Understanding DH - Jordan Peterson and feminism

[whovillewho]

DH has been listening to Jordan Peterson for a while and has developed/started to express views that I would generally describe as ‘anti-feminist’. I have tried briefly to discuss this but his (DH’s) points don’t make any sense to me. I should point out that I have always considered myself to be a feminist but I have never really felt the need to justify it, as it simply makes sense to me.

DH has said to me “You can’t be a feminist as you’re not a bricklayer and you couldn’t do a bricklayer’s work” and “What do you do that proves you’re a feminist”. I don’t argue/discuss this as to me he’s not making any sense… He’s also a bit of a wind-up (joker) but generally a reasonable guy (this aside).

I have tried reading some of what Jordan Peterson has written but found it to be very muddled. I have listened to some of his interviews, and found them to be okay. I have tried to google his views on feminism but so far haven’t been able to find anything that explains DH’s (to me) bizarre stance. Does anyone have any pointers that could help me understand (and subsequently counter) DH’s views?

He's pretty dim, why waste your breathe trying to explain arguments which he will be unable to grasp?
If he does grasp them you might in some way strengthen his intellect, better to keep him in ignorance and humour him (imo)

@NoBinturongsHereMate sounds fantastic abuse of my brain. 🤷‍♀️🤣.
This is why I'm asking OP if her husband is open to suggestion! If he gets led onto some others, this might become tricky. Is he innocently just enjoying this? Then no problem. But who is he watching and why? It may be irrelevant.

I can see the truth in alot of this stuff and also totally reject it at the same time. I could not physically, mentally or emotionally adhere to the reality of alot of this stuff which is why I happily remain single and have done for over 10 years.

Jpeterson, I've got time for him, alot actually.

yes, feminists have fought to be allowed frontline roles but not to be obliged to even be drafted as a first step to be obliged to go to combat. on the contrary, many can't even imagine that situation as was shown by the recent thread about possible return of the conscription.
i always thought that argument "we are represented in combat" is very strange. yes, you may be represented by small number of volunteers. how is that even comparable with being conscripted and pushed into the trenches?

JP has the gift of sounding authoritative and your husband has assumed that he is correct as a result of this ability. This is a mistake on behalf of your husband OP.

I suppose you could build a nice garden wall.

I don’t think your DH knows what he means so I’d just keep asking him for clarity, which it doesn’t sound like he can provide.. hopefully he’ll get a new hobby more within his grasp, but he doesn’t sound like the brightest OP, sorry to say.

Feminists are not a homogeneous lump, and most of them have not spent a lot of time fighting for women to be allowed into front line combat, at least not in the UK nor any other country I know of. This is partly because it is not a pressing issue, and (depending on the level of combat we are taking about) significantly fewer women than men would pass the physical tests needed to enter training.

Anyway, what has this to do with the price of bread? It’s approaching the OP’s husband and his brick walls for randomness.

@NoBinturongsHereMate I will definitely look at that, thank you. I'm always open to having all my views challenged. I really enjoy these discussions and learning more.

How many women are walking around saying we don't need men I do wonder. This explosion in OF, social media and myself and my friends have had this mentality tbh - this is why it seems the we don't need males mentality is challenged. Their argument is that we aren't saying we don't need women at the rates females now seem to be saying.

Or perhaps it is that fenales are through their actions demonstrating a lesser need or want of males? And this is being interpreted as a complete rejection of men? That alongside the high rates of divorce?

I had this mentality as a mum. I became a single mum. I thought I could do it all, partner, mum and great career. I absolutely could not. I thought single motherhood would be fine. It's hard and it messes up kids. ( Unless the men are abusive arsewipes).

If I look at the point regards work choices. I know not one of my friends and I who could do or would choose to do any of these blue collar labour jobs. I imagine if we tried, we'd all be crap at it. There will always be exceptions of course.

I joined the TA in my youth. It was great. It was clear on the whole that the females just could not match the guys in most areas. There were some impressive exceptions but not many.

I would never ever accept this previously. I would never admit it to myself. I used to really feel that we could do anything just as well. I don't believe that to be true now. Are we amazing and do we have an essential role in the functioning of society? Yes.

I need to learn and read more to challenge my view that men would survive much longer if all women were eradicated tomorrow and women would not if vice versa. This may be brainwashing impact for sure.

I've been in counselling with a fab older lady for almost 15 years. She has seen so much. I never really absorbed it when she said most men would secretly prefer a return to 1950s housewives and most men do not want to even think their wife has slept with any other men. I believe it now.

@Pantaloons99

What are taking about?!

I’m starting to think that you and Mr Conscription are the OP’s brick obsessed husband in a different guise..

I think if you’ve been seeing a counsellor for 15 years and you’re in this state of confusion it may be time to make a change. In fact the fact that you haven’t been able to move on after 15 years of her treatment is probably enough to indicate that.

Oh rubbish. You obviously have not bothered listening to him.

I read JP 12 rules for life.

Sorry I absolutely struggled my way through the first few chapters. It was incomprehensible garbage.

I am not an idiot- I have a masters in philosophy. But Lord what he was doing to Being was a crime that Aristotle nor Heidegger could forgive him for. This is my personal threshold: if it’s harder to read than Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, it’s not worth reading.

