By David Futrelle
The “involuntary celibates” who congregate on the Incels.me forum have previously celebrated such lovely fellows as Toronto van killer Alek Minassian, a self-described incel who murdered ten pedestrians in a symbolic attack against sex-having “Chads and Stacies,” and Elliot Rodger, the incel “saint” whose 2014 murder spree in Isla Vista California helped to inspire Minassian’s rampage.
Now the incels — or at least a portion of them — have a new hero: Canadian self-help guru and angry fussbudget Jordan Peterson,
On Friday. you may recall, the New York Times ran a highly critical profile of Peterson in which the Jung-quoting lobster-hierarchy fetishist offered some thoughts on how to stop young men from taking up guns and vans and massacring as many people as they can. In one of his chats with the Times’ Nellie Bowles — conducted after the Toronto attacks but before Friday’s shooting in Santa Fe — Peterson suggested that the real solution to incel violence is “enforced monogamy.”
Here’s how Bowles described their discussion:
Violent attacks are what happens when men do not have partners, Mr. Peterson says, and society needs to work to make sure those men are married.
“He was angry at God because women were rejecting him,” Mr. Peterson says of the Toronto killer. “The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges.”
Mr. Peterson does not pause when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end.
“Half the men fail,” he says, meaning that they don’t procreate. “And no one cares about the men who fail.”
I laugh, because it is absurd.
“You’re laughing about them,” he says, giving me a disappointed look. “That’s because you’re female.”
This is the sort of nonsense you might expect in an incel forum, or from some similarly reactionary manosphere hangout. And so it’s hardly a surprise to see many on Incels.me hailing Peterson as a new incel idol. The only real question is what took them so long?
In a post yesterday, one prolific Incels.me commenter brought Peterson’s interview to the attention of his fellow forum regulars, asking “Is Jordan Peterson, our guy?”
More than a few commenters responded with an enthusiastic “yes!”
“What he is saying is exactly what I have always been saying,” declared someone calling himself SaintMarcLepine, the moniker a dark tribute to the Canadian misogynist who murdered 14 women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique in 1989.
RageAgainstTDL was even more enthusiastic:
This is absolutely brilliant. He is forcing mainstream writers and the public to confront the idea of monogamy and explain why feminism has destroyed it for their own chad-hungry desires.
Peterson is contrarian by nature too. He thrives on disagreement. So he won’t let this go. The more feminists argue they have a right to only fuck Chads, the more he will highlight how damaging this is to society.
The tide is turning.
A wannabe philosopher calling himself TheWitchKing pounded out a thousand-word treatise which could be summarized as “lol, Peterson is triggering the femoids.” Here are a few snippets; I’ve removed, among other things, the author’s extended musings on Peterson’s similarity to Loki, the Norse trickster god.
I usually have little use for Peterson or his philosophy, but I can’t help but admire anyone capable of provocation of this magnitude. … Peterson is striking at one of the most precious values of the modern West: the agency of women when it comes to the matter of sexual selection and reproduction.
With this act Peterson has crossed a kind of threshold … The idea of compulsory monogamy is not some idea that will merely inspire outrage among radical feminists and the members of academia surveying the world from the dizzying heights of their ivory towers. Rather, the idea of enforced monogamy is the stuff of nightmares of every modern daughter of the West. …
Informed by the Enlightenment values that championed the freedom of the individual, the sexual revolution was kind of a dawn for women. What Peterson is suggesting would be tantamount to murdering the light of that new day and plunging women back into the prolonged nightmare they believed that had finally escaped. …
Sadly or happily, depending upon your perspective, the amusement to be had at all of the outraged shrieking is the only good thing that’ll come from Peterson’s scandalous idea.
Mikepence made essentially the same point in a few short sentences:
He really got them riled up with this. Femoids cringe at the thought of being within 10 feet of an ugly guy, she can’t imagine actually being in a relationship with one
It’s almost as though incels are less interested in dating and/or marrying women than they are in terrifying them and/or making them miserable.
Animeincel was equally smitten with Peterson:
Yes he is on our side, and his very very smart. He is just not as aggressive yet cause he know media will slaughter him then. He understands the incel problem 100% and I love him.
