To wonder why mumsnet hates Jordan Peterson?

[Gogster]

Strange because he's actually keen on women's rights

I think he's great! And very handsome.

Isn't the idea that Patriarchy is no good for boys either, that it limits their choices and expectations, traps them in toxic masculinity? Their options are different from women's, but also restricted.

Absolutely. Feminism has always argued this. But it was still better for men than women. The patriarchy was a hierarchy first and foremost and those men who were lucky enough to be born in the top echelons (or with the attributes considered worthwhile) had more opportunities than other men but on average a man had more opportunities any than his female counterpart.

JP loves to talk about the genius of men in the past but look at the background any famous inventor, philosopher or politician and you will find that they benefited from educational opportunities denied to women at the time.

Then look at the poor men, eg. the miners. They had tough lives and were shat on by other men who were higher up but still managed to go home and be head of the house and above their women. Domestic violence was common.

JP believes men do the hardest jobs but Caroline Criado Perez shows pretty well how women’s jobs are overlooked in the data. And one can’t forget the most dangerous profession is probably the “oldest” one.

In JP’s world the most a woman can hope for is a secondary role to a good man. And her fortune lies in being able to attract the right mate, rather than on her own strengths and talents. That sucks for women because they are just as intellectually curious as men.

This is what concerns me really. I can believe that one way to make frustrated males less antisocial is them having a female partner, but the part that always seems to go unexamined is how much of the frustration simply gets directed at the woman and children instead.

Exactly. He doesn’t examine this at all. He recently said that young good looking women have the highest status of everyone in our society.

Any woman who has been halfway decent looking will tell you that such a status is precarious and carries with it a whole lot of resentment and projection from men.

People should actually read what he says rather than accept what other people say he is saying.
They might be surprised.

I haven't listened to this podcasts episodes on Jordan peterson so have no views on that ,but I would just like to point out that the male host of this podcast is a massive misogynist and you really shouldn't be putting any stock in what he says.

Having made two supportive comments, I still think he's a dick about women. He gets so far, really well.... then doesn't take the next step. Which I think is laziness, and lack of interest.

And that's a problem- he could do with a really good feminist giving him a shove in that direction. Ironically.

I don't suppose he claims to have the whole solution to everything. I do like listening to him, when he can be concise. He's much better when being challenged than when monologuing!

Because men tend towards violence when they are frustrated and women don't. These arguments seem to be at cross purposes. No one ( not even Jordan Petersen) is saying that men should tend towards violence, just that they do and that arguing they just shouldn't is pointless. It is just something that happens. Therefore societies have structured themselves in a way to lessens the most extreme negative effects of this tendency on societies

The difficulties are that many times this has meant controlling women so that they are available to give men meaning and stability in their lives and have had their freedoms severely restricted because of this.

I though Jordans argument is that this is not acceptable but that we can get a similar effect by having very strong cultural pressures on men (and women) to be monogamous and to lead industriousness, stable lives within family units. This will give women the safety and protection they are in need of when they have young children and gives men the feeling of being needed and a purpose which keeps them less frustrated . This does mean that some individual freedoms may be lost (- such as the freedom to have multiple partners without strong societal censure.

What is the alternative? By all means go on about how things should be but it is pretty childish to ignore all the evidence of how things actually are and expound a nirvana where men don't tent towards aggressiveness by sheer dint of their will

Of course you could have a life without men at all, but then where would the majority of women who want children get them from?

Wasnt it recently on here that a young lady of about 30 was upset because he had mentioned that this was leaving it too long to try to get pregnant FFS! Some of his views are odd to say the least!

I’m not aware of his misogynistic views but saying we ‘Shouldn’t be putting any stock in what he says’ completely overlooks that his whole point is applying proper fact checking to everything and is transparent about his methodology and sources

so unless you have some way of debunking his methodology, it’s totally irrelevant to this

He sees a claim, he investigates it thoroughly, he reports back his findings (humorously)

That's what confuses me about the reactions on here. It feels like every other thread on MN is about incompetent and juvenile husbands. Peterson's "mission" very much seems to be helping men to be the kind of husbands women want them to be..

Jordan Peterson makes his income via notoriety. He is extremely right wing, with their traditional views on women and their place in society. He is not pro women in any shape or form.

He is incredibly vocal about his ideas about beauty standards, and how public shaming should be used to help people lose weight

not sure that’s a trait I would want my DH to learn or use tbh

I think it is because of his views on feminism and patriarchy.

