Possible Jordan Peterson webchat on MN

[GeordieGenes]

If you go over to site stuff, MN are asking posters if they would like a webchat with Jordan Peterson! The thread is pretty negative, but I think it would be great to ask him about gender critical issues. He's one of the only Canadian voices we have!

If you think this would be good, please go and say so on the thread!

Ask yourself if you know of one single mother who was not the primary care giver (unless because of death) in the first months of a baby's life, and that is despite there being adequate facilities to bottle feed babies now? You cannot sit there with a straight face and tell me that is social conditioning and biology plays no role in that.

Biology plays a role in the sense that women are more likely to be at home recovering from pregnancy and birth, but even then there is no reason that woman has to be the only/main carer. And as it happens I know of a couple of men who were SAHD, so were the primary carer from day one. I also know numerous couples who split care equally. But then, the men I know tend to be the normal type who actually quite like their children, not weird stereotypes who keep them at arms length.

And you are correct that social conditioning is a factor, but biology isn't. As I said above: there is no biological reason why a man can not take care of a child.

I had a long (and successful) career in a STEM field, I can assure you, the reason women are underrepresented is not because they lack ambition; aren't interested; prefer to change nappies.

Saskia

I know you are sticking to your guns on this. But it's really tenuous.

Ask 1000 new mothers is they would be happy for their partner to do that early care of the baby, I am sure 99% would not want to do that.

Most mothers don't leave their baby's side for weeks.

It is NOT social conditioning that does that to us. As you say, "there is no reason that a woman has to be the main carer", yet the overwhelming majority still do it. You really want to say there is nothing biological in that? Evolution has played no role in that?

Ask yourself if you know of one single mother who was not the primary care giver (unless because of death) in the first months of a baby's life, and that is despite there being adequate facilities to bottle feed babies now?

Actually, my partner took 3 weeks off starting with my planned C-section and was the primary care giver during that time, because I had issues with recovery. At about 6 weeks post partum, though I had family leave, I started working from home again and my mum took care for my baby for up to 8 hours a day, while I sat on the computer. When I left my home (e.g. a conference week in town, 3 months after birth, I did experiments in the lab at 4-5 months that nobody else could do and I had a deadline), I pumped. At 7 months my partner took over.

It may not be the norm, but the idea that no mum ever was not the primary care giver is absurd. And particularly in the old times it was not at all unusual that women who had to work (my greatgrandma was a cook, for example) gave their children to other families during the day time.

Your idea of how women actual organize their lives seems to be very much colored by conservative preconceptions.

I had a long (and successful) career in a STEM field, I can assure you, the reason women are underrepresented is not because they lack ambition; aren't interested; prefer to change nappies

So what was it?

I have never said shut up about it. I have said don't push it as the ONLY reason why women don't 'get on'.

I didn't at any point push it as the only reason. You, on the contrary, never conceded that it is a factor.

Because we concentrate on it too much. I know it exists, I have experienced it first hand. But I have also experienced the fact that I did have some agency in these situations, we are not helpless, it is a small factor in the overall picture, especially now in the UK

Ask 1000 new mothers is they would be happy for their partner to do that early care of the baby, I am sure 99% would not want to do that. Most mothers don't leave their baby's side for weeks.

?

Not in my circles.

The competitiveness and less agreeable personality type, of course, is much better received in males than females

Not true. Men do get overlooked. I always need to remind DH that Americans do not understand modesty or humility and if he wants a better job or promotion, he needs to push himself forward in a way that’s embarrassing for someone from the UK. Business culture in the US can be brutal.

I know you are sticking to your guns on this. But it's really tenuous.

No, things that really happen are not 'tenuous'.

Ask 1000 new mothers is they would be happy for their partner to do that early care of the baby, I am sure 99% would not want to do that

Pop over to the relationships section, you'll see post after post from new mothers who are desperate for just that. I don't know a single mother who wanted to be the one and only person to do all the childcare. Being expected to do so is a major cause of PND, it's something the vast majority of mothers are desperate to avoid.

It's not evolution, it's not biology, it's a fucked up system that says only women can care for children, and dress it up as some kind of mystical bond between mother and child, which is not only plain wrong, but really awful for those men who do care about their children and would like to be active in their lives.

FFS, we hear so much about absent and deadbeat dads, but now we have men who are involved being described as almost mythical beings.

Because we concentrate on it too much.

So, we should concentrate on the issue of women freely choosing to stay home, because there is nothing to fix there, but ignore the issue that women want to have fixed? Why? So that JP feels better? Or incels?
Why shouldn't one concentrate on the issue that requires fixing?

