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?

Yes pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is all very well if you have bootstraps, but not a lot of use if you don't even have boots.

I probably wouldn't argue back as such - but get him books/audio books like -

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

The Authority Gap: Why women are still taken less seriously than men, and what we can do about it

Subtle educate him why women feel need for fair playing fields - or history books looking at fight to get the vote.

Jordan Peterson is very personable in interviews - but when you actually look at what he says it's not always so.

You can’t be a feminist as you’re not a bricklayer and you couldn’t do a bricklayer’s work

FIL was a brick layer - MIL same working class area worked all her life as machinist in textile factory till later years when they all went and she did cleaning. My Dad was in car factory - office skilled job designer - DMum was a secretary till kids - sort of equivalent women working class jobs/fields which Patterson ignores. Though at some points in time sectaries and machinist were mostly men and then changed to mostly women.

It's not impossible if tech change that brick layer could become a mainly female dominate profession - it's happen several times though can also result in a loss of status and pay over time.

I suspect the idea is you can't be a feminist if you don't push women towards brick laying - but FIL pushed DH away from it saying he was doing well enough in school to aim higher - not out in all weathers and with better job security and pension and less wear on his joints.

A labourer needs to carry bricks en masse, a bricklayer is mainly installing them. But yes, it's hard physical work, outdoors. There is no reason why women can't do construction. Plenty of men aren't physically strong enough to do heavy manual labour anyway. Or they don't have the work ethic. Some plumbers are morbidly obese. Electricians could easily be either sex.

Women aren't encouraged into the trades at school. Mind you, neither are lads unless they're deemed academically inferior. I totally disagree with this approach and it's in schools they need the change the culture of who does what job.

Unless your husband has the physical capacity himself to work full time as a bricklayer, then the whole argument is nonsense. Well, it's nonsense regardless.

@BobbyBiscuits I think what you have to understand about him is his sincerity. It's what appeals to people. He believes what he says, is erudite, and has the gift of the gab. But his positions are informed by a deep rooted liberal belief (in the Ayn Rand vein) that western democracy provides the best ever moment of human opportunity for human beings to thrive and succeed in free societies, but the onus is on the individual to grasp that opportunity, and that involves difficult choices. But you must own your choices and not blame others. So if you are a woman and choose to have babies, and if that impacts your career, you can't have it all and you made your choice. It's a very attractive ideology (given that it has fundamentally shaped our societies since the 19th century). But in this purist version of it, there can be no room for the idea of structural inequality, because efforts to remove or overcome structural inequality are efforts in aid of equality of outcome. And for JP, there is no worse thing than policies pursuing that aim. It's the road to tyranny. I happen to agree with that idea, but I think structural inequality exists and that efforts to overcome it can be seen as providing equality of opportunity. For example funded child care is good for parents, but more so mothers, for reasons I need not explain, so that levels access to work et cetera.

@Pantaloons99 he debates people who are ill prepared or who proceed from hubristic positions on the left that are easy to take down. People take him on wanting to knock down every point, but if they just studied what he says, they'd realise he is remarkably consistent (meaning predictable) and not wrong about everything, and they could have better responses on stand by. The one about bricklayers is a case in point. You could just off the bat say that you agree that brick layers are 99% men, just as nurses are 99% female. Both are hard jobs and it's a function of gendered ideas around building and caring that probably drives this division, but it's not urgent for discussion to see it as a problem requiring active solution. Indeed, if equality of opportunity is provided and the division continues, then perhaps it isn't a problem at all (he should agree with this). But what is a problem are the structural barriers to promotion that women encounter that men do not (or to a lesser degree) once they have selected their trade or profession, and that equality of opportunity would be better served by addressing those issues. It isn't about men competing with women or vice versa. It's about everyone competing on a level field, which means policies on childcare for example that may be more utilised than women than men. He'd say you're seeking equality of outcome, but you'd have to hold your ground and say no, not at all, because people will still succeed or fail based on personal qualities of grit, competence and determination. And it can be seen as an argument on the difference principle (Rawls theory of justice). Societies put some things in place to allow citizens to prosper (schools, hospitals, roads, trains, pensions, basic benefits) and it's just another facet of that conversation. How to enhance freedom, but attempting to dictate the same outcomes for everyone.

@sadabouti thankyou, that is incredibly insightful to read. I certainly do not have enough facts or understanding on this topic to strongly support any particular position.
That was very well articulated and has given me another perspective!

Oooh what an interesting thread. For me, being able to engage with JP is linked to when I 'peaked' because I could suddenly hold differing views from my old lefty bubble. I became aware of him when he got in trouble for saying he wouldn't be compelled to say the 'wrong' pronouns. I thought 'well that's not nice' and so had already earmarked him as someone the opposite side to my #bekind natural stance. I then recall reading some of his offensively un-feminist soundbites that XChrome wrote above, or watching a few of those awful YouTube 'gotcha' clips (caption: "JP schools a feminist!!!!"), and had a few 'right on' male friends who would be scathing of his views (the cynic in me now feels they were protesting too much) and so my knee jerk reaction was that he had absolutely nothing good to say... but I hadn't actually read or watched him at length.

But then when I did peak it was like a mental block lifted and I could listen to him with an open mind - certainly not agreeing on everything he said, but he had some interesting points that I hadn't considered and occasionally came across as likeable and he wasn't this evil incarnate incel that I had labelled him as.

