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MNHQ here: How would you feel about a Jordan Peterson webchat?

229 replies

RowanMumsnet · 05/04/2019 13:13

Hello

We've been offered a webchat with Jordan Peterson (his new book has a chapter on parenting, although the publishers (Penguin) recognise a webchat is likely to be more wide-ranging than that). We know he's very controversial, to put it mildly, but also as you know we believe in the value of open debate. So we thought we'd ask you what you think: would you like the chance to put questions to him and debate him on-site or would you rather not?

OP posts:
FermatsTheorem · 08/04/2019 18:59

Cross-posting this from my comment on the similar thread in FWR:

Can't say I'd be particularly interested in taking part. As a female scientist who knows how many social and cultural barriers there are to female progress in my profession, I'm inclined to take his "the data are in" claim vis-a-vis men liking stuff and women liking people with a pinch of salt. Yes, there are many more men in scientific professions and women in caring professions - but the bare numbers don't tell us anything. They don't tell us why.

We still haven't got a test which can tell us whether it's nature or nurture. Yes, I know his claim is "look at the Nordic countries, they've done more than anyone else to remove barriers to women's participation - yet women still aren't rushing for those jobs" - but as we all know, legislation and workplace culture are two different things. You can have laws on paper saying you've got a right to long maternity leave, your partner gets just as much paternity leave, you have a right to flexible working, you have a right to equal pay. But it's quite possible for all those legislative aspects to be in place and for the culture to still be putting up barriers. Or for those legislative aspects to be in place but "more honoured in the breach than the observance."

(I had to take my last employer to court to get equal pay - the law was there, hence I won, but my employer certainly wasn't going to do it off their own bat. And I was lucky in being in a unionised environment, so there was a union to bear the legal costs and financial risk on our behalf, and in a workplace with enough decent men prepared to step forward that we could get workplace comparators to prove the case. Those are the sort of soft, cultural issues that act along side the law.)

However, Peterson has spent his adult life building up a repertoire of obscure test cases and facts about different legal systems, and is a very polished performer and polemicist - I know that short of putting in inordinate amounts of time picking his writing apart, reference by reference, he'd simply do a Gish gallop. So I'm inclined to view any such webchat as wasted time and effort on my part.

But if other people fancy it... I'm inclined to agree with posters on here and on the FWR thread - it'd be hard to see how it could be worse than Penny Mordaunt's efforts.

GCAcademic · 08/04/2019 19:07

It would be like posting a neon sign to direct all the really vile, woman-hating keyboard warriors towards MN. It would also suggest that he is a credible voice on parenting.

I agree with this. It's tedious enough trying to keep the MRAs and community disruptors off FWR as it is. Having just witnessed his mob going after a Cambridge academic, I'd say it would be extremely tiresome.

PigeonofDoom · 08/04/2019 19:08

No thanks. He’s a misogynist asshat who uses pseudoscience to support his ideas. Evolutionary psychology is 90% bollocks. As a female scientist I’ve had to fight against silly little pricks like him and it is so dispiriting to think you’d give him space on here.
Would you give space to a far right sexist politician? No, so you shouldn’t be giving space to him either.

Ellenborough · 08/04/2019 19:14

I would LOVE it.

SpamChaudFroid · 08/04/2019 19:18

I'd be interested. I don't like most of his views, but do find him very engaging and interesting to watch for some reason. Will we be able to converse with him on his GC views, or is the webchat purely about his book and nothing else? I wouldn't really be interested if that were the case.

Ellenborough · 08/04/2019 19:25

I think his views on sex and gender are ridiculous but I do think it would be interesting to know what he thinks about MN and it's stance on women being able to speak openly (mostly).

We haven't been able to speak openly on MN for 2 or 3 years now. There is no truly free speech here any more.

I'd very much welcome this opportunity. I've watched about 100 hours of his university lectures, talks, interviews etc. I don't agree with all his views and beliefs, but I've yet to see or hear anything he's said that brands him transphobic, homophobic, sexist, racist etc.

Same here, although I am a bit of a way behind you in hours. He is extemely prolific.

Time40 · 08/04/2019 19:27

I would love a webchat with Jordan Peterson. Please invite him.

Ellenborough · 08/04/2019 19:30

He’s known as the stupid man’s smart person.

If he's engaging people who don't usually think much and encouraging them to think then that has to be a good thing. There is nothing worse than intellectual elitism.

