ubc-prof-who-denounced-u-of-t-colleague-in-gender-debate-has-skeletons-in-her-own-classroom


And such a deranged pathological actually made it big and climbed the ladder of the university administration!!

 

[Timótheos]

Here's another good article in defence of Peterson and free speech...

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-exposes-the-creeping-dictatorship-of-gender-rights-movement


Jordan Peterson exposes the creeping dictatorship of gender-rights movement

Bill C-16 , Gender Identity , Gender Ideology , Homosexuality , Jordan Peterson , Lgbtq , Totalitarianism , Transgender

November 4, 2016 (CultureWitness) -- For anyone who has doubts about the totalitarian tendencies of the radical left, and in particular the creeping dictatorship of gender-rights ideology, this program is a must-see. On Oct. 26th, Dr. Jordan Peterson appeared on The Agenda with Steve Paikin, and defended himself valiantly against three gender-rights activists. He was asserting his right to stick to the English language rather than adopting the various newly-minted personal pronouns, like xe, thon, zer and a singluar 'they', to refer to those who identify with a multitude of alternative gender identities. At the present time, Bill C-16 threatens to make it a violation of human rights for anyone to refuse to use these pronouns. The Agenda debate paints a very disturbing portrait of the intolerant and anti-truth society that is descending upon us.

Dr. Peterson was unwavering in defence of the truth and showed not the slightest signs of being intimidated by the left-wing barrage against him. Nonetheless, the following exchange shows just how serious the situation has gotten in our formerly free Western paradise:

Paikin: Are you prepared to suffer the consequences that society may deem you need to suffer because of your views?
Peterson: Yes, I'm prepared to do that....I think that the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal is probably obligated by their own tangled web to bring me in front of it. If they fine me, I won't pay it. If they put me in jail, I'll go on a hunger strike. I'm not doing this, and that's that. I'm not using the words that other people require me to use, especially if they're made up by radical left-wing ideologues.

Dr. Peterson might be headed to jail for refusing to use "zer" and "thon" but fancy lawyer Kyle Kirkup of the University of Ottawa, a specialist in LGBTQ Human Rights, still tried to play down Bill C-16 as an insignificant tweak to existing laws, saying that the whole brouhaha over pronouns is just a tempest in a teapot. But Paikin didn't let the matter drop, and managed to corner Kirkup into an admission:

Paikin: If a trans person, or somebody whose gender identity was more, shall we say, complicated than the male-female that we've been talking about so far, and the pronoun used to describe that person were not traditional, would the person have a case before the Human Rights Commission?
Kirkup: I would say absolutely, as a general rule that you should be thinking about in terms of employment settings, absolutely, respecting a trans person's pronoun choice is really fundamental.

And voila. The totalitarian tendencies rear their hidden aspirations. Suddenly, it's "fundamental" and an apparent no-brainer that anyone who refuses to bow to the ideologically-driven linguistics of the left can be hauled before the Human Rights Commission. Well then, clearly Bill C-16 is not so harmless after all.

But there's more. Among other things, it became clear that the gender-rights activists consider it hate speech and even outright violence if anyone so much as dares to question the biological premises of gender expression and gender identity. This became very clear when Nicholas Matte, Ph.D. Candidate in the Sexual Diversity Studies program at the University of Toronto, accused Dr. Peterson of "abusing" students by refusing to use their preferred gender pronoun:

Matte:...I don't agree with why Dr. Peterson has been asked to stop abusing students on campus...
Peterson: To stop doing what?
Matte: Abusing students and other members of our learning community who do deserve respect and do deserve to be able to work and learn and contribute to society in a place where if they are physically assaulted....
Paikin (to Matte): You've accused him of abusing students by not using the pronouns that they want to be addressed by?
Matte: That is how I see it, absolutely.
Paikin: That is tantamount to abuse, in your view?
Matte: Absolutely. Many, many global documents, many organisations...
Peterson: How about violence, is it tantamount to violence?
Matte: Yes, absolutely.
Peterson: How about hate speech, is it tantamount to hate speech?
Matte: Yes, of course it's hate speech to tell someone that you won't refer to them in a way that recognizes their humanity and dignity.

