Helen Joyce on Jordan Peterson's podcast

[DuckInAPuddle]

Just saw on Twitter that Jordan Peterson has interviewed Helen Joyce for the latest episode of his podcast. Just listening to it now, so can't really comment yet. There doesn't seem to be a thread on this yet, so thought I'd share the link in case anyone else is interested.

Not a huge fan of JP on video, but it was a good interview - good for Helen Joyce newbies, or for people who've binged almost everything she's done like me.

They focused a lot on the sociodynamics of the movement, and what its success tells us about the state of society and ourselves, rather than the more "technical" aspects she usually focusses on.

Here's JP's chapter headings, to give you an idea:

Intro
Writing "Trans"
Women and Biological Reality
Age Solidarity Among Women
Narcisissm, a Key Contributor
Fetishes & the Unbalanced Psyche
Breaking the Fantasy
Freud & the Oedipal Complex
Context Defines Your Identity
Transhumanist "Meat Lego"
The Depth of the Battle, the Death of God
Lying to Children, Ellen Page
The Social Pillory

Giving it a whirl now, at!

I’m generally on the fence re:JP (although tbf it’s mostly his tone that I’m not keen on and critiquing people on how they say things rather than what they are actually saying is a pointless cul de sac and one I am trying to unlearn) but it’s undeniable that he has a massive audience and a lot of contacts.

I’d love to see Helen on Joe Rogan - I think he’d really enjoy her humour and she might be able to give him that last push he needs to leave the ‘true trans’ narrative behind once and for all. Plus, massive audience that is probably more varied that JPs.

Back in the day I reflexively didnt like JP. More recently I've come to find him fascinating, especially about anxiety, narcissism, gender issues. Even bought a ticket to his show on Friday.

Started listening to this earlier today. My first thought was, wow, he's come a long way since he interviewed Abigail Shrier. He was terrified of that interview, and gave her an absolute grilling. She was brilliant, of course.

Yes, would be amazing if Helen got on Joe Rogan. Maybe her and Posie Parker together!

Helen is wonderful but JP is hard to take. He cuts across her and repeats himself and drones on about what he thinks even when he's supposed to be finding out what she thinks. His voice and attitude is so grating. I could only stand it for around 15 minutes. Impressed by you hardy souls who stuck with it...

I would agree about cutting across her too much. This is the first time I have listened to Peterson and there were some really good bits. There were some interesting takes on why girls fall for social contagion and why women are such supporters of ideology which made me think.

The point JP made about girls and boys having even levels of negative emotions until puberty and then girls/women experience far more negative emotions basically for the rest of their lives was really interesting. I know he is quite into certain kinds of tests and data on personality and character and his contribution there (assuming it’s true, it seems to make sense) put things in a different light. Children really aren’t being given the life skills or receiving the help they need from pre-puberty in order to navigate early adulthood.

I was going along with it and thinking that JP was talking a lot of sense until he started on about what women really need/ want — marriage, family, children, work yada yada yada. I'm one of those women who never wanted children and have lived independently (even within relationships). JP can't help it. He understands the position of women better now than he did, but his insistence that marriage and children make women happy loses me and I can't get beyond that.

Yes, that was interesting. He is much, much better and more thoughtful about girls than I remember him being in the past.

At the beginning I decided JP was talking too much and not giving Helen any time to speak. I wondered if it would’ve been better with a third person interviewer, because sometimes he just went on TOO long.

Luckily I was busy doing something up a ladder so I didn’t switch it off as I realised after a while that Helen was letting him riff as she was contemplating his input as he was bringing a slightly differently angle to the ‘usual’ podcast episodes. By about half way through I felt like they had built a better rapport and the conversation was more even.

The stuff about girls being judged from a biological viewpoint and perhaps being predisposed to ‘be kind’ thinking (in order to attend to a needy infant without leaving them in a car park) and that making girls more vulnerable to fears of rejection/negative thoughts/anxiety was interesting and while I do agree he tends to generalise a bit too much re: women wanting motherhood, I think that’s a combination of being data driven (seeing numbers instead of individuals) and also being into those Jungian archetype thingies.

He did mock himself for being very talkative and Helen laughed at him, so that helped redeem him from my judgement in the first ten minutes.

I think they could really get somewhere in future conversations now that they’ve broken the ice. I’d like to see someone like Heather Heying as a third (evolutionary biologist) who could maybe flesh out or refute some of JPs thoughts on what is biological and what is cultural or psychological (I think Helen understands a lot of that intuitively and it would be nice to have it confirmed or dismissed or expanded on.

it occurred to me when JP was talking about Freud that some of the controversial things JP has supposedly stated might have been more him explaining someone else’s thoughts and theories enthusiastically in the first person, before adding his own mitigating commentary, because I suspect you could totally clip that but to make it sound like JP personally believes, in 2022, that everyone is motivated by the Oedipus complex.

Totally agree that TRAs behave like toddlers (Cutted up pear!) and that it’s partly the refusal to sweetly acquiesce to their demands in a stereotypically feminine, female socialised way that enrages them so much.