However I do see his point on how it actually isn't helpful

But I like him, I think he.is excellent to hear in lectures and debates.

And I don't see him as right or left wing at all.

Also, he's a meataholic. Gross.

No one is forcing people to be married, you don't seem to actually understand the concept.
It's a category error, we are not talking about individuals and rights. We are talking about how social structures emerge and shape societies. real category error here.

The whole disciplines of anthropology and sociology would be wiped out if we were limited to the kinds of things you are saying.

You understand that what I've said about radicalization isn't a theory, right? It's purely emperical, whatever you think the causes are. A lot of oor unmarried women with no prospects are not the same kind of risk as men are.

You can speculate about their frustrations and how they deal with them but that doesn't change the data.

As far as socialization, I would say that if that were the real main cause of male violence being different from female violence, you would probably see some societies where female violence was more common, or where there was no difference of this kind in bahaviour. But we don't see that at all, in fact we see that it is an extremely strong patter across almost all societies, and also among mammals. In fact in many social mammals we see that same risky age group, young males without female bonds, are a problem.

You can also look at things like esperiments with horomones and such in humans to see that they have a significant effect on aggressive behaviour, so while they aren't the whole story it seems likely they are part of it.

None of this is actually controversial though in the social sciences or sciences. There are questions of degree, but tbh you only find these kinds of claims that it's completely socially mediated in areas like gender studies, and it's ideological rather than data driven.

I think it was actually more specific in a way, it was about the body positivity industry specifically, which has become weird and very unhealthy.

But he tends to assume that people understand what his comment is directed towards which doesn't work on Twitter.

Because some people are so upset about the trans movement they will side with anyone, even someone as deplorable as Jordan Peterson or Donald Trump, to feel like someone else understands and validates how they really feel (which is actually a real crushing anger that women have been treated like shit for eternity and they think trans rights is erasing any ‘progress’).

Which is really sad. Because at the end of the day, these men do not give a flying fuck about women’s rights. And the trans ‘movement’ if you forget all the emotional teenagers on twitter, is actually going to do very very little negative to the average woman. If anything, it’s more likely to encourage overall sensitivity and ‘fuck off’ go traditional gender roles.

I don’t like the idea of fat-shaming but I think the point of his comment re Yumi is that society shouldn’t normalise obesity since it is bad for the individual’s health and for this reason shouldn’t be celebrated.

He could make that point without singling out a woman for public shaming. He's not just a bloke with an opinion, he is a 'guru' to many younger men.

It's also a bit rich, his concern for others' health, given he eats meat all day on his "carnivore diet" and his tendency to abuse prescription pills...

Society has not normalised being fat, such rubbish.

He's not really saying that frustrated men should go out and get married, so it's not really to the point.

It's interesting to look at this discussion because people seem to get very mixed up between talking about individuals and social structures, and they tend to conflate when he is addressing one or the other, and sometimes then even get mad that they think he doesn't talk about one or the other.

The place where he talked about institutionalized monogamy was an interview, and they were asking him how e (ie society) guards against that kind of situation where groups of men are being problematic in that way. What he said was that one way of addressing it is having a social structure where most people are likely to marry, and that historically that's why that type of society develops, as opposed to the ones where men had multiple wives.

He didn't suggested it's the only thing, but it was an interview question and the interviewer was surprised enough by the answer to stick with talking about it.

That certainly speaks to a certain interpretation of incels as being not just people that were always around, but a kind of group that has developed in response to current social conditions. You could argue that's not so, but it's certainly not obvious that he's wrong, and it's not a sexist theory even if it is wrong.

There are also lots of interviews where he talks about what individuals should do in various situations, and his advice tends to be be very personal and based on his clinical experience. If you are a man who is wallowing in your basement thinking that women owe you something, you should clean yourself up and get a job and find some meaningful activities to participate in. If you are a woman who wants a promotion, you should strategize to get it. Etc.

Clearly he does believe social structures are one way to shape people and behaviour and he often argues about social structures he thinks are effective or dangerous. But he also thinks individuals have a role. I've heard him say in interviews that he ultimately thinks the latter is more important in terms of making change, because you can't change society without changing yourself first - he also said that might be his bias as a psychologist.

Not society, have you looked into the body positivity stuff? It's very crazy. It's also pretty connected to identity movements in general.

Mumsnet is not of one opinion. If you think that you've not spent much time here

That has been around since the 1960s. Still being fat is not normalised.