Jordan Peterson thinks women who wear makeup and complain about sexual harrassment are hypocrites

Ive just realised, i wear make up so the women in work will include me. Talk to me. Know im young at heart..

Perterson has some ideas that are better than others, but I don't think it's true that he is unaware that individual women wear make-up for all kinds of reasons, like social expectations or socialisation. He's very much in the habit of thinking like a Jungian, and the assumptions and natural processes that are operating underneath the things that individuals do.
As far as make-up, I think there are some pretty good questions inherent in what he is saying. Why is it we have tended to expect women to wear make-up, but not men? Why in even business settings are women expected to look young? Why is fashion for women so directed toward sexualization? As individuals maybe we wear make-up, or high heels, or low cut blouses, because that is expected in our jobs. Maybe for some people, like women actors, we are expected to take our clothes off because that is how you get roles, even in high quality productions. But doesn't all thing fundamentally come down to sexualising women in a way that we don't sexualise men?
Obviously many people simply aren't conscious of this stuff, and then plenty of women think by dressing provocatively they are expressing sexual power. But in any of these cases, if we really object to being seen as sexual objects in the workplace or other settings, and the behaviours that come out of that, it might be a good idea to be conscious of the less visible ways society and our socialisation makes us a participant in that objectification. It might not be possible to totally escape from them or even change our own perceptions, but it's something important to think about. It's one thing to complain that the patriarchy puts women in the position where they have to do that, but sometimes I think we don't like to face that actually we can be pretty comfortable with certain parts of that socialisation ourself, and at that point we become kind of complicit, and it does seem a bit like asking men not to notice something that we complain about in other instances.

I wear makeup all the damn time (currently sporting sparkly gold eyeshadow and black lipstick.) It has fuck all to do with being attractive to men ('you'd look so much prettier if you didn't wear so much makeup' fuck off!) No, it's because I like it and want to wear it for myself, although my idea of pretty is on the weird side anyway. This dude is missing several tricks, lipstick comes in far more colours than red, same with blusher, men wear makeup too, and women who don't wear makeup get harassed too. The only person who's fault it is is the person doing the harassing.

I didn’t know who he was; I’ve just read your link fizzthecat1 - wow, he really is a joyless, woman-hater isn’t he? No wonder the incels love him...

yes. He blames women for being sexually harassed. That is shocking but he will get very little scrutiny for it.

If the adage "when a person tells you who they are, believe them the first time" is correct, and I believe it probably is, then what Jordan Peterson is telling us about himself is really quite interesting.

I believe he may be the one guilty of hypocrisy here. His whole claim to fame was standing up against government controlled speech (a position I agree with btw). Yet he's advocating a "rule" against makeup in the workplace?

I get he's not explicitly saying there should be a law, but honestly how else could it be achieved? Society and culture is getting more fractured not less, so the mere notion of getting everyone to wake up and agreeing a new cultural norm overnight seems improbable in the extreme.

Why women wear make up is a red herring, of course the reasons can be many and varied, but making general pronouncements and making judgements like this is tilting towards the tyrannical tendencies Peterson says he's against.

I'm usually a fan of his, and the conversation surrounding how to integrate men and women ina professional context is one that needs to occur. My proposed solution is that men and women should be encouraged to socialise aside from sexual/romantic contexts. After all if a man is agonising on how/when to approach a woman could not be anything other than better served than having close female friends on which he can consult if something is creepy, inappropriate or otherwise inadvisable.

I don't know why people keep on about this man, I cba to Google him but he sounds a bit thick.
I love makeup and wear it most days. I definitely put a lot of store in being attractive to men (and considered attractive by other girls)when I was younger. I felt I had no other power, as, even though I knew I was intelligent boys and men made it very clear they thought I had nothing important to say.
As a "pretty" girl I could command attention from boys and respect from girls.
Later I wore it as war paint-black eyeliner makes me feel more confident, and makes me look less tired!
It's really simplistic to say make up on girls and women is a sexual display.
It can be, but it's also armour, protection, conformity, comfort. All sorts.
Old women wear make up. Is this twerp suggesting that when my Nan puts on her red lippy she is inviting a groping? I think most men would be disgusted at the idea!

Oh I know what you mean about people hanging off his every word OP and he's just regurgitating other people's theories but distorting them with his own skew. And he's so dogmatic! Dogmatic about the theories he's distorted. Grr

I agree with the poster who says that society won't allow a woman to age or to have blotchy skin or invisible eyelashes. She'd be mocked for letting herself go.