Helen’s insights into the pillory effect were great and her advice to businesses and employers on how to survive a cancelling were really useful (and I thought JP was quite envious that his university employer had not resisted the bullying with a shield of ‘free speech’ the way The Economist has done for Helen).

Helen shouted out to us Mumsnetters too.

*Waves!

Thanks for posting. I always find JP fascinating and I think there is an element of feminists disagreeing with him on principle without always knowing exactly what he is saying. And, as he mentions here, his words when taken out of context can be very misinterpreted. I don’t agree with everything he says but I think he talks a lot of sense. I do find his voice a bit grating though. Listening to the audio book of him reading his 12 rules I felt like I was being harangued!

I am not fond of JP but the demonization he gets from liberal America is absurd.

I am not fond of JP but the demonization he gets from liberal America is absurd.

I know - I have to resist the childish urge to try to get into him more just to piss off people I really want to piss off.

his insistence that marriage and children make women happy loses me and I can't get beyond that.

I thought all the available data on happiness directly contradicts this idea; how does he square the circle? (Cherrypicking stats he likes, I assume.)

I don't think interviewing comes naturally to him. He tends to engage like an academic in a conversation that is, not necessarily combative, but where the other person will behave in much the same way.

I come from a family where everyone talks that way, my poor husband can go a whole dinner not getting a word in.

So his interviews can fall flat if he really has to be the person managing the interview in an active way. He's no Joe Rogan in that sense.

He's right on a population level though.

There are always people who are different, people who go live by themselves in the wilderness with no one within 500 km, etc.

But a society needs to be built on the fact that most people need other people around in order to be happy, and if it isn't, it will begin to see a lot of abnormal and maladaptive results.

There are whole cultures and millions of women around the world where women don't have an option. Here in Western Europe women are still encouraged to believe that a heterosexual sexual relationship and children are the gold standard of womanhood.

There seems to be at least some evidence that unmarried, child-free women are happier than married women and women with children.
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/women-happier-without-children-or-a-spouse-happiness-expert

Why do you think that single people need to live in the wilderness and become maladapted? Bizarre statement. Do you not see your prejudice there? You live surrounded by single women.

I think it's true to say that most humans want to be in long term committed relationships to raise children. Most women do want kids. Most people are happier in a relationship. Of course there are always outliers and non-conformists, but their lives are about creativity and innovation, and they often suffer.

I think Louise Perry's book on the case against the sexual revolution goes into all this from a feminist perspective.

He's right on a population level though.

He's precisely wrong.

Single women are happier than married women. Women without children are happier than women with children. This is the truth at a population level. This is just the first link from Google which you can follow through to the academic writings if you so choose, there's a lot of research on this. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/women-happier-without-children-or-a-spouse-happiness-expert

He's incorrect though, from my understanding. Big differences are observed in confidence, self image, etc around 8 years old. Marked difference from children even a year younger

I think we’ve all been through enough bad data/skewed news stories to need more than just a Guardian article to refute something!

If JP is wrong, I’m interested in why he’s gone wrong, where is his info from? - that’s why I think someone like Heather Heying would’ve been a great addition/fact checker.

Lots of evidence that the more you educate women, the fewer children they have and the higher the number of educated single women choosing to be child-free. So much to support that that it was a bit of a moral panic back in the noughties.

We've lived under patriarchy for so long that no one can have any idea what women would choose if they were to be free to make any decision they wish without judgment and prejudice from the rest of society.

This is interesting (America data) ifstudies.org/blog/does-having-children-make-people-happier-in-the-long-run

but reading all that left me wondering if JP actually said ‘happiness’ ?

eg I was definitely ‘happier’ before I had kids but when you’ve got three additional needs (disabled or seriously ill) kids and all the financial implications that come with that, perhaps happy is unrealistic. Of course I was happier when I was 22 and living a life of freedom with little responsibility.

I’d say I’m less happy now but more fulfilled and my emotional life has a greater depth to it. Is that motherhood or age? I know I would definitely have my babies over again because no other emotion compares to the enormous love I have for them.

For many years I felt embarrassed about this (two fancy degrees I barely use) but I’ve been able to shrug off the cultural socialisation that made me feel lesser for actually enjoying motherhood (by realising it was not that much different to the judgement women who chose the opposite life also face).

i’m going back to listen again to that bit.

I don't live in a patriarchy.

Anyway, the fact remains that we are mammals who are driven to reproduce. To that end, it suits women way better to be in committed and long term relationships than to be alone.

Most people want children because we are biologically driven to want them. There's interesting research suggesting that our drive to pair and reproduce may be diminished when there are too many humans, eg in big cities. But either way, it's a basic human drive.

We've lived under patriarchy for so long that no one can have any idea what women would choose if they were to be free to make any decision they wish without judgment and prejudice from the rest of society.

I agree with this.

I need to refresh my info on the stuff that came out of Sweden (paraphrasing) re: the surprising gap in gendered Labour choices for such an egalitarian country.