He’s well spoken, obviously intelligent, relatively quick on his feet, possesses an impressive education, a professional, he’s passionate and current.
And I don’t think I like him.
Jordan Peterson first came to my attention a few years back when a friend of mine texted me and asked me what I thought of him. I told the friend I didn’t think about him at all, owing to the fact that I’d never heard of the guy up until that point. So my buddy emailed me a bunch of links, several of which were YouTube videos, and asked me if I could take a look and offer an opinion. To me, it seemed that there was something about this Peterson guy who resonated with my friend, but that he might have been uneasy with the resonance and wanted to run it past me for an opinion before he bought any Peterson t-shirts, coffee mugs, or any other merch.
I went about the business of looking into Jordan Peterson, methodically going through the materials and supplementing those with other materials from different sources.
There were elements to the man that impressed me. His arguments were well presented, although to be honest, there was something about them that verged on disagreeable, at least to me. The more I dug in, the louder the blips on my personal radar.
Peterson, at the time, was at war with the University of Toronto, where he served as an associate professor of psychology. The conflict involved a recent mandate from the university, as per a change in the Canada Human Rights Code, to recognize the pronouns of transgender students, or trans people generally. He argued that he would likely use the preferred pronouns as a matter of civility, and maybe even respect, but that there was no way in hell he was going to be mandated by law to use them. That was his line in the sand. This, in his mind, was an egregious violation of his, and everyone’s, freedom of speech.
The whole pronoun thing was a relatively new phenomenon at the time, at least to me anyway, and I like to think I’m more or less on top of things. By that time I had experienced a transgender student in one of my classes, and had tripped over the pronouns on more than one occasion, not with intent but more from a lack of experience. Also, things like using plural pronouns for singular entities was a source of some minor cognitive dissonance, what with my early education involving gulag-type grammar teachers.
At first, I didn’t outright disagree with him, so I was willing to hear him out. I watched the interactions between Peterson and various committees dealing with the subject, and I watched him in face-to-faces with members of the transgender community, many of whom were outright furious with him for his stance. But he hung in there, calmly, and with measured arguments, almost always deflecting the criticisms, much of it emotional, levelled at him.
I did, however, continue the investigative process, and looked through a large number of video and print resources covering this issue, and other topics that he may have weighed in on. It was through this process that I eventually landed on my verdict of Jordan Peterson, the one that I would share, over beer and wings, with my buddy.
He’s a shit-disturber.
I suppose others might use the more genteel term of provocateur, but that’s just a more polite way of describing someone who likes to throw the stuff at fans and watch the result. It was almost as if he was amused somewhat by how viscerally angry his arguments made people, and believe me, they were angry to their very core.
I decided that, despite all the traits itemized in the first paragraph, I didn’t like this man, and felt he could be dangerous if he galvanized enough push-back from like-minded people to create problems for transgender people, the university that employed him, and lawmakers attempting to keep up with the times.
While I had no idea that the man would grow to be a flashpoint for so many societal issues, my impressions seem to have been borne out by the fact that he has a significantly large following of people who share his views and look upon him as a legitimate expert to which they point when making their own arguments.
Since that time, Peterson has found himself embroiled in controversy after controversy, expanding his “expertise” into areas where he has no qualification, nor much feet on the ground experience. And this, unfortunately, has landed him on the hero list for right-wing agitators looking to disrupt society at every opportunity. He is, intentionally or not, the darling of the far political right.
He also has a way of appealing to the “everyman,” or “everywoman” out there who feels angry at the rise of what they would consider to be “woke” society.
Peterson rides this wave and profits from it, as author of a couple of books and a guest speaker or participant in online forums and discussion groups. So he’s making some money, actually quite a bit of money, grifting along as he attacks LGBTQ communities and individuals as others cheer him on. To me, he’s the Canadian version of those two charlatans Oprah Winfrey gifted to the world, Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil, except those two are a little more sleazy.
As mentioned, one of the issues that brought Jordan Peterson into the spotlight was his public opposition to the Canadian Bill C-16. The bill aimed to add gender identity and gender expression as protected grounds to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code. Peterson argued that the bill compelled people to use specific gender pronouns, which he believed violated freedom of speech. Critics countered that the bill did not mandate the use of specific pronouns and was primarily focused on protecting transgender individuals from discrimination.
This served as a springboard for Peterson to begin offering his personal opinions around gender and identity which have been as divisive as his position on the pronoun issue. He has expressed skepticism about the validity of certain gender identities and has criticized elements of gender theory and feminist discourse. Some critics have accused him of being transphobic and promoting harmful stereotypes, while his supporters have predictably commended his defence of free speech and academic freedom.
When backed against a wall, Peterson will claim that he’s been misrepresented and taken out of context by a hostile media, which leads to further controversy and polarization. One of his most common rejoinders to criticism is to claim “I didn’t say that” or “that’s not what I said,” and he has the speaking ability to dance around critical questions without really answering them. His claims that the mainstream “woke” media is out to get him are music to the ears of those who already mistrust that very same media and get much of their information from far-right sources.
Peterson has been extremely vocal in his opposition to what he perceives as political correctness and cultural Marxism, arguing that these ideologies stifle free speech and academic inquiry. Predictably, his stance on “woke-ism” has earned him both praise and criticism from different corners of the political spectrum.
Peterson has been criticized for having associations with alt-right and far-right figures and groups, which he has denied. However, his refusal to disavow certain individuals and groups has led to further controversy. Regular appearances with other provocateurs, like Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan are hard for him to deny, but he uses his appearances on these shows as a way to amplify his messages and fortify his wallet. Yet even Joe Rogan, about as perfidious as they come, chastised Peterson for the latter’s “deadnaming” of transgender actor Elliot Page, deadnaming being the hip, current word for calling somebody by their birth name rather than the name they assumed as part of their new trans identity.
Peterson’s ride has not been entirely easy. You can’t be hated by so many people without having some of that negativity start to take a toll on you, and it did. He was called any number of names in public, including “nazi,” and it doesn’t matter how well you seem to shrug it off, sometimes the sheer volume of the vitriol can take a significant toll on a person. Peterson sought solace for anxiety through the use, or over-use of prescribed benzodiazepines, a family of drugs loosely categorized as tranquillizers. It led to addiction, something it took months for him to get on top of as he was hospitalized not just here, but in other countries as well.
The Ontario College of Psychologists claims that Peterson’s public statements are a form of professional misconduct, something that they feel requires him taking courses designed to re-educate him on appropriate social media usage. A failure to take the courses will result in the revoking of his licence to practice in Ontario. Peterson says he’ll take those courses when “hell freezes over.”
He’s currently appealing that decision in the Ontario Divisional Court.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 