Cathy Newman and Jordan Petersen on C4 News

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

Just on. He was saying that people are different due to ' agreeableness, women being more likely to be so; men less so, hence the gender gap

It's the first time I have ever seen Cathy Newman angry. And he was spluttering a bit, first time for him too, for me, I think.

Watch it on + 1

I agree with some of Petersen's views but he didn't come off at all well here

I had come to think the middle ground in politics was an easy position, but I'm now beginning to see what a difficult and precariously balanced place it was.

I think that's why it's dangerous in a way and why I find him so interesting. There is a void there, and that is a bit scary. Not for men or women, but for people.

I decided today that if I had to chose between free speech and feminism I would chose free speech, as without it feminism couldn't exist.

Tbh that's the deepest thought I've had for a while. I'm not an academic

I think that is an important thought Shwang.

And that sense that we are taking so much for granted in our western liberal democracies and actually have no idea how quickly it could all be eroded, withdrawn or overtaken. It does make sense of the world in some ways that the dominant narrative from our politicians at the moment just doesn't, and sounds often frankly deluded. I am absolutely seeing why his ideas are appealing. I just still need to work out whether they are true, legitimate and helpful.

I know what you mean by I just still need to work out whether they are true, legitimate and helpful and watching him breaking down into tears a few times in online stuff made me uncomfortable - is he genuine or manipulative? Are his emotional 'Oprah' moments for real?

That has nothing to do with my decision though. It has just focused what I've been thinking about for a while - mostly to do with my family / friends more than someone online. But it has really helped me focus, and I have tidied my room

By the way, has anyone else seen the "Men", "Women" and "Lobsters" signs at Boston Airport in the US? I saw them in the early 90s in the domestic terminal.

The first two looked like doors into toilets. No idea what was behind the third.

Have rtft btw. It's fascinating; thanks to you all.

By the way, has anyone else seen the "Men", "Women" and "Lobsters" signs at Boston Airport in the US? I saw them in the early 90s in the domestic terminal.

The first two looked like doors into toilets. No idea what was behind the third.

Have rtft btw. It's fascinating; thanks to you all.

Does anyone actually think this about toilets?

Lobsters or people?

Toad gonna practise that JP assertive and tell you to fuck off or stay on topic. So either engage or fuck off

The clownfish example is great fun :

www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/08/clownfish-are-all-born-male-a-dominant-male-will-turn-female-when-the-current-female-of-the-group-dies/

The male dominance hierarchy doesn't exist to oppress females, because there aren't any females to oppress. The top (female) clownfish is actually the top male, who has flipped to female once he's reached the top of the pile. The prize for getting to the top of the male dominance hierarchy is that absolutely all of the baby clownfish that group produces are your babies. Cos you're the only girl in town. And the prize for getting to second spot is that virtually all the babies are yours. Until you inherit top slot and then all of them are yours, when you become female.

This is the male dominance hierarchy on steroids. When you win you don't get the pick of the girls, you become the ONLY girl yourself !

"In biological terms, men don't choose - they compete to get chosen"

Yes, but no. In some species, females don't get a choice. The male competition plays out and the females are mere booty, so to speak. In other species males compete for mating opportunities, and females choose who they are going to grant their favour to. But in some species there is mutual choice - ie as well as the usual business of females choosing males, there's also males choosing females.

The reason why it's usually females choosing males is that the females are the scarce resource and the males are the plentiful resource - ie a hundred males and a hundred females aren't going to produce more offspring than ten males and and hundred females. So you only get into a males choosing females situation when the males are themselves a scarce resource. And this applies where males are required to put in some resources (ie labour) to keep the offspring alive and kicking. So think pair bonding, eg in birds.

Humans are pair bonders because on average, before the welfare state, a woman couldn't keep her babies alive on her own. This is because of the helplessness of human infants and the length of time they remain unable to fend for themselves - and the consequent burden on the mother's ability to keep herself alive. A woman needed help. So if a man has to put in resources, he's going to choose which woman (of those available) is the best investment.

But even with pair bonding, there's a pay off for cheating. If you are number 14 male bird and you've bonded with no.14 female bird, then it's in your interests to sort out Mrs 17, 25 and 46 down the wood when their husbands are away. Because if you do get Mrs 25 up the spout, you're not going to have to provide any resources. You'd like to canoodle with Mrs 3, but she's not going to give you the time of day, since she's got Mr 3. But watch out, while you're chasing after Mrs 17, 25 and 46, male birds 1-13 are after your missus. You're safe from male birds 15-100, because your missus won't fancy them.

And so we get to all the fun stuff which drives literature film and art - the pursuit of long term mates; and the simultaneous pursuit of something on the side. Where something on the side means different things to men and women. For women it's something better than I've already got. For men it's just "more beans please, miss !"