Yeah, there was a time when the confirmation bias would have seriously kicked in for me, raising youngsters, pregnant constantly while DP earned and worked long hours, had I come across JP's brand of MRA arguments. I would argue long that I was there because I chose to be, reading articles and books about the pure joy of picking up my husband's discarded socks and being too overwhelmed to leave the house with three kids under 5.

A 'respected intellectual' voice would have fitted in very well to the world I lived in, all homeschooling, quiverful and submissive wife. But not everyone lives in an ultra conservative cult milieu, and even those of us that did, while we might welcome that soothing voice, telling us our oppression is only natural, it's nothing at all to do with reality, and is actually much more strongly rooted in desperation.

Perhaps I have a specific vantage point, in extremis, that means I can see it more clearly than those who haven't been to the real edges of this kind of thinking - but I'm telling you that I am not a 'natural' caregiver, and however many painted on smiles I could show you from that time, I was living a half life, and there are many women in that position still, who grab on to JP's misunderstandings and distortions because otherwise, the house of cards comes crashing down.

Flora

I am not sure you would expect him to say this but the motherhood you describe there is one he is not advocating. 'Motherhood doesn't have to devour you' I think are what he says and he recommends that you set your iife up so you don't lose yourself on becoming a mother. I presume that is going to be the theme of his new book.

He advocates leaving kids to it more, definitely not helicopter parenting. Making sure you have time for yourself, being more selfish and disagreeable.

JHChrist. Seriously?

You'll have to be more specific, BadPenny

They (men) had to demonstrate their status with dowries,

Just wanted to point out that this statement from upthread is completely wrong. Brides paid dowries to grooms, not the other way around. Women are still being murdered by their husbands' families in India because their dowry is deemed insufficient:

www.smh.com.au/world/india-burning-brides-and-ancient-practice-is-on-the-rise-20150115-12r4j1.html

Where this fits in with Petersern's "men have to prove their status to women' schtick, is hard to see. I don't know why he's being treated as some kind of guru on this thread. His arguments are ancient ones that don't really deserve yet another airing.

He’s a charlatan peddling made up but real sounding rubbish. It’s a damning indictment of a society if he gets taken seriously.
PS you got an infinite supply of those rose tinted specs mooncup??

He’s a charlatan peddling made up but real sounding rubbish. It’s a damning indictment of a society if he gets taken seriously

I really wish people would say which parts they disagree with, rather than just "eww MRA" " Horrid charalatan"

I don't even class myself as a fan (much more Team Sam Harris) but I do know his arguments and can represent them when people are just dismissing them without any reason. Open discourse and all that

It's like people develop hate for me just because I can recite JP's arguments. I find that baffling. I am not Jordan Peterson.

12 rules for life? Come on. You’ll be telling me how meaningful you find astrology next.

12 rules for life? Come on. You’ll be telling me how meaningful you find astrology next

Again, perhaps tell me which of the Rules you think is bollocks and why, then its an actual discussion

They may be lovely rules. But self-help type bromides are not interesting to me, and they are not the product of serious intellectual endeavour. I don’t take them seriously any more than I take men are from Mars and women are from Venus seriously.
If you find them helpful that’s nice, but that doesn’t make them philosophy.

You've never even read it have you?

mooncup, where in my post did you get the impression I was describing 'helicopter parenting'?
I described my experience of ultra conservative Christianity, and I still know many women who are still part of it, and do not have the option to make their life as they might secretly hope it could be because they have it drummed into them that their subjugation is part of the natural order, and actually there is something wrong with them for wanting something else - and Peterson and his acolytes feed into this kind of shit.

As I said, it's an extreme example, but there are other women who labour under the same burden on a less extreme scale, and deserve to be liberated just as much.

I’ve not read Mystic Meg either this week mate. I don’t need to to know it’s probably not Plato.
Read some Cordelia Fine. The whole underpinning of what Peterson says about patriarchy being “natural” has already been blown to smithereens. He doesn’t need to worry about that because of the legions of gullible fools who can’t tell the difference between schlock and original insight.

flora

He doesn’t advocate subjugation of anyone. From what he says, what makes you think he’d support the religious subjugation you experienced?

It seems to me that very right wing people can cherry pick his views to subjugate people. Very left wing people can cherry pick his views to entrench themselves further into identity politics and demands for ‘rights’. This isn’t necessarily a problem with what he says, more a demonstration of how we all use (selected) information for our own means.,