It's quite straightforward to infer from what he's said that he thinks women are encouraging sexual harassment. He's being unusually clear in this interview. But, as usual, even when Peterson is speaking in perfectly clear, everyday English us critics 'just don't understand him!' or are 'misinterpreting him!'

His argument is that women wearing makeup is sexually provocative - it constitutes an outright sexual display. He then agrees that a woman who doesn't want to be sexually harassed is a hypocrite if she wears makeup. In saying that, he thinks that wearing makeup in the workplace and not wanting to sexually harassed are incompatible, or inconsistent positions. One cannot consistently desire to wear makeup AND at the same time desire to not be sexually harassed without the charge of hypocrisy. This means that Peterson sees an intimate connection between wearing makeup in the workplace and workplace harassment.

Why does he think that harassment and makeup go together? Because, as he's already stated, he regards makeup to be sexually provocative and a sexual display. The clear inference from this is if you do sexual displays at work you are a hypocrite if you become dismayed when men react to these overt sexual displays in a sexual manner. The message is you ought not to be dismayed at sexual harassment because, by putting on a sexual display, what on earth were you expecting to happen? The woman who wears makeup is acting provocatively and so should expect to get some sexual responses in return.

Now, he's not outright telling men that it's ok to harass women who wear makeup, but he is implying that women are encouraging it by putting on a sexual display.

So basically telling his male audience that they are free to sexually harrass women and they're basically asking for it
no, I can't see that. You're projecting. Unless you can give me an example of where he says it. Which I doubt.
I think it's an interesting issue. A related one is why do so many woman wear very high heels now.
and how do you judge the gender of his audience? I'm a woman, and I think his stuff is often interesting.

This twat was on Question Time last Thursday night

Peterson: Why? Why do you make your lips red? Because they turn red during sexual arousal. That’s why. Why do you put rouge on your cheeks? Same reason.
Does he have a thing for circus clowns? Is the workplace he has in mind a Big Top?
What a tool.

they could never grasp that women wear what they like as it makes them feel good or gives them confidenxe or simply because they like what theyre wearing.

Nope. I used to wear make up at work and dress as described because women who do not do these things are deemed unprofessional. I rarely wear make up now and would be delighted if wearing no make up and sensible shoes were considered acceptable for professional women.

Oh he is just a twat

Im sure he does say interesting stuff on the odd occasion, i havent seen it yet but law of averages says it must happened once...or maybe it will happen one day, its deffo one of those

It's classic when so many women are under pressure to wear make up to conform to society's expectations of female looks. Classic of a patriarchy or any other form of abusive control - forcing you to do something and then blaming and abusing you for doing that.

He is horrific and so so anti-feminist. Yet many people on here defend him. Seriously- he is saying that you are asking for it by wearing makeup. He is laughing at the women who worship him.

The whole red lips thing is borrowed from Desmond Morris’s Naked Ape 40 or 50 years ago. It was bad science then - anyone who believes that shit now is just embarrassing themselves.

Isn’t he just saying this sort of stuff to provoke reaction. But like Katie Hopkins.

I don't wear make up for the same reason I don't do ironing, I'm too fucking lazy. But I still feel the need to shave my legs and armpits. My pits stink if I don't no matter how much I shower. The legs has to be some kind of social conditioning because if I don't I feel that I look a gorilla. They do get very hairy. But nobody has the right to make any judgements of anyone else for what is basically just choices in what they feel comfortable with in regards to their appearance. Especially since a lot of those choices will have been promoted strongly by the society we live in that then decides to cast it's critical eye.

Janie143
But women who don't wear makeup are trans according to today's ideology

Spot on. 'Damned if you do, damned if you don't' is part of the abusers toolkit.

"Why do you make your lips red and out rouge on your cheeks? Because that's how they go during intercourse"

This might be news to him, but not everyone makes their cheeks red/pink, and not everyone wears red lipstick 😂 What about the women who have purple or even nude lips!? What about black eyeliner, how does that relate to sex? What a dumb man.

Men really do think it’s all about them. I‘ve loved makeup since I was a little girl. I love the colours and textures and the different effects you can achieve. I don’t mind not wearing it and often go to the shops or for a walk bare faced, but I definitely look better with it (very pale, barely there eyebrows) and wear light makeup for work, and clart it on in my free time. The last thing I want is to sexually attract males. I have a perfectly nice DP already, thanks, further male attention neither wanted nor needed.