SpartacusAutisticusAHF · 08/04/2019 19:30

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

LassOfFyvie · 08/04/2019 19:36

Yes- primarily swayed by the ridiculous posts on the FWR about how MNHQ must not allow this terrible man to darken the doors.

Longtalljosie · 08/04/2019 19:38

He wants to come on so he can pick a big fight with us and get us all outraged, then his PR is “Jordan Peterson outrages Mumsnet”.

I vote we don’t play ball. Sod him and his women=chaos bullshit.

bingowingsmcgee · 08/04/2019 19:41

Yeah I'd be interested.

tharsheblows · 08/04/2019 19:44

God this thread is depressing. I think less of you for even asking.

mooncuplanding · 08/04/2019 19:49

I think it would be great fun

He provokes people and the nest of vipers loves a good prod.

I would really hate everyone to be like this thread having one dimensional arguments like "woman hater" and "MRA supporter", we'd have to get a bit snazzier than that with him.

mooncuplanding · 08/04/2019 19:52

8He wants to come on so he can pick a big fight with us and get us all outraged, then his PR is “Jordan Peterson outrages Mumsnet”.^

And if he doesn't come on, his PR wins too!

"Mumsnet refuses JP a platform"

And he nicely wins his argument about free speech

lunabody · 08/04/2019 19:52

Definitely not. Have no interest in helping him sell his book by giving him extra publicity.

StormyDaniels · 08/04/2019 19:53

I’d like to ask him about his all beef diet and which biscuits he misses the most whilst on it.

mooncuplanding · 08/04/2019 19:55

I genuinely don't understand the hate for him

He points out women and men are biologically different and generates such massive outrage from that statement.........??

Then pop over to FWR and join a trans thread and the same people are saying the same thing - a man is not a woman

birdsdestiny · 08/04/2019 20:01

Yes. I disagree with him on many things but I am uncomfortable with only having people on who I agree with. That's not the way I want MN to go.

GottaGetUp · 08/04/2019 20:01

I’m not interested. I haven’t heard him or anyone else ever say anything that has made me want to find out more about how he thinks or how he wants the world to be. There are many many people out there that I would be far more interested in having on for a webchat.

raisinsraisins · 08/04/2019 20:04

It’s a very easy couple of hours work for him. He will have practiced and rehearsed all his clever answers beforehand. And he’ll be guaranteed free publicity in the media the next day from the fallout.

It won’t help MN as it will attract more MRA to the site.

Mysterian · 08/04/2019 20:07

Get him on. I don't believe people should be no platformed. I won't take part or read the webchat though.

FermatsTheorem · 08/04/2019 20:09

Biological differences: on a physical level (strength, height, speed) these are relatively dimorphic (large d value, if you want to get technical about it - difference between means of the male and female populations divided by the square root of the product of their standard deviations - it's a measure of how distinct the bell curves are). For mental/neurological differences, insofar as any can be replicably measured, the d values are tiny - the curves largely overlap.

So it's quite possible to say that men and women are biologically different when it comes to physical strength (hence women don't particularly want to share overnight spaces with strange men, a small but non-negligible percentage of whom may want to do them harm), but hold that there aren't many cognitive differences, so there's no reason (for instance) not to employ women in STEM subjects. No contradiction at all. (See picture - d values for, say, height, are round about 2, d-values for cognitive differences insofar as any studies have found them - and not all have - are less than 0.5)

Also - even if the d values were bigger, this still wouldn't be a basis for tailoring your education system or employment system differently for the two sexes. Even if, say, only 10% of women wanted to and/or had the aptitude to become engineers, it wouldn't be right to deny these women the opportunity to try. (In fairness to Peterson, I think he'd agree with this, from what I've read).

Talking about biological differences is actually quite nuanced.

(What I can't get my head round is the trans activists who argue that there's no physical difference, so male-bodied transwomen should be included in women's sport, but there is a difference in brains, which allegedly explains how it's possible to have a "ladybrain" in the "wrong" body).

MNHQ here:  How would you feel about a Jordan Peterson webchat?
AssassinatedBeauty · 08/04/2019 20:11

"He points out women and men are biologically different" not the way that gender critical and radical feminists mean it. He takes biological differences to mean hard wired brain differences, which he then argues explains the massive imbalances in things like women in STEM careers. Women are chaos, men are order, apparently. Women tend towards liking people and men tend towards liking things, due to unavoidable brain differences, apparently.

Lovetocycle · 08/04/2019 20:27

Yes please!
I have found his lectures really helpful.

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