Woke staff revolt over Jordan Peterson book

Because it’s censorship and it’s a dangerous precedent.

Jordan Peterson believes that women (or the feminine) cause chaos and men order and that men are in charge because they're better at being in charge. And his position on enforced monogamy is disgusting.

www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html

It's a little ironic to see him celebrated on the feminism board. I get that you agree with him on trans rights, but I'm baffled by the general embrace.

Well I don't know where the message originated etc but yeah. I had a chat with DD obviously and said. Erm you know that on X day there's no one going out and killing children right? And she said. Yeah.

But fact is it was circulating and if you're feeling low or there's lots of messages etc then it's going to have an impact.

I mean that was a one off I don't check her phone all the time but she went through a funny stage during first lockdown and well not for this thread :) the chat with her mates was a bit of a shocker tbh. Anyway. Yes. People out to murder 12 yo schoolgirls because they somehow know they're questioning about gender on X day.

@NiceGerbil that is terrifying.

There is no concerted campaign to murder trans kids. The murder rates for trans individuals not involved in prostituition in certain countries are low, often lower than for women.

Lying to kids about how the world is against them feels like - that word we're not allowed say.

On this

'But I completely understand that people really believe that there is 'harm' being done to trans people through JP's work - the propaganda campaign of TRAs is very powerful'

Just remembered something.

Checking my DD watsapp as you do. She was 12. Message from friend saying on X date there is going to be a thing where trans kids will get murdered. People have been working out which kids are trans and will kill them.

And they were saying it's so scary etc.

I think maybe what is being propagated amongst children is maybe underestimated.

I’m confused by the Butler references. That’s massively overstating the power of academic work, surely? Butler’s theories or critique of gender (still not made time to read it so I don’t really know) didn’t invent male self-entitlement to sexual rights over women and children, cancel culture, sexual fetishisation being played out in women’s spaces, women’s (and lesbian’s) spaces and opportunities and sports being taken over by men, women’s freedom of speech bei my threatened, medical experimentation on children and emotionally vulnerable adults, ostracism of detransitioned people, institutional/regulatory capture and all the rest of it?

Misogyny and homophobia and lesbophobia have never needed support from anyone to reach the conclusions they currently have, because these ways of thinking have always been with us.

And if one academic (or a whole school of academics) popularises particular ways of thinking or a theoretical language for something, that doesn’t mean that they have actually created the phenomenon they describes, or which they argue we should all follow. A vanishingly minuscule fraction of people in the population have ever read gender theory books or ever will.

There’s obviously some academics publishing great stuff every day and some academics publishing complete sexist nonsense that would be a disaster if it was turned into social policy.. but if individual authors had such power we’d hear a lot more about all of them wouldn’t we?

We need more ideas to be discussed and published so we can all think freely about what the impact on people’s lives will be from those ideas. Rather than play it out on Twitter under threat of harassment for wrongthink or have the discussion only confined to academic writing.

Even if all those things TRAs and so on said were true it still wouldn’t explain the level of upset.

Woke people aren’t that upset by contemporary slavery, the Chinese government’s treatment of Muslims or child brides. So there’s still something quite perplexing going on in the response.

Crying to get your own way is something seven-year-olds do.

But I completely understand that people really believe that there is 'harm' being done to trans people through JP's work - the propaganda campaign of TRAs is very powerful. In this narrative, there's a big concerted campaign to literally murder trans people, propped up with misrepresented statistics from South America, with people like JKR supporting this and 'really' wanting this, and signaling this not through what they actually state but via coded 'dogwhistles'.

TRAs gaslight GC women but they also gaslight trans or possibly-trans people to an incredible extent. Thinking about Mermaids in particular - telling kids that there's loads of people who want them dead, who won't understand them, who they can't trust (including/especially their parents). That only those within the community will understand them.

People genuinely feel they're doing the right thing by defending this allegedly most-vulnerable-ever group, and by extending a protectiveness that other adults don't get or expect.

I think JP is a bit of a dick. But what he actually says vs how the wokesters represent him - there's a chasm in the difference.

