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?

Very much his modus operandi. Create a theory according to existing bias, cherrypick (or invent) data to suit, ignore both material facts and at least 75% of the actual problem he thinks he's solving.

@sadabouti Rand is not liberal but libertarian- very different things.

I've read around him and could be wrong but he's very male centric. For example, he talks about how men have made all of societies great technological inventions yet doesn't acknowledge that women haven't been allowed into higher education or STEM until relatively recently.

And even when they were allowed in and made major discoveries, half the time men then nicked the credit.

For example:

https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/7-women-scientists-whose-discoveries-were-credited-to-men-1911896-2022-02-11

Yes, as per the doctrine of "What's yours is mine and what's mine's my own"!

He wasn't admonished by authorities, unless you mean the College of Psychologists of Ontario as an authority.
They wanted him to undertake media training because of his inflammatory tweets. His crazy tweets even included doxxing his "enemies." Another (which I personally saw) was a threat to assault a book critic who gave him a bad review. He also called a doctor a "criminal" for doing a breast removal on Ellen/Eliot Page, which is libel.
So yeah, he was making the College look bad.

Encouraging something as a social norms is socialization, not enforcement.
He may have just used the wrong word.

@NoBinturongsHereMate I understand libertarianism as a school of thought within liberalism. I am not sure how else you can frame any political philosophy concerned with liberty, how it is achieved and its limits.

Im a biologist with interest in evolutionary science (but its not my area, i'm a pharmocologist)
I have massive issues with some of the sweeping statements he makes alongside the normal stuff. He does seem to consciously/purposefully put very contentious statements in with basic science to cloak them in respectability and that just immediately gets my back up because it feels intentionally dishonest.

A lot of our knowledge of animal behaviour that has previously been explained by evolutionary theory has been found to have been interpreted through a very societal lens (e.g. male birds being promiscuous and females being monogamous has been roundly discounted as genetic testing of eggs has shown that female birds are actually massive slags and having sex with any and all)

i think he has some interesting ideas, but he absolutely skews the data he presents and gets irate when people call him on it.

That's exactly what he does.
I remember watching an interview in which the woman interviewing him made a critique of some things he had said. His eyes instantly went dark with hatred and malevolence and he spat out an outraged response. I was actually scared he was going to harm her. Another time in a debate he spent about half his speaking time petulantly bitching about how unfair his opponent supposedly was to him instead of saying anything substantive. He's a narcissistic kook.

hard agree

and i dont think anyone with any critical thinking capacity would apply social structures of other species to humans without interrogation?
Like, even other primates have vastly differing hierarchies?

True.
Speaking of primates,
I heard a great story about a community of primates (can't remember which ones) in which bullying from a core group of dominant males was constant. They viciously oppressed the females, children and the more gentle males. So naturally, they had first dibs on any food the group found. Well one day they found some food humans had thrown away and the dominant males gobbled it all up. The kicker was the food was poisoned and the bully primates all died. After they died, the community was peaceful, egalitarian and happy.

JP was a psychology professor at the Uni of Toronto, one of the most popular with classes and lectures bursting at the seams with students who wanted to hear him.
IMO, intellectually he is rapier sharp (google his interview with Cathy Newman which left her looking like an idiot) and he is informed. He challenges woke dogma with appeal to what is really going on societally. His twelve rules for life (something like that) was leapt on by young men feeling directionless / powerless in the face of feminism / societal change. Indeed in the UK one of the lowest performing groups through school are white working class men, but all resources / assistance / step up programmes seem to favour minorities / young women.
He interviews a lot of interesting people - see podcasts - though his interview style can be laboured.
Your husband’s take on what JP has to say sounds reductive and a bit moronic. Plus you don’t have to DO anything to be a feminist. It is a belief system relating to equal opportunity

He was a psychology professor, who was pretty much forced out - a large part of this because of his stance on forced use of pronouns etc (as well as quotas). He then was able to (in his words) monetise his disagreements and continue his stance against forced speech etc in other ways. Understandably, he is very anti academia as it is now. The Vice President of the university that forced him out was a man, and someone who I heard Peterson describe in one interview as a friend. Peterson's own interpretation of events is that it was pretty much the work of feminists (campus feminism is pretty dire) and partly a symptom of the dominance of women at universities. That might be partly correct, but it does completely ignore the fact that the person with overall control of the situation, who let all that happen was a man. Its extremely understandable why he wouldn't want to confront this fact.

He is undeniably clever, has principles etc but also massive biases and is much more governed by his own emotions and personal experience than he would probably admit. That really informs a lot of his "objective" arguments.

I have massive issues with some of the sweeping statements he makes alongside the normal stuff. He does seem to consciously/purposefully put very contentious statements in with basic science to cloak them in respectability and that just immediately gets my back up because it feels intentionally dishonest.

