Woke staff revolt over Jordan Peterson book

''He was angry at God because women were rejecting him. The cure for that is enforced monogamy.''
Enforced monogamous pair bonding doesn't make men less violent. It means violent men are given a socially mandated private punch bag to work it out on.

The quote about women wearing make up; women who do not wear make up or heels are also sexually harassed, because sexual harassment is about power, not sexual attraction.

Not sure what the ....."come on, tell us what you think" accusations are about

They are not accusations, but questions for those making negative assertions about yer lad Peterson to back up their statements - see above from CatsCantCatchCriminals2 re: appallingly sexiest quotes. Easy enough, one would have thought if true....but no takers. Kinda makes one suspect that they are not true.

BTW This thread was bumped after I read the link that you Cara made on the BDSM thread to the shark cage blog - the author linking there abusers listening to Peterson. The nonsense of it made me smile and I remembered this thread....

Not quite sure why this thread's been bumped, or what the "come on, tell us what you think" accusations are about.

The general thrust of the thread (which I remember from first time round - bit like Groundhog day here at times) is "love him, hate him, indifferent to him, it's a good thing that his publishers have stuck up for him." And whether or not one agrees with his views is irrelevant to the belief that "cancelling" him would be a bad thing.

I'm a fully paid up woke liberal leftie, but am willing to admit I respect Peterson. He's measured and reasonable, doesn't make claims without evidence and is guided by a pervading respect for evidence and truth. Of course that's still subject to what initial position you're seeking evidence OF, and there he and I would part ways. But I'd much rather have to deal with a right wing that's been listening to him than one listening to Trump or Farage.

That article looks pretty weak though. There's a lot of emotive claims about "reports that people were crying" etc. with very little specificity about what anyone in particular said or did. Maybe I'm jaded from too many years in the trenches of the culture war, but I read it and see an anti-woke agenda looking for fuel for that culture war based on probably not very much at all.

No-one

Anyone?

I think he's just too big and profitable to cancel. A new author would be dropped in an instant if the same thing happened to them.

Having said that, I do get the sense that the tide is turning a bit. I have way more conversations now with people who are questioning the "woke" orthodoxy. I think the knowledge of what's happening is becoming more widespread and people are not okay with it. Look at how alternative media has boomed while traditional newspapers die out. There will be a tipping point and it will be in our favour. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon.

In the light of several other threads it's heartening to see that Dr. Peterson's publishers are standing up for him.

It is depressing however to consider if that is as a matter of principle or simply because Dr Peterson would be too big a financial loss for them to cancel.

Hahaha I wish headline writers were that witty! :)

Sorry to lower the tone, but is anyone itching for on of the tabloids to cover this under the heading "Snowflake Penguins need to be more Lobster"?

‘In research on lesbian mothers, there’s a much more equal division of work between partners, which suggests that maybe women aren’t naturally hardwired to want to do all of it to the detriment of their career.’

To me the point being demonstrated here is that lesbian parents do better because women care more about kids on average. The world isn’t full of men contributing differently but equally by pursuing their careers. Men on average work fewer hours than women and put a smaller proportion of their income into the household. Children raised by women play more, receive a greater proportion of household resources, attend school more and receive better health care.

Whether women work outside the home or in the home or a combination of the two, they are more likely to be doing so for the good of their children.

‘Men and women are biologically different but we get into dangerous territory (lady-brain etc) if we say that our psychology is inherently different, rather than as a result of socialisation, because then we will get males claiming to be women because they love tidying the house.’

It isn’t about it being inherently different, but there being some group differences on average with a huge overlap, similar to height.

Being a bit nurturing shouldn’t make a man a woman anymore than him being five foot six should.

It is also clearly not what underlies the concept of transgenderism as the gender stereotypes promoted by transgenderism are not about caring for children. They are about women as a male fantasy.

However, I believe that JP may be ignoring female socialisation and that his conclusions are based on the society we live in. I do not believe that the Scandinavian countries which he quotes as an example of how sex differences are inherent is free from male and female socialisation.