Like Animeincel, Weed is convinced that Peterson is an incel ally who can’t quite say that outright just yet:
I think Peterson tries to appear as neutral as possible but deep down he is on our side.
nklfdnblidnfbli wondered if Peterson was directly cribbing from him.
i mentioned enforced monogamy in the incelcast, maybe peterson listened to that and got the idea from me? mainly we need it because almost all girls want only chad and chad is polygynous.
While Peterson was a bit vague as to what he meant by “enforced monogamy,” nklfdnblidnfbli was happy to spell out what he himself meant by the term.
here’s how i think it should work
– people can opt in or opt out of enforced monogamy
– if they opt in they pay lower taxes and get free basic income from the govt
– marriage laws must first be overhauled so that men aren’t disadvantaged and family courts are fair
– in enforced monogamy people must be married to have sex, and if you get divorced you have to go through a 6 month waiting period where you are not allowed to have sex, this is to discourage people from getting married and then divorced for every hookup
Huh. That seems a bit, er, elaborate, but I guess it might increase the odds that dudes who hate women and love murderers will eventually have sex.
All this said. there were more than a few in the thread who weren’t quite so excited about Peterson’s incel turn. Some were turned off by Peterson’s paeans to self-improvement — incels dislike being ordered to clean up their rooms, Peterson-style, nearly as much as they hate being told they need a shower.
Others thought Peterson was little more than “controlled opposition,” blaming his recent rise to fame on the machinations of, you guessed it, the (((Jews))). (Of course Peterson isn’t Jewish, and while he’s not a Christian either, he’s a big Jesus fan whose beliefs have been described as similar to Kierkegaard’s “Christian existrntialism.”)
“Peterson is a gatekeeper attempting to keep men from turning to far rightwing ideologies to correct their problems,” declared WarriorSkull.
He does warn women that he constantly sees career women … end up in their 30’s desperate for children and unable to secure a man for obvious reasons. This isn’t sufficient to make much of a dent in the direction our culture has and will continue to head, but the jews will continue promoting him as a “safe” alternative to rabid leftism.
ElliotRodgerHere put it more bluntly:
Jordan peterson is a f*ggot judeophile. fuck him, he is popular among the MGTOW cucks
In a later comment he added that Peterson “has a horribly ugly jewish wife.”
Starystulejarz compared Peterson to other alleged tools-of-the-Jews like Alex Jones and … Richard Spencer?!?
he is (((((controlled opposition))))) like alex jones, mark dice, trump, lauren southern, richard spencer, they will tell you 15-50% truths and rest is misinformation to brainwash you and keep you in state which jews want you to be (not to wake up and swallow blackpill fully)
Apparently this sort of conspiracy theorizing is contagious, as I can’t help but wonder myself if this little chorus of anti-Semites, all of them relatively new members on Incels.me, are part of an alt-right recruitment squad deliberately targeting angry, troubled men.
Another new recruit, a fellow calling himself rabbiter, kicked back hard at the notion that Peterson was “controlled” anything.
People like Jordan Peterson have helped a lot in moving the Overton Window in the last 3 years or so. We need more people like him. Anyone who criticizes him as “controlled opposition” needs to be sent to a North Korean Gulag.
Unfortunately, I think rabbiter is right that Peterson is nudging the Overton Window rightward — and bringing some of the worst ideas that have been floating around in the manosphere into the mainstream. “Enforced monogamy” is probably not the last terrible incel idea Peterson will bring to his growing audience in the next few months and years as he continues to explore his own inner incel.
Well, this was only a matter of time. The many branches of the alt-right are converging, heads of a single hydra.
So, do these guys realize that in a state of enforced monogamy, they wouldn’t be paired up with super models? Nor would they be able to divorce their wives for getting fat or talking back.
That seems to be Peterson’s thing, wrap reactionary views up in vague language, then claim he’s being being misrepresented when criticized.
I don’t think he’ll be spouting this crap in the next few years. I predict a crash and burn, a “sabbatical”, possibly even a divorce, but at the very least he will look back a few years (or sooner) from now and openly regret many things he said. I predict a spread in the NYT or maybe even a book detailing his brush with the alt-right and how it was alt-wrong.
Assuming this is a reference to LOTR, he does know that character was killed by a woman, right?