I suppose if you sort of just nodded and generally agreed with him it would read ok. But as a book actually explaining his ideas it’s just…drivel.

I suppose if you sort of just nodded and generally agreed with him it would read ok. But as a book actually explaining his ideas it’s just…drivel.

I don't know his specific educational background, but it's very common for people (especially men) with a certain type of education to learn how to sound erudite and convincing without actually being enormously intelligent (or possibly having decent intellectual capacity but no intellectual curiosity).

Boris Johnson was an extreme example, but it's very common among politicians and far more common than it should be among academics. On a first listen they seem convincing, but if you really think about and analyse what they're saying it quickly becomes clear they've not done the same and are indeed spouting drivel.

@theduchessofspork why are you seething so much. You clearly are. It's a great debate topic and if you're passionate about this, why don't you try get people on board instead of berating OPs husband and myself. Convincing her he's some idiot isn't going to do her any favours.

Something clearly happened to you and you sound bitter as hell.

These were not taken out of context. They are things he said on X and are easily searchable.

What on earth is a Canadian point of view?

There is absolutely no such thing in Canada as women only lists for jobs or positions in government.

Agree. There was even a JP word salad generator for his drivel which you could not tell from the real thing.
He's basically just a sophist and not a particularly well spoken one at that.

Agree. He's taking snippets out of it which he can use as a cudgel on his partner. Not good.

Thank you all for your responses, they are very interesting. I’m in Australia so on a different timeline to most (currently reading through quickly during my lunch break).

I will try and find out more about JP but more importantly I probably need to better understand modern feminism - as I have generally allowed this to ‘wash over’ me in recent years, and I would be better placed to argue my point from an informed perspective. I agree with the PP who said JPs writing is unintelligible, so will look for interviews - a few posters have made recommendations, thank you.

DH has definitely been watching a lot of JP on YT. Thank you to the posters who have explained the bricklayer analogy. I have an engineering background and sometimes work in construction but DH will comment that I don’t do ‘real work’ as I’m not the one doing the actual building - which baffles me, especially as DH’s work is similar to mine. I don’t argue with DH as such as a) it seems a pointless argument; and b) I am generally much happier in my work than he is.

I think I need to start sticking up for myself a bit by countering some of his comments/digs. I am no pushover, I just choose to pick my battles, and a lot of what DH says is to get a rise out of me - but I have a feeling there is perhaps slightly more to this.

The issue with bricklaying is that the bricks are designed for man sized hands. So even if women do decide to do bricklaying, it fucks up their hands.

If there were no men, bricks/blocks/building materials would be smaller as they evolved from the hand sized mud and manure and straw mixes that were used for centuries to build with.

I doubt JP has ever built anything with bricks, and I expect he would tell the OP's husband to 'clean your damn room'.

With JP people need to understand he is just a psychologist. He got cancelled for refusing pronouns and he bangs on about religion but from a purely story perspective, not a religious one. He compares everything to religious texts as though they were psychological text books. I equally love and hate his interviews but he isn't some sort of guru. He is just a guy that said no and it ended up being the best thing he ever did.

Do you not think we are all influenced by the culture we live in?

Yes but you ARE taking them out of context. For example his comments on enforced monogamy are factual. There is evidence that societies are less violent as a whole when men are in relationships. So a society that pits men against women leads to incel culture and greater violence. He's not saying that the solution is government mandated monogamy though that is a huge leap.

Was that the one with Mary Harrington? I think they were pretty much on the same page as he let her talk longer than usual! I agree with you but I think he was also relating this to the fact that the pill resulted in more abortions- I don't know if this is true but that was the context. So he was looking at it from the point of view of society as a whole rather than individuals?

Your post is incomprehensible - I don’t mean ‘what are you talking about’ as in, I think you’re wrong, I mean literally - what are you trying to say?

The same applies to the OP’s husband and his bricks.

JP has been pretty scathing of men, in everything I’ve seen. His work revolves around men failing to step up. That women have every right to be unimpressed with men who don’t pull their weight.
That men and women will be happier if men stop opting out.

@Pantaloons99 "How many women are walking around saying we don't need men I do wonder. This explosion in OF, social media and myself and my friends have had this mentality tbh - this is why it seems the we don't need males mentality is challenged. Their argument is that we aren't saying we don't need women at the rates females now seem to be saying."

I like discussing how we change our opinions etc. But you seem to be using yourself/your friends to create a strawman feminist argument that exactly mirrors the counterpoint argument you want to make. Eg"how many women think ridiculous thing I wonder"... "me and my friends used to talk about how we thought this thing" "men very rationally point out that women thinking thing is stupid". That's fine. But you are debating your past self (also fine.

I do think it sounds like hanging out with your old friends made you think "I don't need no man I can do it alone" . Then watching hours of podcasts made you completely change your mind and "see the point of" people like the Whatever squad. Then you responded to my point criticising them by saying of course they are awful and probably want Giliead (I think mostly they want to make money from impressionable young men). This is going to sound bitchy, and I don't mean it to, but if this is the case, maybe you need to spend some time learning to make up your own mind on issues. Learning how to interrogate your own beliefs and others arguments. Otherwise your opinions are just being blown about by whatever happens to be in your immediate vicinity. Your therapist should be doing that with you rather than giving you her own life anecdotes. Be less agreeable in the words of JP.