Yes, I think you're quite possibly completely right about that. That's what I suspect also.

That was one of Peterson’s points to Newman. Most women don’t want to be Newman - she’s not the average woman.

One of Helen Lewis' points to Peterson is that he's not the average man - he cries easily, is in touch with his emotions, is devoted to his family, has many traditionally 'feminine' interests, started out working in childcare and so on. It's absolutely right that all the personality types and interests should be open to all of us, even if on a population level, men and women exhibit different sets of traits. No one should be punished for not having a certain kind of personality or interests, nor should we as a society say that only certain kinds of interests are important and valuable. Individuals of both sexes should be free to pursue their highest calling. Peterson argues that denying this is a net loss to society. If we cut off access for females into the sciences, for example, we lose what brilliance they can bring. But it still might be the case, all other things being equal, that more men pursue work in the sciences. We won't know, until all other things are equal, I guess.

(I think JP argues that we have equality in Scandinavia, and the data from there shows women are still more likely to go into certain professions, such as nursing and childcare, than men are, even without barriers to accessing other professions. I suspect he might be wrong that there are no longer any barriers to women in those countries, however.)

I also find the low status given to single mothers to be a consequence of the notion that success as a woman rests on negotiating with a man so he will do 50% of the childcare and nurturing.

That 50% may represent some form of equality, but it isn’t liberation from relying on male approval and attention.

Still no quote then?

Queenofknives, I agree to a certain extent. I think that men are more aggressive that women due to hormonal differences. However, I believe that JP may be ignoring female socialisation and that his conclusions are based on the society we live in. I do not believe that the Scandinavian countries which he quotes as an example of how sex differences are inherent is free from male and female socialisation.

However, I do think this comes back to my point that he takes the structures in society as given (partly with some support from the animal kingdom). It is impossible to strip socialisation from personality traits in adults and those are some measures he uses to discuss sex differences.

But again, I think that he has some good points for individuals as long as you accept the limitation that he to a large extent takes society and socialisation as given.

The main focus of feminism should be ending violence against women.

The economic problems of SAHMs - that is an issue that could be resolved by government policy. It shouldn’t just be seen as a problem women have to tackle individually. The same with homelessness. We should be able to resolve homelessness as a society. These issues shouldn’t be left to negotiations between individual women and men.

There are obviously many women who are not interested in nurturing. That was one of Peterson’s points to Newman. Most women don’t want to be Newman - she’s not the average woman. But there are a large number of women who do have more of a focus on providing care, and I do think that is partly innate. I also think that nurturing is socialised out of men. We should be able to say that all personality types and interests should be open to both sexes whether there are average differences or not.

But all of that is really secondary to the issue that whatever women collectively do - they need full human rights. They should not be child brides, raped, in domestic violence situations, abducted, trafficked, disenfranchised or enslaved.

However it’s untrue that in the animal world every species behaves the same in that females are the nurturers and males the aggressive hunters.

I've never argued that (although I think most mammal species do have this kind of division - I'm no biologist though). But I think it's pretty hard to make a case that human males and females are equally aggressive, for example, when near on 100% of violent crimes are committed by males and very few by females. Do you not believe there's any natural/biological/evolutionary component to behaviour then? If not, how would you account for that statistic, which seems pretty stable throughout various societies?

The attempt to equate going to work with ‘hunting’ for instance is ludicrous. Therefore, comparisons to the ‘animal kingdom’ as evidence of why men and women are treated so extremely differently in the world are bound to be weak.

Again, this is not an argument I've made. I also don't argue that it's natural that women are treated differently (badly) - in fact I specifically said I do not believe it is. But I do believe that men and women have naturally different traits, broadly speaking. It isn't and shouldn't be used as a justification for oppression or discrimination or unfair treatment. We can be different without having to be inferior or be treated as such. (Although of course, we are inferior in terms of say, upper body strength, and males are inferior in terms of longevity, for instance - so when we talk of equality, we are talking about political/legal equality, and equality of opportunity. We will never beat men in arm wrestling competitions, no matter how much we are socialised to be tough. But in a modern society, that should not matter, except in sports competitions.)