There we have it. Get ready for this, because it is about to become law: anyone who refuses to verbally affirm the claims of gender-rights ideology will be accused of hate speech and even violence.

I found it rather amusing that as soon as his claim of abuse was doubted by Paikin, Matte immediately ran behind the skirts of huge piles of 'global' documents. I guess if the pile of papers gets big enough then what they say must be true, even if all the papers were produced by like-minded left-wing ideologues.

This doesn't make sense in any logical way, and it doesn't really have to. If Matte demonstrated anything on this program, it was his exquisite ability to talk at length in loose and convoluted circles without actually making logical arguments. Here's what I mean:

Paikin: Why do you think the trans community needs this kind of legislative [hate speech] protection?
Matte: People are actually suffering huge lack of access to resources that will allow people to survive. So people are being physically assaulted, people do not have counsellors that they can go to who are not going to, as Dr. Peterson has done on YouTube, recommend that they actually become more anxious and more upset about situations, people are being assaulted, I brought all sorts of really depressing stats that people who are leaning towards thinking that this is not that big of a deal, those people need to look at those stats.
Paikin: Give us one stat.
Matte: 58% of students could not get academic transcripts with their correct name or pronoun. That causes a huge chain of events for students or anybody who's had any kind of academic training. As everyone recognises, we need to be able to have references, we need to be able to have resumes, we need to be able to get jobs....The feeling of disrespect is not as important as the ways that people in authority are able to circumvent the possibilities for living, so it has more to do with not being able to find housing and therefore being homeless, it has more to do with not being able to get jobs because people are discriminated against....what we should be talking about are the social issues facing people who are being discriminated against, and what that looks like on campus, which is that some professors refuse to offer basic dignity to students and colleagues, and that leads to people missing classes, it leads to people dropping out, it leads to a lack of positive opportunity for society to actually benefit from the contributions of many, many people.

O-kay, so Dr. Peterson and anyone else who refuses to use "zim" and "hir" is causing homelessness, physical assault, drop outs and unemployment among the trans community. Gotcha.

But Matte has one big thing going for him: he can afford to be incoherent. He nestles secure in the knowledge that his side of this epic tug-of-war has already won, at least for the time being. Free speech has already lost, and gender ideology has already won. I don't want to sound defeatist, but this is not a matter of personal opinion. Whether or not we accept it, the legal hammer of Bill C-16 is already descending down to clobber the common man who dares to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

In fact, Matte was still being far too tolerant and forgiving towards Dr. Peterson, at least in the view of some other gender-rights warriors. One such activist actually refused to appear on The Agenda because he or she objected to giving Dr. Peterson any opportunity to be heard at all, saying:

Giving (Jordan) Peterson this platform serves to legitimize his views which are based in bigotry and misinformation. The humanity and rights of transgender, non-binary and intersex people are not a matter of debate, and holding a debate which places a false equivalency between the views expressed by Peterson and the human rights concerns of the trans community would be an act of transphobia.

Let me repeat a portion of that:

The humanity and rights of transgender, non-binary and intersex people are not a matter of debate.

Clearly what this speaker would like is an outright ban on any questioning of the claims made by gender-rights ideology. And Kirkup, a prominent legal eagle with a very fancy resume, also seemed to support the view that Peterson should not have been allowed on The Agenda:

Paikin: Kyle, are we being transphobic here by having this debate?
Kirkup: I do worry about setting up a false equivalency in this conversation, and really even making the premise that trans lives are up for debate. They're not up for debate. Human rights aren't up for debate...

And that, right there, is the totalitarian mindset. The term "human rights" has become a blanket that envelops the entire gender ideology in a protective bubble wrap, making it completely immune to any criticism or questioning.

This view will triumph in our society in the next few years, as Dr. Peterson predicts:

Peterson: Many people are claiming that the expression of these views should no longer be permitted. ...I believe quite firmly that if we continue on our present path at the universities for five more years, that's a discussion we will not actually be able to have on campuses, by fiat."

