Who is Jordan Peterson?
Lisa Sugiura's book The Incel Rebellion: The Rise of the Manosphere and the Virtual War Against Women (2021) is open access.
When Canada proposed a nondiscrimination bill for gender identity and expression, Jordan Peterson opposed it, claiming that if everyone has to respect everyone else's pronouns, there's no free speech. That's why he's famous today.
Sugiura explains that the "rejection of identity politics" is behind the so-called "intellectual dark web." These are academics who "view themselves as dissidents and mavericks and position themselves as truth tellers," principally Peterson, now a bestselling author with a "subscription-only, ‘anti-censorship’ website called Thinkspot" he launched in 2019. Peterson is
"notorious for his seething critiques against feminism and ‘cultural marxism’ – the (conspiracy) theory that Marxist Jewish academics at the Frankfurt School in the 1930s are responsible for devising the ideas underpinning multiculturalism and critical theory – essentially embedding Marxist ideals into cultural values (Neiwert, 2020). According to opponents such as Peterson, the influence of cultural Marxism is so significant that it dominates contemporary academia and culture, with feminism being one of the products of this duplicitous cabal. ... [His books] normalise and rationalise the patriarchial social order..."
He says there's no "gender wage gap" and he cites "bunk statistics" on that, Sugiura says. He bases his arguments on "gender role stereotypes – that women aren’t in high-pressure leadership roles because they don’t want them as it would be a conflict with women's 'agreeable' nature. Peterson also validated incel violence as a means to counter rejection, in the New York Times in regard to Minassian’s Toronto attack – 'he was angry at God because women were rejecting him. The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That's actually why monogamy emerges'," Sugiura writes of Peterson's comments. Peterson later claimed he hadn't meant to endorse the incel demand to provide them with women for their use, but rather was explaining the norm of monogamy.
Peterson is saying that men won't defend assaulted women unless they think of the woman as their property. That's the only way — according to him — they can empathize or otherwise believe that her rights and dignity are important.
Peterson is saying:
"Let's say you have a non-standard gender identity. What the hell are other people supposed to do about that? ...if I don't know whether you're male or female, what the hell should I do with you? You don't know, because you don't know what the rules are. And so the simplest thing for me to do is just not do anything with you. The simplest thing for me to do is just go find someone else who's a hell of a lot less trouble."
Update: This is what he's up to, June 27, 2023.
July 3, 2023. He's saying that anyone who categorizes transgender people with the genders in which we live or with which we identify is someone who is very far from "deserving any politeness."
August 2023
Book reviewers complained after he took positive-sounding phrases from their overwhelmingly negative reviews and used them for his book jacket.
October 2023
Apparently taking a page from Peterson's playbook, J.K. Rowling (then 3.5 years into her own transphobic Twitter campaign) tweeted that she'd "happily do two years [in prison] if the alternative is compelled speech and forced denial of the reality and importance of sex." It isn't an innovative framing. Peterson has been on this horse for years.
Further reading
In one video I examined, he says stereotypes are necessary. See: "Helen Joyce in conversation with Jordan Peterson: That Transphobic Peterson/Joyce Video" (Medium; paywalled)
See also: "When you claim that experts don't know their stuff" (on Medium)
