Why the hate for wisdom?

[Relax]

Loving all the great arguments being made.

Just wanted to make the point that Jordan Peterson's issue about the gendered pronoun bill was not about "free speech" as commonly thought, but about "compelled speech".

He was stating that the government has no precedent to tell someone that they have to say something.

There are already plenty of limits on free speech, such as inciting violence and conspiring to commit crimes.

Jordan Peterson when asked directly if he would use trans-gendered pronouns, he said if asked in a reasonable way that he would. He's also expressed how unfortunate it is that trans people have been dragged into this debate on "compelled speech" as other trans advocacy groups have also expressed.

Just thought I would add that for some extra nuance.

nuance is important for sure

"what does Peterson actually believe? He bills himself as “a classic British liberal” whose focus is the psychology of belief. Much of what he says is familiar: marginalised groups are infantilised by a culture of victimhood and offence-taking; political correctness threatens freedom of thought and speech; ideological orthodoxy undermines individual responsibility. You can read this stuff any day of the week and perhaps agree with some of it. However, Peterson goes further, into its most paranoid territory. His bete noire is what he calls “postmodern neo-Marxism” or “cultural Marxism”. In a nutshell: having failed to win the economic argument, Marxists decided to infiltrate the education system and undermine western values with “vicious, untenable and anti-human ideas”, such as identity politics, that will pave the road to totalitarianism.

Peterson studied political science and psychology, but he weaves several more disciplines – evolutionary biology, anthropology, sociology, history, literature, religious studies – into his grand theory. Rather than promoting blatant bigotry, like the far right, he claims that concepts fundamental to social-justice movements, such as the existence of patriarchy and other forms of structural oppression, are treacherous illusions, and that he can prove this with science. Hence: “The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.” Islamophobia is “a word created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons”. White privilege is “a Marxist lie”. Believing that gender identity is subjective is “as bad as claiming that the world is flat”.

Cathy Newman was wrong to call Peterson a “provocateur”, as if he were just Milo Yiannopoulos with a PhD. He is a true believer. Peterson is old enough to remember the political correctness wars of the early 90s, when conservatives such as Allan Bloom and Roger Kimball warned that campus speech codes and demands to diversify the canon were putting the US on the slippery slope to Maoism, and mainstream journalists found the counterintuitive twist – what if progressives are the real fascists? – too juicy to resist. Their alarmist rhetoric now seems ridiculous. Those campus battles did not lead to the Gulag. But Peterson’s theories hark back to that episode.
Peterson was also shaped by the cold war; he was obsessed as a young man with the power of rigid ideology to make ordinary people do terrible things. He collects Soviet realist paintings, in a know-your-enemy way, and named his first child Mikhaila, after Mikhail Gorbachev. In Professor Against Political Correctness, he says: “I know something about the way authoritarian and totalitarian states develop and I can’t help but think that I am seeing a fair bit of that right now.”

In many ways, Peterson is an old-fashioned conservative who mourns the decline of religious faith and the traditional family, but he uses of-the-moment tactics. His YouTube gospel resonates with young white men who feel alienated by the jargon of social-justice discourse and crave an empowering theory of the world in which they are not the designated oppressors. Many are intellectually curious. On Amazon, Peterson’s readers seek out his favourite thinkers: Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Solzhenitsyn, Jung. His long, dense video lectures require commitment. He combines the roles of erudite professor, self-help guru and street-fighting scourge of the social-justice warrior: the missing link between Steven Pinker, Dale Carnegie and Gamergate. On Reddit, fans testify that Peterson changed, or even saved, their lives. His recent sold-out lectures in London had the atmosphere of revival meetings.

Such intense adoration can turn nasty. His more extreme supporters have abused, harassed and doxxed (maliciously published the personal information of) several of his critics. One person who has crossed swords with Peterson politely declined my request for an interview, having experienced floods of hatemail, including physical threats. Newman received so much abuse that Peterson asked his fans to “back off”, albeit while suggesting the scale had been exaggerated. “His fans are relentless,” says Southey. “They have contacted me, repeatedly, on just about every platform possible.”

   Peterson's audience includes Christian conservatives, atheist libertarians, centrist pundits and neo-Nazis

While Peterson does not endorse such attacks, his intellectual machismo does not exactly deter them. He calls ideas he disagrees with silly, ridiculous, absurd, insane. He describes debate as “combat” on the “battleground” of ideas and hints at physical violence, too. “If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect,” he told Paglia last year, adding that it is harder to deal with “crazy women” because he cannot hit them. His fans post videos with titles such as “Jordan Peterson DESTROY [sic] Transgender Professor” and “Those 7 Times Jordan Peterson Went Beast Mode”. In debate, as in life, Peterson believes in winners and losers.

“How does one effectively debate a man who seems obsessed with telling his adoring followers that there is a secret cabal of postmodern neo-Marxists hellbent on destroying western civilisation and that their campus LGBTQ group is part of it?” says Southey. “There’s never going to be a point where he says: ‘You know what? You’re right, I was talking out of my ass back there.’ It’s very much about him attempting to dominate the conversation.”

Peterson’s constellation of beliefs attracts a heterogeneous audience that includes Christian conservatives, atheist libertarians, centrist pundits and neo-Nazis. This staunch anti-authoritarian also has a striking habit of demonising the left while downplaying dangers from the right. "

~ https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018...rnets-nest

I'm 5 months older than him... I know the 1990's political 'scene'. esp at academic institutions - very well.

I know exactly where he's coming from...  the pulpit of a traditionalist, straight, white, patriarchal conservative, privileged male dominant egregore.

I don't think anyone should force anyone to speak a certain way; so I do see where he was in reacting to that. I think he's softened his stance somewhat since he first reacted to it also.

It's basic politeness to respect people when they ask you call them by a certain pronoun, name, etc.

I don't think he's a "bad" person and I don't feel ill will towards him - to me - he's a dinosaur - incredibly "old fashioned' - but he's a conservative training ground pathway through to more extreme ideologies. [Edit: the 'it is harder to deal with “crazy women” because he cannot hit them' is disgusting though ]

He embodies and has 'tapped into' the "backlash" against "social justice" by those most likely to lose power from social justice - by having to share it with everyone - the boys club.

I've been schooled by POC it was hard - but I listened and learnt - men need to do the same - listen to women. And stick up for women. We're being murdered at a sickening and disproportionate rate every day.

Day in day out.

https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/understan...tatistics/

and yes- men experience violence also - but no where near the same and most usually from other men.

To any of his fans - please realise pointing this out isn't being misandrist - it's wishing for a shift from patriarchy to fraternity.