Humans are clever, complex pair bonders and our behaviour is certainly not deterministic. We have enormous flexibility. But we don't have infinite flexibility. We all have our animal brains, which have been tuned by evolution. So we have instincts to behave in particular ways. We have instincts that exist as potential and which are tuned by social and environmental factors when we arrive and develop in the world. And we have brains that can think rationally (OK reasonably rationally.) But we should not assume that thinking rationally will always and easily trump instincts. It will do so sometimes and with effort.

I'll try a variant of a JP trick on you all. I imagine that pretty much every one participating in this thread thinks him/herself pretty well educated, pretty intelligent and pretty rational. Now go off to a quiet room and close your eyes. See if you can think of ten stupid, irrational things you've done in the last month. (And yes, buying those cookies when you're on a diet definitely counts.) If you have to stay in the room for more than fifteen minutes, because you can't get up to ten - you're lying to yourself.

AssassinatedB : "We just need to learn not to prefer men that are currently considered "high status", is that right? What sort of alternate hierarchies ought women to consider?"

The problem with any cartel is keeping everyone in line. You are in competition with Ms X for the affection of Mr G. There's no reason to believe that she's going to co-operate with you to reduce male oppression, if that gets in the way of her winning the contest for Mr G. Even if she's says she's going to co-operate. She may care more about getting Mr G than she does about male oppression.

Of course you may not care about Mr G. Indeed you may care so much about defeating male oppression that you don't want to mate until male domination has been vanquished. If so, the next generation will be composed of the descendants of Mr G and Ms X, not you. But perhaps their children will agree with you, and carry on the fight.

Humans are sneaky critturs. And therefore interesting.

Yippee : "And then men worked hard to try to protect the advantages they had provided themselves."

I think life is more complicated than that. It's true that male dominated societies have always been interested in controlling female mating, if they can. But they have been interested in controlling male mating too. Because the real war is between everyone and everyone as to whose descendants are going to make it into the next round of the game. Traditional male dominated societies do not exist to allow all men to oppress all women. They exist to allow powerful men to dominate everyone else, men and women. And the only reason it's powerful men, rather than a powerful man, is that it's really difficult for one man to acquire absolute power. Hence you have to make alliances.

Note that the Duchess of Wherever was always just as keen as her Duke, that their daughter should not mate with the under gardener. The Duchess has exactly the same interest as the Duke in channelling her daughter's reproductive energies towards high status males. And exactly the same interest as the Duke in seeing that her son gets to sow some wild oats.

The point of social structure is that I should be in charge and that everyone should do what I say. Everyone doesn't mean women. It means everyone. I am forced to negotiate down from there to whatever is practical.

"Remember it's only 100 years since men decided to grant some women the vote"

And remember that in the previous 100 years, the small group of men who held power were forced bit by bit and through gritted teeth to hand out votes to other men. It's not a men oppress women thing. It's a those with power oppress those who aren't for as long as they can get away with it. (Mediated to some extent by ethical considerations. So for the most part the powerful men who reluctantly ceded votes to wider classes of voters did not do so because they were defeated in a contest of violence, but because enough of their group weakened and succumbed to argument.)

Obviously the reason for the political elite being male is violence. Women can't compete in a hierarchy determined by violence. Of course the male hierarchy hasn't been about pure power for eons - the brains to plan and organise and the talent for persuasion have allowed clever persuaders and planners to dominate big thugs. But a clever persuader without the practical capacity for violence is impotent. And that's what a clever woman would be in the male hierarchy until very recently. So it's no surprise that monarchies, oligarchies and elites have been very male up till recently. But they're not about doing women down. They're about doing down everybody who isn't in the ruling club.

I am aware of occasional exceptions to the rule of a male elite - eg Greek societies worshipping Mother Nature. But there are good reasons for why such societies might have appealed to our curious species. The mystery of where babies come from is a deep one, and those who control that mystery must be in tune with the Gods. But since those societies ultimately depended for their survival on male military violence, it's not surprising that matriarchies were subsumed by patriarchies.

Good post

Shwangalangadingdong : “watching him breaking down into tears a few times in online stuff made me uncomfortable - is he genuine or manipulative? ”

This (pro-Peterson) reviewer

neoneocon.com/2018/01/20/all-hail-jordan-peterson-not-just-a-debater/

certainly thinks he’s manipulative, though she doesn’t use that word, and she also thinks he’s genuine :

“He can get firm, assertive, and/or almost angry, but only when he decides for strategic reasons to display those particular emotions. And yet he also seems—and I believe actually is—sincere even in anger.”

