Dr Jordan Peterson

But deathgrip, from that passage, it's entirely unclear what happened.

She seems to have had sex that later she realises she didn't want. Would the man have known she didn't really want it? I'm not sure. Did she show enthusiasm at the time? We don't know.

Unless you want a blanket rule that women cannot drink and have sex with people they don't know. Actually, I would welcome that rule, but I know a lot of women who'd see it as a serious infringement.

I was a woman like her. I identify completely with his description. In my case it was a narc mother that left me with poor boundaries and no sense of self.

Identifying that as a problem that she can address and be less vulnerable in future in all areas of her life doesn't seem to me damaging in itself.

I'm still not sure what you are getting, deathgrip. I'm probably not going to try anymore because your explanations haven't explained and you are angry.

Good to know kantastic

The Helen Lewis / GQ one is excellent for this sort of stuff, as she talks about the patriarchy and privilege, but comes up pretty short when challenged as to how a women got such a good job inside of a patriarchy, or that she should resign and offer her job to someone less privileged she flat out refuses because she "doesn't want to and doesn't see why [she] should have to"

Sorry, you think it’s excellent because he’s using one woman’a success to disprove the existence of the patriarchy? FFS.

Wow, I've just had to towel off my screen as that paragraph is absolutely dripping in condescension. And we wonder why public discourse might be becoming more polarised...

Have you read much incel or MRA content?

I know what the trad fem argument will be to that - I have used it myself in the past - and it's "you can only blame the rapist for rape" and that is true, she is committing no crime. But this is about asking a women why she finds herself back at a man's house when she doesn't really want to and asking her if she could have any control over that.

That’s not a trad fem argument, it’s a pretty fundamental view of sexual violence. And yes, people would call it victim blaming because it is. It’s also insulting to men to imply that if women don’t protect themselves against rape, men just won’t be capable of not raping.

This narrative not only blames women but infantilises men.

If assessing how you felt responsible for what happened helped you, then that’s great. What was “relieving” for you would be highly damaging for others.

Aside from his evident disbelief that a woman could be a victim of rape five times, he’s also painting a narrative to explain it way without considering the impact of past sexual assault on behaviour. He’s calling her a “ghost” and blaming the rapes on her this, rather than considering the way those experiences have shaped her personality or future actions, or the complex ways in which society attempts to train women to be passive, or the way we respond to past trauma and how that is used against us.

The following passages in the book are not any better - Peterson talks about how he could tell this woman one of two things (that she is to blame or that she is blameless) and that would become her narrative.

it seems entirely possible that someone like that might say - oh, wait, I didn't really mean all that to happen and I felt upset later, I must have been raped.

Seriously, is this still FWR or have I accidentally stumbled on to Reddit by accident?

Deathgrip this thread isn't remotely representative of most of the rest of the forum. I think most of the regulars here lost interest long ago.

He is a psychoanalyst, and that description is about a client trying to make sense of herself and her own experiences.
He is actually focusing on her and the sense she is trying to make of her narrative, her feelings and her decisions.

It's not a socio-cultural analysis of rape and male and female relationships it is about just her.

He is an expert in personality research, and agreeable- disagreeable axis is well understood and recognised as a consistent measurable personality trait in psychology.

Disagreeableness is not a bad trait. It can help you to be very successful.
I am a proud to be disagreeable women. If I'd had daughters I would have tried to bring them up to be disagreeable.
As it happens I have agreeable sons who I am happy have discovered JP.

I think he's obviously a tortured complex soul though.

@daisyjgrey - thank God there are two of us.

Nah, I'm joshing.

As a man, I don't assume feminists to be intelligent enough to understand rigorous argument, and think they might easily latch onto things without understand it at all. So I get where you're coming from entirely.

If you can think of a reason why I, as a woman, should regard incels and MRAs as likeable, or assume they all have the intelligence to understand rigorous argument .... Well, I'd listen, but I wouldn't promise to agree.

And just because people I dislike like something, that is not a good reason to condemn the thing they like out of hand, for me: I do not assume incels or MRAs to be intelligent enough to understand rigorous argument, and they might easily have latched onto something without understanding it at all

Wow, I've just had to towel off my screen as that paragraph is absolutely dripping in condescension. And we wonder why public discourse might be becoming more polarised...

So it is better to give people agency rather than victim hood.

I can see eminent Victorians like Octavia Hill nodding in agreement.

It's really tricky ground within 'traditional' feminist narrative. At first glance it reads that he doesn't understand what has happened, perhaps doesn't believe her. And that has caused women so many issues throughout history.

But what has happened?

It's his description of what this women said, obviously, so maybe it's not accurate, but there is actually zero indication that she was coerced into sex in these scenarios.

To me it read as someone who had become so passive, who had no real principle of action, or even intent, that she felt like she hadn't actually made a decision to have sex. She was just going through the motions, so to speak.