Dr. Peterson is right about that.

So why is this happening? Why are the gender-rights warriors pushing so strongly against free speech? A surprisingly perceptive answer came from a member of the trans community, a man who transitioned into a woman named Theryn Meyer.

Paikin: I wonder if you could give us your explanation for why some people adamantly refuse even to have this discussion, that the notion of having this discussion is somehow transphobic.
Theryn: I think it has to do with there's a lacking when it comes to actually being able to defend your points through argument. So if you open up the discussion for argument, they know they will lose.

It's the oldest trick in the book: when you run out of arguments, use your fists - or in this case, Bill C-16 - to crush your opponents.

 

[DianaRose]

Here's another good article in defence of Peterson and free speech...

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-exposes-the-creeping-dictatorship-of-gender-rights-movement


Jordan Peterson exposes the creeping dictatorship of gender-rights movement

Bill C-16 , Gender Identity , Gender Ideology , Homosexuality , Jordan Peterson , Lgbtq , Totalitarianism , Transgender

November 4, 2016 (CultureWitness) -- For anyone who has doubts about the totalitarian tendencies of the radical left, and in particular the creeping dictatorship of gender-rights ideology, this program is a must-see. On Oct. 26th, Dr. Jordan Peterson appeared on The Agenda with Steve Paikin, and defended himself valiantly against three gender-rights activists. He was asserting his right to stick to the English language rather than adopting the various newly-minted personal pronouns, like xe, thon, zer and a singluar 'they', to refer to those who identify with a multitude of alternative gender identities. At the present time, Bill C-16 threatens to make it a violation of human rights for anyone to refuse to use these pronouns. The Agenda debate paints a very disturbing portrait of the intolerant and anti-truth society that is descending upon us.

Dr. Peterson was unwavering in defence of the truth and showed not the slightest signs of being intimidated by the left-wing barrage against him. Nonetheless, the following exchange shows just how serious the situation has gotten in our formerly free Western paradise:

Paikin: Are you prepared to suffer the consequences that society may deem you need to suffer because of your views?
Peterson: Yes, I'm prepared to do that....I think that the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal is probably obligated by their own tangled web to bring me in front of it. If they fine me, I won't pay it. If they put me in jail, I'll go on a hunger strike. I'm not doing this, and that's that. I'm not using the words that other people require me to use, especially if they're made up by radical left-wing ideologues.

Dr. Peterson might be headed to jail for refusing to use "zer" and "thon" but fancy lawyer Kyle Kirkup of the University of Ottawa, a specialist in LGBTQ Human Rights, still tried to play down Bill C-16 as an insignificant tweak to existing laws, saying that the whole brouhaha over pronouns is just a tempest in a teapot. But Paikin didn't let the matter drop, and managed to corner Kirkup into an admission:

Paikin: If a trans person, or somebody whose gender identity was more, shall we say, complicated than the male-female that we've been talking about so far, and the pronoun used to describe that person were not traditional, would the person have a case before the Human Rights Commission?
Kirkup: I would say absolutely, as a general rule that you should be thinking about in terms of employment settings, absolutely, respecting a trans person's pronoun choice is really fundamental.

And voila. The totalitarian tendencies rear their hidden aspirations. Suddenly, it's "fundamental" and an apparent no-brainer that anyone who refuses to bow to the ideologically-driven linguistics of the left can be hauled before the Human Rights Commission. Well then, clearly Bill C-16 is not so harmless after all.

