Cathy Newman and Jordan Petersen on C4 News

MarquisDeCarabas

Could you cite the racist and sexist remarks, and also where he said or inferred that the be-all and end-all is the drive to succeed and make money, all of which you state he made?

Could you also offer evidence against the empirical research which he offered in psychology which you dispute?

Only just watched the full half hour interview. My assessment is that these are two people ostensibly poles apart but actually with different versions of the same politics.

Peterson is a nasty, right-wing piece of work cloaking his views in the false credibility of clinical psychology. As well as being sexist and racist, he thinks the be-all and end-all is the drive to succeed and make money. Newman on the other hand is your textbook, neoliberal feminist who thinks the same, the only difference being that to her mind women should have a good crack at being brutally competitive and money-grabbing too. Make some more women FTSE 100 bosses and then we have equal opportunity capitalism! Woo hoo, great times for the sisters!

I don't like either of them very much.

An odd disparity with the one in The Observers sister paper I thought, when they generally strongly overlap.

This is a very good review and gives an excellent and fair summary of Peterson's worldview :

www.theguardian.com/global/2018/jan/21/jordan-peterson-self-help-author-12-steps-interview

Well done, Graun

Sure all of us bitter and angry feminists are the same nauticant

Is that you, Cathy?

Do we have to have this childish shit?

Also how can you claim his content is 'tedious and repetitive' without having watched it?

Is that you, Cathy?

HoldMe, I have to assume that you're so angry and bitter because you have no actual argument?

Comparing him to 'alt-right' commentators does nothing but prove your ignorance. I'm really not sure what you're trying to accomplish.

I didn’t say you were, Yippee, and I don’t think so.

On a totally unrelated note which doesn’t in any way prove my point, welcome to MN butwhowasreality! I’m sure watching JP’s hundreds of hours of tedious and repetitive YT videos will transform my worldview. Sadly I still have 40 minutes of Stefan Molyneux’s opinions on how Queen Elsa is brainwashing little girls to plough through before I can start on JP’s views of Marxism and Disney movies (why are all these oddballs so obsessed with Disney).

I’m sure once I finish I’ll realise JP has been flirting with me all along. Or I’ll want to gas the kikes. One or the other.

I'm guessing but I suspect Peterson has a rather particular view about online abuse.He has obviously had his share of it, made more threatening by the ad hominems from academia which pose a threat both to his clinical license and to his university job. I don't think he expected the furore when he first stuck his head above the parapet on pronouns, but he's had to deal with it for more than a year now, so he's grown a protective carapace and recognised that lots of people are happy to hurl abuse and there's nothing that can be done about it. Nor, since he's a free speech fanatic, is there anything that should be done about it short of actual threats of violence.

And I doubt very much that he thinks it's his place to step in and "protect" CN. That might be the old fashioned chivalrous thing to do, but that's not the way the world is now. And moreover him doing so now would be implying that the poor little woman can't handle the sort of thing that he's had to handle. All that "agency" stuff.

The reason I suspect this is his attitude is that it mirrors his attitude in the Lindsay Shepherd affair - the student who was hauled over the coals at Wilfrid Laurier for showing her class a TV discussion in which JP had participated. Clearly he was on Lindsay Shepherd's side in the argument, and he praised her intelligence and fortitude. But I remember being rather shocked that he didn't act outraged at the abuse she got or try to put any kind of metaphorical protective arm round her. I thought - here's this 23 year old girl being abused and slammed from everywhere, on precisely the issues that he's championing, and he's not even getting up on his hind legs and saying "Stop ! She's barely out of school and you're ripping into her like she was an experienced leatherskinned politician."

But then I thought - nah, he's smarter than me. She's chosen her battle, she may be young and inexperienced, but she's fighting it with courage. If Daddy steps in to protect her, he diminishes her.

*I can't really bf to read all the posts here, but one thing I'm curious about is how many people here are regular posters in this forum.

It doesn't seem particularly interesting if most are not, as there must be a million other places to read about JP on the internet*

The same poster who wrote this earlier. WTF is that about?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3093545-Left-wing-student-censured-by-university-and-told-she-is-a-Nazi-for-broadcasting-debate-between-opposing-viewpoints-on-transgender-in-communications-class

Another thread posted on here last year. Where does that descend into

They'll be here, spamming this thread, desperate for the last word, for days and days. They won't be contributing to MN, they don't have any interest in FWR (beyond dismantling Cultural Marxism, obvs!). They'll be dogs with a bone, forever.

It's also weird that the OP of that thread was on this one earlier telling us pretty much to shut up about it

HoldMe, your posts are so wrong they almost hurt to read. It's bordering on pathetic at this point. You sound like someone who has had their worldview rocked and doesn't know how to react.

Instead of trying to personally attack him or his 'flying monkeys', tell us what you specifically disagree with and why.

Have you watched a single lecture or podcast of his?

One final point before I go - the nature of JP's online following is such that the flying monkeys don't go away. They'll be here, spamming this thread, desperate for the last word, for days and days. They won't be contributing to MN, they don't have any interest in FWR (beyond dismantling Cultural Marxism, obvs!). They'll be dogs with a bone, forever.

I know the last time I said debate wasn't worthwhile I gave some people an allergic reaction - but debate with these sorts of followers (and I've been doing it with Red Pillers, YE creationists, the Breitbart alt right, you name it) really isn't worthwhile. Because you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

Ultimately, Peterson's overwhelmingly young middle class white male audience is getting something emotional, not rational, from this movement. And while JP might be happy to ally himself with someone who says "gas the kikes" with one breath and "the mainstream media is conspiring against JP!" with the next - I think that we, as feminists, can do better than this. He might have got trans issues right. That doesn't excuse the fact that literally everything else he comes out with is garbage.

Making him a prominent anti-trans figure will do the movement more harm than good in the long run.

he does not take the opportunity to debate but rather hides behind an insistence that criticism is an attack on freedom of speech

Actually pretty much ALL HE DOES is debate and invite criticism and free speech. None of the points raised by your links have been answered so how is anyone supposed to take you seriously?

His plan to build a database of all university academics with "bad" politics (ie, politics he disagrees with) isn't very liberal.

Linking to the FB profiles of undergraduate students who disagree with him and encouraging his hundreds of thousands of followers to harass sorry "contact" them isn't very liberal either.

Anyone can quote pablum about freedom of speech. When their actions support harassment and terrorising of people who exercise their freedom of speech by disagreeing, I prefer to judge the actions, not the words.

I haven't seen a single FWR poster suggesting he should be in prison for his beliefs (that's what opposing his "freedom of speech" actually means by the way - expressing the view that he's a moron is not).

'Victim card' 'alleged verbal abuse'

Well aren't you lovely

How has CN pulled the victim card? D'oh by having "security" called in because some people called her a stupid biatch?

And they would all be men, of course.

"Is there any point looking at what roles those physicians take, e.g. surgeons, consultants, GPs? Presumably it's roughly equal at all levels and in all areas these days?"

Yes, certainly worth looking into, though I'm much too lazy to do so. But I vaguely recall reading that different medical disciplines have different sex ratios. In particular I believe surgery is still very male dominated.

And of course you can spin that both ways. Maybe it's the National Union of Misogynistic Knifemen protecting their guild from the frilly ones. Or maybe surgery attracts the sort of people who don't like to engage with people. You don't need to stop and chat to a spleen you're removing.