Anyway, I digress, but I now treat him as any other person who is clearly intelligent but not all-knowing, and both agree and disagree with some of his points but also see his flaws and weaknesses in a way that makes him quite ordinary. I also find him interesting as a 'movement'. He appeals to a wide variety of people, based on some common sense and an understanding of and rehashing of other people's ideas / influential works (whether psychology or literature or religion etc), so people can take what they want from him - which undoubtedly does mean those who aren't very bright interpret what he says as a way to back up their own unenlightened thinking.

I sometimes wonder how he could be when he himself evolves in his thinking (as any enlightened person should aspire to), debating more people on the opposite side of the divide - hasn't Dawkins recently challenged him to a friendly 'duel' of minds? And I'd love to see him talk to some of our wonderful women intellects this side of the pond. Ones who could match his verbosity and pompous style, and fight with a sparkle in their eye rather than that miserable and disappointing interview with Cathy Newman 😬

@Daffydaff I think he shifted his position on assisted dying from pro to anti, but I may have got this wrong. He tends not to be persuaded by others, but by his personal experience. I agree that his speaking is a rehash of existing ideas. But remember, he was a university lecturer for many years, and rehearsing the big ideas from key texts is what they do. He does it well and with flair. He has had his moment of peak influence mind, because he has been around long enough now for people to get a handle on him. What he gets right, and where it is opinion dressed as insight.

Sure, but my question was about JP. What exactly is it about him that you consider indicative of cultural influence?

That's nothing to do with monogamy. A man could have sixteen wives and it wouldn't make him any more or less likely to be violent as having one would.

What part of "enforced" isn't about mandating it? How else could it be enforced except by government mandate?
If it meant what you say it does, neither the word enforced nor the word monogamy would be in the statement, unless maybe he was out of it on clonazepam and didn't know what he was saying, which is certainly a possibility.

I think the point of the monogamy part is that if a man had 16 wives, then 15 other men have no wives because Mr greedy guts is taking more than his fair share. Whereas if every man gets a wife and every woman a hubby then we are all happy. It doesn't really take into account the tendency to covet what someone else has (or feel hard done by that their wife isn't a really sexy blonde like rich Gary). It also doesn't match with the idea that woman need to chose good partners/fathers for their children (if not all men = good responsible fathers but all women should marry and have children some women will have to marry the feckless ones).
There is some truth in the violence thing though, because in polygamous societies Mr Greedy Guts 16 wives has to find a way to stop the other 15 men taking his women. So in some societies, men are killed or encouraged to kill each other. In others they are encouraged to go out to war and conquest new places etc meaning they either die in battle or find new wives elsewhere. Which is a pain for the surrounding areas.

I thought of that, except he was talking about a crime which happened in a country in which polygamy is illegal. So it makes no sense that it should be attributed to polygamy. It was a crazy response to a shocking crime. He wanted people to feel sorry for a mass murderer.

I guess, in that situation, the polygamous man with 16 wives was replaced by "Chad" eternal enemy of all incels. Its all his fault really (shakes fist in rage at imaginary man).

Naturally they blame it on some sort of sexual injustice instead of the fact that they are loathsome people. God forbid they ever take a bath and learn some manners.

In fairness, Peterson does suggest this sort of thing. He would take about 1000 words to say "have a bath" and include an odd segue into statistics about Auswitzch, Lobsters, and how a story in the old testament is a metaphor for striving but he does say it.

😄You have his brand of word salad pegged perfectly.
I would have to say that anyone who has to read a book to learn something so basic has almost no chance of a successful long term relationship. I've seen this happen. Once a man is sure he has a woman hooked he just lets himself go and reverts back to frat boy slobbery, because the only reason he ever bothered to be presentable and polite was to snare himself a sex partner.
Then they don't understand why they get dumped after doing things like leaving their stinking turds sitting in the toilet for the woman to deal with.

I've read JP extensively and agree with most of what he says

For a start, I think his experience of being admonished by the Canadian authorities has made him sometimes unjustifiabley paranoid.

You're taking this very literally. "Enforced" can also mean enforced by societal norms. Where has he suggested government -forced monogamy? This is really not what he's saying.

I'm not saying everything he says is correct btw! I think he really underestimates structural inequality as others have pointed out but a lot of the criticism directed at him by women is also misplaced.

Yes I used to do that when I was younger but now I'm not sure if I am a feminist as it doesn't mean "believes in equal rights" but also seems to mean you belive on alot of other things that mean alot to left wing people which I don't. For example I am a conservative (small c) on abortion and would like the emphasis to be on supporting women to have a baby rather than abortion. I am also a Christian. But on here that makes me a facist woman hater. I also don't subscribe to verbal aggression towards men. So although I believe in women's equality I don't label myself a feminist anymore.

What is he saying?

I did some digging and apparently what he's saying is that in societies where monogamy is enforced by society, there is less male violence. However that's not true as many countries such as Pakistan for example, where marriage is socially enforced, there are very high rates of domestic abuse and violence.

He talks about male violence only between other males and doesn't seem to include violence against women and girls. Men in monogamous relationships beat, rape and kill their partners.

I totally disagree with this.It should be on merit only. It is also saying, indirectly that without lists, women couldnt do it on merit.

If you look at the top jobs in society, they tend to be male dominated because of structural inequality. There is bias in society towards men for some roles.

For example, many orchestras found that when they auditioned musicians behind a screen, they hired more women. Therefore women were hired on merit whereas before they had been hiring based on male bias.

Men have been getting jobs, being paid more and being promoted for decades due to bias against women, not because of merit.