But there's more. Among other things, it became clear that the gender-rights activists consider it hate speech and even outright violence if anyone so much as dares to question the biological premises of gender expression and gender identity. This became very clear when Nicholas Matte, Ph.D. Candidate in the Sexual Diversity Studies program at the University of Toronto, accused Dr. Peterson of "abusing" students by refusing to use their preferred gender pronoun:

Matte:...I don't agree with why Dr. Peterson has been asked to stop abusing students on campus...
Peterson: To stop doing what?
Matte: Abusing students and other members of our learning community who do deserve respect and do deserve to be able to work and learn and contribute to society in a place where if they are physically assaulted....
Paikin (to Matte): You've accused him of abusing students by not using the pronouns that they want to be addressed by?
Matte: That is how I see it, absolutely.
Paikin: That is tantamount to abuse, in your view?
Matte: Absolutely. Many, many global documents, many organisations...
Peterson: How about violence, is it tantamount to violence?
Matte: Yes, absolutely.
Peterson: How about hate speech, is it tantamount to hate speech?
Matte: Yes, of course it's hate speech to tell someone that you won't refer to them in a way that recognizes their humanity and dignity.

There we have it. Get ready for this, because it is about to become law: anyone who refuses to verbally affirm the claims of gender-rights ideology will be accused of hate speech and even violence.

I found it rather amusing that as soon as his claim of abuse was doubted by Paikin, Matte immediately ran behind the skirts of huge piles of 'global' documents. I guess if the pile of papers gets big enough then what they say must be true, even if all the papers were produced by like-minded left-wing ideologues.

This doesn't make sense in any logical way, and it doesn't really have to. If Matte demonstrated anything on this program, it was his exquisite ability to talk at length in loose and convoluted circles without actually making logical arguments. Here's what I mean:

Paikin: Why do you think the trans community needs this kind of legislative [hate speech] protection?
Matte: People are actually suffering huge lack of access to resources that will allow people to survive. So people are being physically assaulted, people do not have counsellors that they can go to who are not going to, as Dr. Peterson has done on YouTube, recommend that they actually become more anxious and more upset about situations, people are being assaulted, I brought all sorts of really depressing stats that people who are leaning towards thinking that this is not that big of a deal, those people need to look at those stats.
Paikin: Give us one stat.
Matte: 58% of students could not get academic transcripts with their correct name or pronoun. That causes a huge chain of events for students or anybody who's had any kind of academic training. As everyone recognises, we need to be able to have references, we need to be able to have resumes, we need to be able to get jobs....The feeling of disrespect is not as important as the ways that people in authority are able to circumvent the possibilities for living, so it has more to do with not being able to find housing and therefore being homeless, it has more to do with not being able to get jobs because people are discriminated against....what we should be talking about are the social issues facing people who are being discriminated against, and what that looks like on campus, which is that some professors refuse to offer basic dignity to students and colleagues, and that leads to people missing classes, it leads to people dropping out, it leads to a lack of positive opportunity for society to actually benefit from the contributions of many, many people.

O-kay, so Dr. Peterson and anyone else who refuses to use "zim" and "hir" is causing homelessness, physical assault, drop outs and unemployment among the trans community. Gotcha.

But Matte has one big thing going for him: he can afford to be incoherent. He nestles secure in the knowledge that his side of this epic tug-of-war has already won, at least for the time being. Free speech has already lost, and gender ideology has already won. I don't want to sound defeatist, but this is not a matter of personal opinion. Whether or not we accept it, the legal hammer of Bill C-16 is already descending down to clobber the common man who dares to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

In fact, Matte was still being far too tolerant and forgiving towards Dr. Peterson, at least in the view of some other gender-rights warriors. One such activist actually refused to appear on The Agenda because he or she objected to giving Dr. Peterson any opportunity to be heard at all, saying:

Giving (Jordan) Peterson this platform serves to legitimize his views which are based in bigotry and misinformation. The humanity and rights of transgender, non-binary and intersex people are not a matter of debate, and holding a debate which places a false equivalency between the views expressed by Peterson and the human rights concerns of the trans community would be an act of transphobia.

Let me repeat a portion of that:

The humanity and rights of transgender, non-binary and intersex people are not a matter of debate.