I’m sure the name sounded all badass to him, but it was a bit of a self own.
Actually, “career women” or at least women with a college education are more likely to marry, not less and in recent years, at a younger age
http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2010/11/767-college-marriage-gap.pdf
It’s almost like this is a myth perpetuated by dudes who want to scare women away from becoming independent and educated.
Hahahah! Just the other day I was posting about how I had once seen conspiracy theorists accusing Alex Jones of being an NWO agent, and here it is popping up in the manosphere. These chucklefucks are so predictable.
It’s a little thing in light of a lot of terrible bullshit. But do they really think 50% of men never have sex? Or children? Either way it’s absurd on its face. Maybe by age 23 or whatever but jeez there’s a lot of life left dudes.
… Is he aware that Loki, per the myths, is pansexual and genderfluid? Cos I don’t think he though his comparison all the way through.
Just when I thought that Peterson couldn’t be more of an insufferable, intentionally-nebulous douche, he brings in Kierkegaard into the mix. Of COURSE he does. Because Kierkegaard is only understood by about 2% of the people who read him, the infamously arcane philosopher makes a great umbrella to hide your beliefs under, because so very few people can call you out and say “That’s not what Kierkegaard meant at all”. I can only understand a fraction of what that baffling old Dane meant, but I like to think that he was at least a little more positive and utopian than this self-appointed messiah of sad boners.
@ChimericMind
Alternate hypothesis: The majority of the time he was bullshitting, in much the same fashion as Peterson does, and there’s not actually any deeper meaning to understand.
Fuck off wannabe Kermit the Frog.
Peterson’s already walked this back to “I was talking about socially enforced monogamy, not state-enforced”, followed by a lot of evopsych babbling. But that…is what we already have?
Here’s the thing I don’t really get. If a kid got angry because he wanted $20 and you didn’t give it to him, you would’t look around for other ways for your kid to get $20. You’d teach him to learn to deal with not having it. So why, when incels (you know, adult men) are mad because they don’t get sex, is the response not to teach him how to healthily deal with that? The only way this makes any sense is if your basic belief is that sex are entitled to women’s bodies, and that they are essential to the survival of individual men. Which guys like Peterson never admit to believing.
He’s been whining on Twitter all weekend about that article and how it’s misrepresented his views; he never argued this, never said that, yada yada.
This (the post, not the whining) is what I was referring to the other day, when I posted excerpts from the article here: incels (until recently) have been a kind of fringe group, easy to spot, easy to make fun of, when one isn’t vomiting at their sheer awfulness.
JP has a massive audience and cult-like fanbase ($80,000 a month just from his Patreon, ffs) and he is normalising incel ideology and making it palatable for more mainstream people. Guys who would normally point and laugh at incels are lapping up JP on monogamy. They’re all over social media saying “this makes sense, you know.”
Incels might not have much impact on the dating experiences of average young (cishet) peeps. But this might. I don’t really want to think about it.
Any incarnation of Loki would kick Peterson’s ass.
“Enforced Monogamy”
I have no clue why but they’re making me want to go polyamorous. Just to not be around them at all.
Peterson is basically an intellectual ink blot test. He says something vague, weak, and meandering, and his audience takes it and reinterprets it into whatever they prefer.
Like when he says “enforced monogamy”, the incel managed to create an entire new political system where some people could get additional welfare funding in exchange for signing up for some kind of compulsory monogamy scheme.
That’s why he’s so popular. He doesn’t make any sense, but he doesn’t have to — the listener decides what they wanted him to have said.
The more I read about this Peterson guy the more objectionable he becomes. I never thought that someone labelled (with good reason) “The Stupid Person’s Intellectual” would be as truly foolish as to openly embrace incel ‘ideology’, but as thinwhiteduchess points out – wrapping up extremist ideology in vague terms only to plead misrepresentation if taken to task over it is his MO.
I can’t help but wonder if there’s going to be much wiggle-room left as an out from this latest display of “fortuitous” self-indulgence, though. If he sees incels as merely another stream of income from whom nothing dreadful could ever eventuate he’s probably gravely mistaken.