If you combine that sort of mindset - and I've met people like that over the years, who live their lives drifting - with rhetoric about explicit consent and the idea that if you feel violated it means you have been raped, it seems entirely possible that someone like that might say - oh, wait, I didn't really mean all that to happen and I felt upset later, I must have been raped. It might be a relief because it would allow a sort of explanation for what was happening in her life, without needing to focus on what she really wants or believes in.

I know many people are uncomfortable with the idea that someone could be so lacking in self-reflection or self-conciousness - but don't we see examples of that all the time in other areas?

Total thought experiment really, but I wondered, reading the account, if this woman might not have been sexually abused as a child, which sometimes can result in that sort of passive response. If so, trying to attach her pain to these experiences as an adult might be a way of avoiding more real and disturbing thoughts.

Obviously if the description is false, none of that applies, but I don't see why we'd assume that.

I can't help wanting to see the context of those paragraphs quoted, because without that context sure, they can be read as damning -- but I can find damning things in most people's work if I go looking. Hellfires, it is the new national sport: find something someone has said, take it out of context, and use it to call for them to be cancelled, it's all the rage, it's being done to J K Rowling every minute of every day at the moment.

And just because people I dislike like something, that is not a good reason to condemn the thing they like out of hand, for me: I do not assume incels or MRAs to be intelligent enough to understand rigorous argument, and they might easily have latched onto something without understanding it at all.

Expecting the facile from an intellectual may be rash anyway: remember all the fuss some years back about the bishop who said things that were blasphemous? The newspaper critics had missed out the hypothetical at the beginning and quoted him straight as stating that the story of the birth of Christ was untrue, when what he had said was "IF the story (etc) were untrue" and gone on to ask what that would mean for Christianity. (Not a lot, I seem to remember was his conclusion.)

hamster, wonderful post. Thank you.

I get what deathgrip is getting at with the passage about the rape.

It's really tricky ground within 'traditional' feminist narrative. At first glance it reads that he doesn't understand what has happened, perhaps doesn't believe her. And that has caused women so many issues throughout history.

But having listened to him talk about this client of his, it is always said in the context of something very specific and that is around women being more in control and responsible for their own lives. Again, I know that is spiky, but you have to follow through with this thought and see which scenarios actually help women most.

I know when I was in an abusive marriage, it didn't help me to just sympathise, call him a bastard and blame it all on him. It didn't move me forward much, somewhat, in that it allowed me to know it wasn't me going mad. What actually really helped me was to question myself on why I had let this happen. Somewhere along the way this has been labelled as victim blaming, but I know from personal experience it is not victim blaming, it is entirely the opposite, it is victim relieving. For me to move forward, I needed to know that I had some control over what happens to me. That I have the right to stand up and walk out etc.

That is what I read from that paragraph - a woman struggling to make sense of all these things that just happen to her. He is talking about encouraging her to take agency over these situations:

"She was a ghost of a person. She dressed, however, like a professional. She knew how to present herself, for first appearances … Miss S knew nothing about herself. She knew nothing about other individuals. She knew nothing about the world. She was a movie played out of focus"

That is a call for this woman to take control of her life.

I know what the trad fem argument will be to that - I have used it myself in the past - and it's "you can only blame the rapist for rape" and that is true, she is committing no crime. But this is about asking a women why she finds herself back at a man's house when she doesn't really want to and asking her if she could have any control over that.

Yes, and I think that is the biggest point he makes (without really remembering if he ever makes it explicitly) - that all of these great identitarian social issues are actually damn complex and reducing it to one thing (gender in this case) is ridiculous.

Well, 12boo, I find him kind of anti-attractive, and I still agree with some of what he says.

Like some others I think he is most interesting in his own area of expertise. When he moves outside of it he is much more likely to say dumb things (as are we all really.)

When he argues against the existence of a tyrannical patriarchy part of me wants to say "fuck off mate" but then I listen to the rest of what he says and it makes sense and seems reasonable

I'm sorry if I'm posting excessively, but this thread actually got me back into him and re-watching a few videos of his I'd not seen in a good while. The Helen Lewis / GQ one is excellent for this sort of stuff, as she talks about the patriarchy and privilege, but comes up pretty short when challenged as to how a women got such a good job inside of a patriarchy, or that she should resign and offer her job to someone less privileged she flat out refuses because she "doesn't want to and doesn't see why [she] should have to"

Don't you think that suggests a little bit of a problem?

I understand that people don't always find it easy to express themselves clearly and when I'm being properly conscientious I try to see what people mean rather than getting stuck on exactly what they are saying. I'm not looking to jump all over you.

But if you won't saw what in particular you find problematic in that account? Do you think he made up the scenario? Do you think we should consider that kind of situation as rape? Is it how he suggests as the origins of her feelings?

There is not some 100% obviously right answer about rape and sexual assault that means there is never any need to talk about or discuss it. It would be strange if there were.