Doesn't Peterson eat only steak and salt? I hear he's been ill recently, can't imagine why

That gets trotted out by critics trying to make him sound a bit loopy but if this is to be believed there was a reason.

In 2016, Peterson had a severe autoimmune reaction to food and was prescribedclonazepam.In late 2016, he went on a strict diet consisting only of meat and some vegetables, in an attempt to control his severe depressionand the effects of an autoimmune disorder including psoriasis and uveitis.In mid-2018, he stopped eating vegetables, and continued eating only beef

The full Wiki entry is impressive even if for no other reason than the amount of work he does.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson?wprov=sfla1

I don’t know Gerbil. It can be very difficult to know how things can snowball or turn down directions you aren’t expecting. I mean, I’m not sure I would have ever described Judith Butler’s writing as dangerous but people now feel threatened by the social movements that were influenced by it.

I don’t feel Peterson is dangerous. I would hope that people read more widely than just his books, but his ideas are too broad for anyone to really become radicalised by them.

And if you think his writing is dangerous then you talk about it? In the old style. Debate etc.

Not get it not published.

Because then stuff goes underground...

It is a difficult line. There is one somewhere. But wherever it is, he's not near it so irrelevant.

I mean whether people like him or not or etc

Is his writing dangerous? And I'm not even sure where the line is on that. But wherever it is, he's not anywhere near it is he?

Related:

newrepublic.com/article/160391/pretty-soon-therell-just-one-big-book-publisher-left

'America’s biggest, most powerful book publisher is about to get even bigger and more powerful. On Wednesday, a number of outlets reported that Penguin Random House had reached an agreement with ViacomCBS to purchase Simon & Schuster, the nation’s third-largest publisher, for $2 billion. The resulting conglomerate would publish at least a third of all books sold in the United States, and transform Penguin Random House, already a superpower, into an industry-dominating behemoth, with potentially serious consequences for authors, publishing employees, and diversity of thought. That extraordinary level of concentration will dramatically lower competition in the publishing industry, likely leading to job cuts, lower advances for authors, and fewer non-blockbuster books being published by commercial publishers.'

Also, when I bought my copy of 12 Rules in Waterstones, the man at the cash register handed it to me like it was a dead rat. It was around then it dawned on me that society was becoming polarised!

Yes, I have enjoyed some of his lectures. He did a talk at one point on the dangers of being naive and coming to the attention of predators. It really helped me make sense of things leaving DV.

He was always very open about using medication for mental health, but the withdrawal sounded awful and hopefully will raise some awareness of the issue.

There is a film about him - The Rise of Jordan Peterson. It is on Sky Arts and is very balanced. It also shows some of the student responses which illustrate the points made in Coddling.

His experience with trying to get off those drugs is utterly horrific. I watched a podcast he did with his daughter Mikhaila quite soon after he'd started recovering and it was so devastating what they went through. Or, as JP would say, "not good."

These are grown ups?

If I was their employer my response would be,"There's the door. Close it when you leave"

EarthSight
You might have put your finger on something there. He gets stick for being a bit trite at times, but that probably comes from his clinical background.

In practice you would often have to help people see the woods for the trees, so keeping it pretty down to earth and simple is what a patient would need when they are stuck in a particular mindset.

Spot on. I wonder if they are aware just how privileged and out of touch with the real world they are at a time when millions are looking down the barrel of long term unemployment and poverty.
At this point in time plenty of employers will just say "There's the door chum,"

Don't know much about him.

Was joining to say what has already been said- mein kampf is in print isn't it? Also Mao's 'little red book'. And etc etc

I mean there's a line somewhere probably but I don't think this chap is eg telling people how to build bombs and then go out and use them or something.

Agree with DreadPirateLuna on Peterson. He's awful on women but quite good on young men, although him becoming a valium addict when his books were all about learning how to be confident and less anxious was rather ironic, especially as his benzo addiction was somehow special and different according to his family and fans.. I think Suzanna Moore mentioned that in the Speccie and got a pile on from his fans.
I wouldn't have known he had another book out (I bought 12 rules) without the media fretting though, much as they brought Abigail Shrier's book and JK Rowling's latest Strike book to my attention.
The weepers and stroppers are both immature and silly.