Dr Jordan Peterson

It's about evidence base. What evidence does he have for this assertion? I would wager that he has none. Show me the studies

I'd wager that a tenured prof at a senior Canadian university, who has also taught at Harvard, has a lot more evidence of this assertion than you. I'd also wager that if it weren't true, there would be plenty of people lining up evidence to the contrary - it's not like he has been short of detractors in the media.

How do you rate 'disagreeableness' in women? Is there a Peterson scale of disagreeableness where 1 = will suck dick for truckers and 10 = will shank you if you mention the washing up

He did an interview with a senior editor at the Economist who expressed incredulity about "how can you measure X? (unfortunately I forget what it was)" and in a bout 30 seconds, the psychologist explained to the lay person (economist/journalist - and one who was almost painfully stupid throughout the entire interview) exactly how they do it. It's not too much of a blow to the ego to recognise that there are plenty of educated people out there who know plenty more about plenty of subjects than you or I do...

It seems to me that the current approach to arguing against someone’s views for many is to effectively enter a sword fight with one arm tied behind their backs.

Jordan Peterson is outright dismissed by some as a misogynist and By others as ‘alt-right adjacent’ and his views are simply not engaged with. It’s clear that many with this opinion actually don’t know his opinions because they haven’t read any of them. It’s as if he’s considered so ‘beyond the pale’ that merely reading his opinions will lead to some sort of deadly infection.

I listened to a podcast with Laurence Fox recently where he discussed meeting up with Amrou the Quantum Physicist Drag Artist. At the end, Amrou suggested Laurence read a number of books. Laurence then suggested that Amrou read The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray. His response was “I’m not reading anything by that transphobe”.

*He also said marriage makes men less violent.

Well, yes, of course marriage makes a violent man less likely to attack people in public when he has a wife and kids to take his abuse out on*

Or, alternatively, it is possible to think about it from a socio-psychological point-of-view and reason :

Men who are married are more often at home than single men, rather than out on the piss, alcohol being a factor in plenty of violent activity.

Men who are married have attained the status of "stable couple", meaning they don't have to (literally) fight for a position in a hierarchy for women's attention (I know it's not smart, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist).

Men who are married more often have much greater responsibilities - maintaining their contribution to a mortgage, helping in raising children and setting a good example for them - so would reasonably be less prone to using violence and the risk of prison, physical impairment, or death that could result.

But sure, jump to DV being the only reasonable explanation, assuming that you have accepted that a prof of psychology could even be correct such psychological data in the first place...

Maybe disliking someone for the conclusions he has reached from the data he has seen, because we dislike the data and the conclusions that they lead to, is a sort of shooting the messenger reaction?

Yep this. This is where cancel culture steps in. To try and silence these messengers.

For instance, I saw a lecture where he claimed that women who truly didn't want children were rare and tended to be disagreeable. Poisonous nonsense to say it to a room full of students, even if you think it.

Why? In case it hurts the students feelings? Our great future academics must be protected from opinions / observations and facts? Would you prefer a world full of science denial, lies, compelled speech and no debate?

Maybe disliking someone for the conclusions he has reached from the data he has seen, because we dislike the data and the conclusions that they lead to, is a sort of shooting the messenger reaction?

I find it quite hilarious that there are either an exceptional number of psychology PhDs on Mumsnet, or that Gove's observation that we've had enough of experts really does seem to be true and that having a pop at a world leader in their field, on subjects to do with that field, from a position of ignorance, is perfectly valid.

His stuff mostly isn't complicated (once explained, I couldn't come up with it myself I don't think), but it does require a person to pay attention and make the effort to grasp his meaning of the words, rather than jumping to outrage - "he said some women are disagreeable, burn him!".

But for this to result in actual relationships, doesn't this mean that men would have to be naturally drawn to women less intelligent, accomplished and dominant than themselves

Because men, I suspect, have different goals in a partner - from a social status POV the partners relative beauty ("look what I have attracted") and in a life sense some sort of estimation of the partners ability to bear children and create a stable home life come more into play.

At its most primal, women want clever / strong men because they can provide, and men look for pretty / homemaker women because they look nice and bring up good kids. (no need for a pile-on, these are very general statements and are not indicative of whether I think they are morally "right", just a low-grain view of what the psychology apparently is.)

Being disagreeable is a positive characteristic for a woman to have. I am not sure he entirely understands that.

He most definitely understands that, and there are 2 points he makes.
At a population level, women are more agreeable than men. This does not correlate with high competitiveness at work and cites this as one reason for the gender pay gap. Please note one factor, please don’t go down the whole dismissing of multi factorial analysis and recognise it is one contribution only. He advocates for and does assertiveness training for women to counteract this propensity. Disagreeableness at work is generally an advantage.

The other thing he says, and again this is in response to the data on population level analysis of sex differences In personality, is that ‘conscientious and agreeable women are the most discriminated against Group in the workplace’
Women are more likely to have these 2 personality traits and they are basically the kind of people who will get on and do their work conscientiously but not expect any reward for it/ demand any recognition.