For me, the sexism comes in with building societies that valorise male behaviours and denigrate female ones. That's entirely avoidable/fixable without having to argue that men and women are naturally interchangeable in our natures. It would be so strange for men and women to be completely alike in nature when one sex is so vital to the process of child birthing and rearing. It seems inevitable to me that this will have an impact on our nature. (Again, on a population level - individuals will align more or less with these traits.)

I think you're making some unjustified leaps in your thinking here, or perhaps I am just not seeing the links. Just because an argument has sometimes been used to support a bad conclusion, doesn't make the argument itself wrong. It's possible to believe that women and men are fundamentally different without also believing that oppression is therefore a fine and natural state for us to live under. I believe we are different, but that it is a gross injustice that we have been oppressed and treated so unfairly. I don't find these to be mutually exclusive beliefs at all.

It seems that we all read or listen to JP and take different things away from it. Maybe that is why he is so divisive?

My understanding was that he didn’t express much in terms of views on what men vs women should do. What I have seen and heard, he talks about how the average man compares to the average woman in terms of measurable (Likert scale) psychological personality traits. He uses this to for example say (in the Newman interview) that on average women tend to score higher on agreeableness than men (on average). He then says that agreeableness is negatively correlated to salary progression. In layman terms, women are more people pleasers and negotiating less hard.

Furthermore, he does not say that this is right, he just seems to think that it is one of the structures in society that is hard to change. His focus as I understand it is less feminist in that it doesn’t attempt to change the existing structure (he finds that hard), but feminist in that he wants the individual women to take charge and create small changes for themselves and be aware of these dynamics.

I have also heard him say that the average man is more career obsessed than the average woman which resulted in on average higher positions, but he found that obsession pointless and slightly baffling.

And chaos isn't bad and order good.

Chaos is progress and change, order is stability and preservation.
Chaos is progressive, order is conservative.(which one do you want to be now 😉)

We need both to balance.

Too much chaos brings anarchy and destruction too much order brings tyranny and oppression.

It's yin and yang.
It's male and female as representations of differing ideas of which we need both for balance.

It's metaphorical trying to represent a truth of humanity.
It's not saying anyone is one or the other. Or that one is good and the other is bad.

So the fact that he says women are chaos and men are order isn’t something that troubles you? That he says ‘women want X’ and ‘men want Y’ isn’t him making giant generalisation about men and women based on him apparently knowing how both sexes think?

He doesn't say women are chaos and men are order. Here below is a link where he expressly says this is not what he believes. It's not long.

(I don't have a huge knowledge of his interviews, I used google to find this)

And when it comes to what the sexes "want", I recall hearing another interview - possibly the Helen Lewis one - with him saying that there was much more within the two sexes that they have in common then separates them. So, I don't see you have shown he believes in strict gender-roles.

but many women will not feel the same as you about family meals and nurturing. It’s not something that is necessarily inbuilt in women because of their sex. Many women loathe domesticity and being a SAHM but they are guilted for feeling that way. A lot of it is also taught because girls are told from infancy that they must be kind, gentle and caring. Boys are not. How can we separate out what is biological and what is socialised? Men and women are biologically different but we get into dangerous territory (lady-brain etc) if we say that our psychology is inherently different, rather than as a result of socialisation, because then we will get males claiming to be women because they love tidying the house.

I can’t work out whether you’ve listening / read his stuff or not. But if you haven’t, I’m sure if you did you would see he is not offensive in this regard.

I am surprised to hear myself say the things I do after many many years of being more blank slate / social constructivist.

But I do feel that way, and I suspect many (not all) women may feel that way too, and certainly may examine it after they have done the hardest years of child rearing and reflect on their ‘choices’

I think radical feminism forgot about biology too quickly after getting going, too easily and probably for good reason - it was needed to compete. But I don’t think it serves us well now that we have essentially gained equal opportunity.