Clearly what this speaker would like is an outright ban on any questioning of the claims made by gender-rights ideology. And Kirkup, a prominent legal eagle with a very fancy resume, also seemed to support the view that Peterson should not have been allowed on The Agenda:

Paikin: Kyle, are we being transphobic here by having this debate?
Kirkup: I do worry about setting up a false equivalency in this conversation, and really even making the premise that trans lives are up for debate. They're not up for debate. Human rights aren't up for debate...

And that, right there, is the totalitarian mindset. The term "human rights" has become a blanket that envelops the entire gender ideology in a protective bubble wrap, making it completely immune to any criticism or questioning.

This view will triumph in our society in the next few years, as Dr. Peterson predicts:

Peterson: Many people are claiming that the expression of these views should no longer be permitted. ...I believe quite firmly that if we continue on our present path at the universities for five more years, that's a discussion we will not actually be able to have on campuses, by fiat."

Dr. Peterson is right about that.

So why is this happening? Why are the gender-rights warriors pushing so strongly against free speech? A surprisingly perceptive answer came from a member of the trans community, a man who transitioned into a woman named Theryn Meyer.

Paikin: I wonder if you could give us your explanation for why some people adamantly refuse even to have this discussion, that the notion of having this discussion is somehow transphobic.
Theryn: I think it has to do with there's a lacking when it comes to actually being able to defend your points through argument. So if you open up the discussion for argument, they know they will lose.

It's the oldest trick in the book: when you run out of arguments, use your fists - or in this case, Bill C-16 - to crush your opponents.

Dear lord, this is so crazy I have a hard time believing it is real. But it is real. I honestly don't understand how the situation could have reached that point. I had always thought that Canada was a relatively "normal" state. Boy, I was wrong. Basicall, being called he or she is the same as being called the n-word. It's like being physically abused. Okay.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

On the topics of "equality of outcome", which Peterson discusses a lot, I found this quote from Ponerology relevant:

It is a universal law of nature that the higher a given species’ psychological organization, the greater the psychological differences among individual units. Man is the most highly organized species; hence, these variations are the greatest. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, psychological differences occur in all structures of the human personality dealt with here, albeit in terms of necessary over-simplification. Profound psychological variegations may strike some as an injustice of nature, but they are her right and have meaning.

Nature’s seeming injustice, alluded to above, is, in fact, a great gift to humanity, enabling human societies to develop their complex structures and to be highly creative at both the individual and collective level. Thanks to psychological variety, the creative potential of any society is many times higher than it could possibly be if our species were psychologically more homogeneous. Thanks to these variations, the societal structure implicit within can also develop. The fate of human societies depends upon the proper adjustment of individuals within this structure and upon the manner in which innate variations of talents are utilized.

Our experience teaches us that psychological differences among people are the cause of misunderstandings and problems. We can overcome these problems only if we accept psychological differences as a law of nature and appreciate their creative value. This would also enable us to gain an objective comprehension of man and human societies; unfortunately, it would also teach us that equality under the law is inequality under the law of nature.

He doesn't mention sex differences, but the same logic applies, as the case of Sweden demonstrates.

 

[Carl]

Peterson has finally appeared on Joe Rogan podcast. I haven't watched yet but it should be interesting:

http://<iframe width="560" height="...HE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[luc]

Thanks Carl, I watched some of it and as always, very interesting.

He does seem to have some blind spots regarding the horrors that the West is causing to the rest of the world and lacks the Ponerology perspective, but listening to the parts that I disagreed with was actually useful for me. Peterson really has a way to force you to think critically and look at many different aspects simultaneously.

I noticed for example that I have some strong beliefs about the world, which aren't necessarily 'programmed beliefs', but things I picked up along the way when I challenged and changed my old, programmed beliefs. To use his analogy, a 'club' is both something you belong to and something you beat people up with. So I think there are some 'clubs' that I joined in my mind, which I used to 'beat up' some of my older beliefs. In that sense, they were useful, but they also can make me blind to important aspects of reality, such as the dangers of liberal/Marxist thinking or the simplistic notion that West=bad.

There simply is no other choice - we need to take friggin' responsibility, grow up, and think with a hammer in every way possible to make sense of what's going on. And we need to be prepared to take the heat, to fail, to err, and then to fail again.