Pushing the window along the wall
Setting him and the rest up for the fall
He’s got humanity’s hangers-on
Clinging to him as a source of brawn
It’s not that simple, as we know
Nobody yet is forced to kowtow
In front of another
For the simple fact that they’re one or the other
It’s just a scrambled-up setback
Cutting the slack
For those who want to coast
On saying they’re the ones oppressed the most
For what reason?
Of course, it’s such a shame
We call it the blame game
It’s never fun
It’s more of a chore, a bore, for real
But we know the deal
They want to push the window down the wall
So people see, more and more
That the idea that something is in store
For anyone who isn’t white, male, cis, straight,
Anything that these fucks hate
Or find suitable for a mate
Is impossible, implausible
And they call it philosophical.
Push the window down the wall
So nobody sees that yes
Yes, there are people pushing away
Pushing down, pushing out
From the chains of constant doubt
Inflicted from above
Through hate they called tough love
Bullshit
Can’t hit
A button to quit
Keep your hands on the controller
Hope to god you can smack down a steamroller
Stand tall, hold on
Before the window is long gone
To the horizon, along the side
Crack the glass and shout
Tell the watchers all about
What they’ve done and what they can do
It’s not all up to you
But a group’s effort is what results
In something stable, standing up to assault
Hold the window, hold the line
Because we’re running outta time
The wall won’t go up anytime soon
Thank the buffoon
Squatting in the Oval Office
When he isn’t in his own towers of gold
Or where the ground’s falling through holes
But the window slid right for him
And it’s moving day by day
We can’t play keep-away
Fast enough
Of this constant assault
On who we are, on who we’ll be
Attack on the legality
Of the rights of humankind
It can’t help you if you stay blind
So keep awake
Don’t take the shake
Make your mistake now
Get it out of the way
There’ll be hell to pay
Down the line
And as we all know there is nothing here that is fine
Reality’s damn bleak
Only what we’ve got in our pockets is sleek
But when we’re given grit and grime
It’s time to make our future shine
Lay it down for the next generation
No matter race, gender, creed, or nation
Plan for tomorrow, fight for today
And no matter what the faces say
You’re real and making an impact
With every single possible act
Take back the window
Yes, it is. It’s turning against incels…and anyone who backs their cockamamie conspiracy theories about sexuality.
And it’s gonna keep right on turning that way, too.
Yesterday on Dispatches From The Culture Wars Ed Brayton did a post on Peterson, calling much of what he writes gibberish. A bunch of Peterson fans showed up in the comment thread, which got so bad it was actually closed, something he generally doesn’t do. And of course a lot of the comments were of the “You’re not quoting him right/you don’t understand him” sort.
The Jordan Peterson subReddit now has a lengthy post addressed to the incels who have been flocking there. It can be summed up as ‘you are not welcome here, you misunderstood, please go away’. It seems even the Lobster People realize that incels are bad news (or at least bad publicity).
Here’s a sample of what “12 Rules” has to say about divorce:
“Was it really a good thing, for example, to so dramatically liberalize the divorce laws in the 1960s? It’s not clear to me that the children whose lives were destabilized by the hypothetical freedom this attempt at liberation introduced would say so. Horror and terror lurk behind the walls provided so wisely by our ancestors. We tear them down at our peril. We skate, unconsciously, on thin ice, with deep, cold waters below, where unimaginable monsters lurk.” Page 118.
I haven’t seen prose that purple outside of Lovecraft.
… Wat
@Robert,
I’m one of those children that he’s so worried about, and once again, he can fuck right off. I’m damn glad my mum was able to walk away thanks to those liberal divorce laws. Those “unimaginable monsters” were in the marriage, and they weren’t lurking.
@tim gueguen,
F.O.A.D
@Mish
I’m also a child of divorce, and while my parents’ marriage wasn’t abusive and the immediate aftermath of their separation sucked for all of us, I’m glad. Because they have both gone on to much happier and more fulfilling relationships, and getting to know my mother outside of the context of that marriage has made our relationship much stronger.
Lifelong marital happiness is wonderful for those who manage it, but three cheers for no-fault divorce, may it last a million years.
Edit to add: here’s another example of that weird conservative inability to get the difference between supporting and promoting a thing, I s’pose. I support abortion and divorce whole-heartedly; doesn’t mean I want everyone to get one, or would necessarily get one myself.