You tube shorts keeps showing me an Canadian History lecturer who does the same - makes a sweeping point with few historical facts to back up form entire world historical timeline - but where I happen to know the History well usually UK stuff it's usually not correct/incomplete or much more complex and the idea he puts forward behind it upon research much more contentious than portrayed.

Makes me wonder if it's a wider problem in their HE sector.

I think Jordan Peterson is a smart guy but he had his biases - we all do and yes I agree he skews data to fit his points.

I think Jordan Peterson is a smart guy but he had his biases - we all do and yes I agree he skews data to fit his points.

Of course he's biased; he can't see beyond his white, male privilege. He ignores glaring facts and says things like women haven't been historically oppressed - what then is the law of coverture, gender apartheid in the ME or endemic violence against women and girls - if not oppression?

He attracts staunch Christians and blokes who think equality means marginalisation. He's such a towering intellectual that he doesn't read books by women or feminists who he dismisses as 'crazy' - woman as hysteric, that old chestnut.

He relishes the patriarchy and thinks because of sea crustaceans, that's the natural order. He calls women chaotic and men logical, yet his thinking is a hotch potch of different ideas, often taken out of context and historically inaccurate.

I am flummoxed that anyone is taking this man seriously.

Of course he's biased; he can't see beyond his white, male privilege.

Everyone has biases - just some are spectacularly unaware of them - I'd say Peterson was in that camp and his are very male white privileged - so not hard to spot for most of this board harder for some white men with privilege backgrounds ie similar backgrounds.

I personally don't hold with purity spirals - more to stop clock is right twice a day - ie even people I fundamentally disagree with on most thing can have a point in other areas were we disagree less - life isn't black and white.

What I've seen and heard about Euthanasia and assisted dying from Peterson - which may not be everything as PP said he's change his position - matches my own safety concerns - but he's clearly influenced by Canada experiences where as my concerns have been raise with HCP attitude towards my now deceased Dad. Doesn't mean I don't think his brick layer argument is disingenuous toss.

I also like to hear what people who disagree with me think - how can I influence their thinking if I just ignore it - so while people listen to Patterson I'm not going to just dismiss him.

Totally agree. I’ve been heard to say I like a lot of what he says, but he needs to stop talking about and certainly for, women.

I think he’s fairly clear that an awful lot of men don’t pull their weight and don’t deserve success.
That it’s their fault, not the fault of women.

I’m not sure whether he expects women to be happy as long as their man pulls his weight- he may think that men who do manning right will be rewarded with a woman who does womaning right. He seems to have room for couples working out their own pattern though- he doesn’t seem to begrudge successful women.

And the enforced monogamy thing is a red herring. The fact society does better when men are tamed in a relationship no way obliged women to take on a useless man. More that women shouldn’t take crap from crap men and men need to shape up and be worth a woman’s attention.

The fact society does better when men are tamed in a relationship no way obliged women to take on a useless man.

That's not a fact, that's just something he pulled out of his backside and said was a fact.

so while people listen to Patterson I'm not going to just dismiss him.

Lots of people listen to Trump, I hope you're not dismissing him.

no, that's not just something he pulled out of his backside. that is a hypothesis from before "patterson" become a thing. apparently, there is some evidence that "Monogamy reduces major social problems of polygamist cultures" :

He was responding to the recent incel attacks in Canada. He said that there was less violent crime in monogamous societies. It's an anthropological theory not a fact. Secondly, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Incels who hate women are not going to stop hating women because they get married. Male terrorists all have domestic violence and misogyny in common.

It doesn't account for violence against women both inside and outside marriage, it doesn't account for rape. It doesn't account for socioeconomic factors which may contribute towards violence.

you keep claiming that he pulled that hypothesis out of his backside. maybe it was pulled out of someone's backside ass but not his. it seems that it is an anthropologically valid hypothesis.
also, unless you have data showing that in polygamous societies violence against women was and is less than in monogamous ones, it is possible that it is less frequent in monogamous societies. not completely eradicated of course.

Valid hypothesis or not, Canada is already a monogamous society.

yes.also he didn't pull that hypothesis out of his backside.

It's a theory which doesn't hold up because it doesn't take anything external to monogamous marriage into account.

That would include for example, culture, religion, politics, wealth disparity, judiciary, implementation of law and so on. South Africa doesn't have polygamy but is one of the most violent countries in the world. Saudi Arabia has polygamy but has less crime.

Factors for high levels of crime include corruption, lax implementation of laws, a weak judiciary, wealth disparity and cultural practices.

China is an interesting case study. Due to femicide, there is a huge disparity between the sexes and millions of men can't marry. China is a traditional culture where marriage is socially enforced but this hasn't led to an increase in male crime.

Violence against women is endemic throughout every culture in the world. It's estimated that 70% of women worldwide will suffer from some form of abuse in their lifetime.

Incels tend to get sucked into the ideology pretty early, usually they're teenagers. Marrying won't change their mindset if they're radicalised. Again, terrorists have been found to be domestic abusers and misogynists irrespective of their ideology.