So she thinks his emotions are genuine but that he’s learned to display them or not according to whether it suits him or not. You could certainly call that manipulative. Or you could call it persuasive.

It’s one of those English irregular verbs :

I persuade
You argue
He manipulates

For my money, I think he's a passionate man, who buttons it most of the time. But in his early pronoun interviews, with the more normal structure of the non PC person being in a 3-1 or 4-1 minority you could see that he could not conceal his irritation even when it didn't suit him. The opposition sometimes succeeded in goading him into responding more snappily than was required. He's clearly got defter at the tactics with practice. His (I think genuine) amusement in the CN interview was much more effective than irritation. But it's clear from his stuff that he's passionate about what he believes, so I'm pretty sure he's controlling the display of his emotions carefully. Perhaps as the reviewer says, you need to learn a lot of self control as a clinical psychologist.

Lee are you in the UK? If so that is not much sleeping!

Thank you. Will cogitate. But my initial impression is that if he's right, our capacity for darkness is both deeper and more instinctive than any of us like to admit.

Which is never going to go down well with a world view convinced of the fundamental goodness of human beings. That's one of the realities I think he is interesting in explaining. Ironically confirmed when Twitter behaviour manifests in all its horror.

I haven't got to any of those lectures yet though to see what he has to offer by way of hope....

No, I'm currently standing on my head and clinging to the bottom of the world. Hence my ability to sneak in 214 consecutive posts while nobody else gets a look in.

I don't know what I think about his thoughts about the dark side. He's clearly influenced by Nietzsche and Jung.

My primary interest in him is that he's, er, interesting and that he tells me a lot of things I don't know, and offers a lot of thoughts that haven't occurred to me before.

I confess I'm uncomfortable that some of his fans seem keen to promote him from "very interesting teacher and good role model" to "mini-Messiah." I understand that some people want a hero to follow, but in a sense those treating him as a mini-Messiah have missed the main point of his advice. Which is that you have to be your own rock, not a worshiper of idols. And if you feel more like putty than rock, it's probably time to get started sorting yourself out. And if you already feel like rock, you're probably due for a spot of nemesis.

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus repackaged.

Will this guy's next work be on how French women stay thin?

In answer to some earlier point about why JP may not have explored certain aspects of these arguments, I think his position is better understood as "it's nowhere near as simple as the absolutists claim, and lots of what they claim is demonstrably and empirically false".

I don't think he's ever really taken on the question of what is the exact nature of the pay gap. What he's done is refute and deny the absolutist version of the story - that's it's pure discrimination, pure patriarchy. He's not really making strong claims about what IS - he's denying what he sees as the obviously false claims of others.

As others have said, he's basically a classic liberal (in the British sense of the word, not the American), with a big beef against post-modernism and Marxism.

Melanie Philips in The Times today on the interview:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/defenders-of-free-speech-have-a-new-prophet-7kk9mnvnl?shareToken=55a5491b83e04fe54133e13e68923661

"He has become a kind of secular prophet who, in an era of lobotomised conformism, thinks out of the box"

Peterson's own thoughts on the Ch4 affair, and its fallout (as well as a series of other things).

As the above posts imply, Peterson's not overly bothered whether what you think he says is correct or not. But he is very bothered when a) you try to prevent him from saying it or b) purposely misrepresent and distort his arguments for the benefit of your own political/cultural agenda. Which I suspect is a position we should all be supportive of.

ETA supportive of his position, not supportive of point B, obv.

Why on earth doesn't this forum have an edit function?

The discussion of male dominance hierarchies here made me think of this thread: Shorter men

Just viewed the interview above where he analyses Newman's behaviour. Again, he is spot on in his analysis.

I am so disappointed in Newman, and so deeply embarrassed that she flew a weird offence-driven feminist flag throughout this interview supposedly representing me, and I am ashamed to be associated with her as a feminist woman.

As a serious interviewer, surely Cathy Newman's entire credibility is gone now?

As a serious interviewer, surely Cathy Newman's entire credibility is gone now?

I would be hesitant to say this on the basis of one interview

Krishnan Guru-Murthy did a dreadful interview a fe months ago and I certainly didnt think 'well bang goes his credibility'

Rufustherenegadereindeer1

I can see why you say that. But her thought processes, ability to think rationally, to listen, to assimilate what is being said and retort with intelligence and without a loading of pre-conception and a transparent desire for the interviewee to represent a stance which he didn't, are here shown to be so totally lacking, that her position is surely untenable now.

This is not the odd mistake or mis-spoken word in an interview. This was a car crash that arose out of the innate failings in her interviewing skill-set. There have been signs of this before, I am not been impressed, but after the Peterson interview, I doubt I would ever be able to take her, or what she is asking and saying, seriously again.