One thing is for sure, this guy is brilliant and what he has to say is furiously interesting, at least to me. He's also clearly a fighter. It's not set in stone that he won't crumble under the fire and that he will lose it eventually, especially since he doesn't have a network (although he does seem to reach out and connect with many reasonable people out there), but for now I think he will 'rise like an eagle' as a result of the pressure he's put under.

 

[Joe]

In the above video, near the start, where he comments on the fact that Trudeau praised Castro and then says he 'tweeted' the story about Cuba selling the blood of executed prisoners to the viet cong in 1967; I could be wrong of course, but that story sounds to me like an example of hysterical US Cold War propaganda. Strange that Peterson would not be skeptical of such an unlikely tale.

I tend to agree with you Luc, that his apparent lack of awareness of the deeper more nuanced truth about the political/military history of the west is a bit of a blind spot.

 

[Possibility of Being]

In the above video, near the start, where he comments on the fact that Trudeau praised Castro and then says he 'tweeted' the story about Cuba selling the blood of executed prisoners to the viet cong in 1967; I could be wrong of course, but that story sounds to me like an example of hysterical US Cold War propaganda. Strange that Peterson would not be skeptical of such an unlikely tale.

I tend to agree with you Luc, that his apparent lack of awareness of the deeper more nuanced truth about the political/military history of the west is a bit of a blind spot.

That may, or may not be true, or only to some extent, but similar practice is known outside of Cuba as well.

In 2005, WSJ carried an article on Castro, opening with this quote:

"On May 27, [1966,] 166 Cubans -- civilians and members of the military -- were executed and submitted to medical procedures of blood extraction of an average of seven pints per person. This blood is sold to Communist Vietnam at a rate of $50 per pint with the dual purpose of obtaining hard currency and contributing to the Vietcong Communist aggression.

"A pint of blood is equivalent to half a liter. Extracting this amount of blood from a person sentenced to death produces cerebral anemia and a state of unconsciousness and paralysis. Once the blood is extracted, the person is taken by two militiamen on a stretcher to the location where the execution takes place."

-- InterAmerican Human Rights Commission, April 7, 1967

and added:

The Cuba Archive project (www.cubaarchive.org) has already begun the heavy lifting by attempting to document the loss of life attributable to revolutionary zealotry. The project, based in Chatham, N.J., covers the period from May 1952 -- when the constitutional government fell to Gen. Fulgencio Batista -- to the present. It has so far verified the names of 9,240 victims of the Castro regime and the circumstances of their deaths. Archive researchers meticulously insist on confirming stories of official murder from two independent sources.

Now, from
_http://www.cubaarchive.org/files/Blood_Extraction.pdf

Cuba: Forced blood extraction from political prisoners before execution
Report of July 2015

The Cuban revolutionary regime one-­‐upped the feared former East German political police, Stasi, which in the mid-­‐1980s sold blood that had been “donated” under duress by political prisoners to the Bavarian Red Cross. [1] Not only does Cuba engage in this same practice, but in the 1960’s it massively drained the blood of political prisoners on their way to execution.

Cuba Archive has credible information of at least eleven cases —twelve corroborated and one reported— of forced blood extraction before execution, two were U.S. citizens: Howard Anderson and Robert Fuller. Additional reports are being investigated. That the recorded incidents took place over the course of several years, from 1960 to 1964, and in different provinces, points to a widespread practice. Anecdotal accounts from former political prisoners of many more cases lack specifics. Because the victims were taken for the blood extraction on their way to execution, fellow prisoners left behind in their cells would not have known this was happening. However, it may be no coincidence that the cause of death listed in most death certificates of the executed is “hemorrhage."

A former Cuban political prisoner who served from 1963 to 1968 at Boniato prison in Santiago de Cuba confirmed to Cuba Archive that the practice was standard: “At Boniato in 1963, we were around 5,000 political prisoners. Each dawn two or three on their way to the firing squad would be brought for blood extraction to a specially designated area at the prison clinic, behind closed doors. Because I’m handicapped (unable to walk), I was held at the prison clinic. Although they wouldn’t let us see the victims, I was about twenty meters away and could hear everything. They did this to everyone going for execution.”