Yes. Totally agree. Some of the comments on here (about J Peterson) are just as pathetic as the ones you'd get about JKR on Twitters.

Being disagreeable is a positive characteristic for a woman to have. I am not sure he entirely understands that.

For instance, I saw a lecture where he claimed that women who truly didn't want children were rare and tended to be disagreeable. Poisonous nonsense to say it to a room full of students, even if you think it

Why is it poisonous nonsense? I don't know the studies linked to such a statement, but I wouldn't find such an observation surprising. The vast majority of women desire to have children (men as well). It is the whole point of evolution and therefore our species will be naturally inclined towards such goals.
Women have more options and freedom these days, and many put off having children until older. Some might be undecided and eventually change their minds either for or against motherhood. Some unfortunately won't be able to have children due to various reasons and circumstances.

I have never wanted children. I've 'known' this from a very early age. It's difficult to describe, but I guess it's the complete opposite of those women who say they have always known they wanted to be mothers. I have always known motherhood was not for me. Never wavered or wondered or been undecided. I think women like myself are extremely rare as I haven't come across others like me very often. I have never changed my mind, despite being told this is what normally happens.

There is a lot of internal and external pressure on women to have children, therefore to be very secure in your decision to not have any (and not waver or be undecided) requires a certain mindset - a level of disagreeableness if you will. I've been very upfront with all the men I've dated that I never wanted children. Absolutely not. Take it or leave it. I don't think many women would be as hard-line about it like that.

But it is an objective fact

@hamstersarse

It's interesting, isn't it? Because one of the things which is under attack, along with freedom of speech, is the existence of external reality. Objective facts, in so far as they inconvenience the dictates of the SJ movement can be discarded. Or those mentioning them can be denounced, no platformed and silenced. It's also interesting how many SJ activists repeatedly call for people to shut up. Silence is a goal.

One of the things some have pointed out is that this means that as more women take university degrees compared to men, it creates a gap of people who aren't going to find a match if they stick to that metric

This is especially true in the ‘working class’ communities. Women in these groups are often better educated than men so are simply not marrying at the same rate. Whereas in the upper highly educated classes, marriage rates are still high.

Whatever your opinion about marriage, there is no doubt having 2 incomes coming into a household gives you huge advantage.

I find this an interesting and unexpected turn of events when it comes to equality any social mobility.

I don't like him, but at least he's speaking out about free speech and the authoritarian take over of academia. He was the only public figure I heard talking about the consequences of bill C-16 (Meghan Murphy got zero media time).

wish to be

hamster

I do realise that he was using it in that context but he didn't quote sources (common for him), I question if it's true (do you know?), the conclusions he was drawing weren't in the spirit of him speaking as a clinician/academic, it was a brick in a wall of theory that was bizarre and idiosyncratic presented as objective fact (another problem I have) and his manner was highly dismissive. But watch the lecture if you're interested and you will see why no woman would be talked about that way, as a species being observed by the great naturalist.

Old Crone

As I understand it the research isn't so much about things like intelligence, but social status, wealth, and education level - though the latter may be more about the job and wealth. So a woman who is a lawyer is unlikely to marry an electrician, without making any assumptions about lawyers being more intelligent than electricians.

The opposite is not true - men don't mind marrying women who have a job which has less social status, who earns less, or who has less education. Again, that doesn't assume that those women are less intelligent than the men they marry.

The reason that people think this seems awful is the assumption that people with the jobs with less social status or lower pay are less intelligent and accomplished.

One of the things some have pointed out is that this means that as more women take university degrees compared to men, it creates a gap of people who aren't going to find a match if they stick to that metric.

I love him!
The all meat diet thing is bonkers though.

Why do you think it seems 'awful' that women want partners who are intelligent and accomplished? Isn't it worse that men appear to want partners who they see as inferior to themselves?

For instance, I saw a lecture where he claimed that women who truly didn't want children were rare and tended to be disagreeable. Poisonous nonsense to say it to a room full of students, even if you think it

But it is an objective fact.

He's a personality researcher so when he talks about 'disagreeableness', he's talking about a personality trait from the Big 5 measure of personality - a valid and robust psychological measure - it's not a moral judgment

2rebecca I didn't think the way he dealt with his addiction odd at all.

YABU unreasonable to be a fan of him. He's not the kind of person who should have a fan base. He's very clever but not quite clever enough or insightful enough for the overarching theory of everything he's going for. He has so much to say that there can easily be bits and pieces you can like and other bits that are ill informed, bigoted or ridiculous. For instance, I saw a lecture where he claimed that women who truly didn't want children were rare and tended to be disagreeable. Poisonous nonsense to say it to a room full of students, even if you think it. Other things make sense. He's a voice in the room that should be turned down a little, IMO.

Peterson can be a bit of a dick, definitely, but overall I think his contribution to the 2010s will be seen with hindsight as important and largely positive.