The Inter-­‐American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS) denounced the practice at Havana’s La Cabaña Fortress prison in a scathing April 1967 report. [3] It asserts that blood was extracted from prisoners on their way to execution “with illicit and massive intentions … for scandalous business purposes.” According to the report, an average of seven pints [4] of blood was extracted per person, producing “cerebral anemia and a state of unconsciousness and paralysis;” once the blood was extracted, the prisoner was “taken by two militiamen in a stretcher to the location where the execution by firing squad takes place.[5] Soviet and Cuban hematologists allegedly directed the blood extractions and conducted experiments at a special clinic at the prison; the blood was then sold to Communist North Vietnam for 50 dollars a pint.[6/7] In addition, blood donations were required from family members of political prisoners (numbering tens of thousands) before being allowed visits.[8] A Kingsport Post story of August 1966 reported on eyewitness who had fled Cuba including one who had worked at La Cabaña prison as having reported of this atrocity to the OAS.[9]

Mass executions cease[10] after the small farmers’ insurrection was extinguished around 1967-­‐68 and no subsequent reports of this forced blood extraction are known. However, Cuba has continued to sell blood products to other countries, obtaining annual revenues averaging $30 million from 1995-­‐2012. Blood is systematically obtained from citizens throughout Cuba led to believe that their altruistic and uncompensated donations are needed to save lives, unaware that the Cuban state is engaged in a lucrative export business. (See the Reports section of www.CubaArchive.org for international statistics and details of this practice.)

The 2015 report is issued by:
Cuba Archive -­‐Truth and Memory Project
www.CubaArchive.org
Free Society Project, Inc.

From CubaArchive website, About US:

Cuba Archive is an initiative of Free Society Project, Inc., a non-profit organization and think tank incorporated in 2001 in Washington, D.C to promote the understanding, recognition, and observance of human rights particularly through research and scholarship.

A distinguished group of academics, human rights' activists, and successful professionals leads this effort.

FREE SOCIETY PROJECT BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Geandy Pavón. Plastic artist exiled from Cuba in 1996 residing in New Jersey. ...

The rest of the Board are former political prisoners, dissidents or activists, all living in the US. Why I don't necessarily trust this kind of non-profit think-tanks?

How about The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal?

Factor 8 documentary:

for more than two decades, ... the Arkansas prison system profited from selling blood plasma from inmates infected with viral hepatitis and AIDS. The documentary contends that thousands of victims who received transfusions of a blood product derived from these plasma products, "Factor 8", died as a result.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/04/arkansas-bloodsuckers-the-clintons-prisoners-and-the-blood-trade/

The year Bill Clinton became governor of Arkansas, that state’s prison board awarded a fat contract to a Little Rock company called Health Management Associates, or HMA. The company was paid $3 million a year to run medical services for the state’s prison system, which had been blasted in a ruling by the US Supreme Court as an “evil place run by some evil men.”

HMA not only made money from providing medical care to prisoners, but it also started a profitable side venture: blood mining. The company paid prisoners $7 per pint of their blood. HMA then sold the blood on the international plasma market for $50 a pint, splitting the proceeds 50/50 with the Arkansas Department of Corrections. Since Arkansas is one of the few states that does not pay prisoners for their labor, inmates were frequent donors at the so-called “blood clinic.” Hundreds of prisoners sold as much as two pints a week to HMA. The blood was then sold to pharmaceutical companies, such as Bayer and Baxter International; blood banks, such as the Red Cross; and so-called blood fractionizers, who transformed the blood into medicines for hemophiliacs.

HMA’s contract with the Arkansas Department of Corrections and its entry into the blood market coincided with the rise of AIDS in the United States. Regardless, HMA did not screen the torrents of prison blood, even after the Food and Drug Administration issued special alerts about the higher incidents of AIDS and hepatitis in prison populations. When American drug companies and blood fractionizers stopped buying blood taken from prisoners in the early 1980s, HMA turned to the international blood market, selling to companies in Italy, France, Spain, and Japan. But the prime buyer of HMA’s tainted blood, largely drawn from Cummings Unit prisoners in Grady, Arkansas, was a notorious Canadian firm, called Continental Pharma Cryosan Ltd. Cryosan had a shady reputation in the medical industry. It had been nabbed importing blood taken from Russian cadavers and relabeling it as though it was from Swedish volunteers. The company also marketed blood taken from Haitian slums. ... In Canada alone, more than 7,000 people have
died from contaminated blood transfusions, many of them hemophiliacs. More than 4,000 of them died of AIDS. Another 40,000 people in Canada have contracted various forms of hepatitis.

Dr. Francis “Bud” Henderson started HMA in the 1970s. As the company began to expand, he brought in a Little Rock banker named Leonard Dunn to run the firm. Dunn was a political ally and friend of the Clintons. He was appointed by Clinton to sit on the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission and served as finance chair of Clinton’s 1990 gubernatorial campaign. Later that same year, Dunn purchased the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan (later to achieve great notoriety in the Whitewater Scandal) from Clinton’s business partner, James McDougal. Dunn later served as chief of staff to Arkansas’ Lt. Governor, Winthrop Rockefeller. ...

Back to Jordan Peterson. Dunno. Maybe for the purpose of studying human capability of evil, especially on a society scale it's better to focus on the past and closed history chapter. Maybe the traumatic dreams and obsession from the Cold War era keep him somehow imprisoned in those times. Or maybe there are things he doesn't talk about publicly.

Nevertheless, I find it "a bit" disappointing when, with his claimed 40 years of researching Soviet and Nazi history and crimes, the only, or primary, two books he recommends is Gulag by (dissident) Solzhenitsyn and The Painted Bird by Kosinski. The first one is an epic story filled with details though, for obvious reason, one-sided. Enough to learn what sort of horrible things human beings are capable of, but not enough to draw a conclusion of the most evil communist ideology - because the whole picture is much more complicated than just that. On the other hand, when it comes to Kosinski's Bird, the whole story, extremely graphic in its descriptions to the verge of being unreadable, is an invention of the author's sick mind*. Kosinski never claimed it's factual, but was happy not to deny too loudly, when it was advertised as such in the, well, Cold War era. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Kosi%C5%84ski

[* There is also a pretty good chance that it was written as part of what Norman Finkelstein later called Holocaust Industry]

Nobody is perfect. I still admire Peterson, even if that's actually his blind spot.

For those who are interested in him as a person and haven't read his book, I extracted (attached) a few pages of his Preface where he presents the path that lead him to point he found himself at in 1999, i.e. when the book was published. There is also an interesting half an hour long interview where he talks about his family history of depression going back a few generation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqXZY3B-cGo

 

[T.C.]

On the Joe Rogan podcast, @ 02:02:16 he describes himself as a deeply religious person and talks for a while about his understanding of religion.

Around 02:18:30, he talks about what sounds like the achievement of the great work in relation to an ideal way of life derived from a religious/mythological understanding of what one should do. He talks about how we know what happens when we don't follow the right path: We descend into hell and then we die (like in the extreme example of drug addiction), but we don't know what limits we could transcend if we lived the right way.

 

[Josi]

On the Joe Rogan podcast, @ 02:02:16 he describes himself as a deeply religious person and talks for a while about his understanding of religion.

Around 02:18:30, he talks about what sounds like the achievement of the great work in relation to an ideal way of life derived from a religious/mythological understanding of what one should do. He talks about how we know what happens when we don't follow the right path: We descend into hell and then we die (like in the extreme example of drug addiction), but we don't know what limits we could transcend if we lived the right way.

The whole podcast is really fascinating, but it is long and if you don't have time for the whole thing right now the last hour I think it is really worth your time, as T.C. describes above.