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.
phil_w said:
And then she clapped! Her mom was there too, and gave me the thumbs up!
Hopefully I’ll be forgiven this transgression against the comments policy.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Persecution_complex#In_politics
Phil W
one man to another. mansplain means you talk to women like you know about subject you know NOTHING about, or maybe just too much bullshit and she knows about this subject very well or she can see very easily that what you say is bullshit.
basically – mansplaining is behaving like you are a arrogant asshole.
thank you for coming to my TED talk)))
12/10 TED talk, would read again
cough
By the numbers.
Or, society accepts and excuses sexuality from men when directed towards women, regardless of whether the target of that attention reciprocates. The sex work industry is an extension of this.
Society denigrates and rejects sexuality in women, leading to assholes telling women that they don’t have a sex drive, and anything urges they might feel are sinful, anyways.
The scenario I’ve presented is also able to explain the differences in how society views and acts towards sex in relation to gender, and doesn’t rely on unproven biological assumptions. By the principle of parsimony, it should be favoured.
Being in a book doesn’t make it true. George Gilder’s far more famous work is Wealth and Poverty, a neolibertarian trash-fire notable for its gilded blindness to the racism, sexism and classism inherent to unrestrained capitalism.
Notable of his work that I’ve seen is that he cites no sources; they’re all his opinion. He prefers to use rhetoric to promote his ideas. Thing is that they’re popular opinions – turns out that guys rather like being told that they deserve everything. So people adorn him with the air of authority and cite his work.
Kind of like how you speak, really – you’ve done nothing here but voiced opinions, relying on authoritarian appeals to “being an elder” – while having no idea on the ages of the people you’re talking to.
The rest of your commentary here has been well addressed and I find beneath the barest of contempt. I believe you’re a liar with no authority and little to contribute beyond the smug gibbering you’ve spattered across the page.
Give me sources or go home.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Persecution_complex#In_politics
Hopefully I can be forgiven this little transgression against the comments policy. (Although in my defense I’m referring to the political tactic, rather than an actual illness)
When the Russian in the room understands modern English terms better than you, stop digging.
Well, that’s enough of Phil. I banned him.
Surplus, I honestly don’t know what’s happening with eaten comments, etc. I didn’t make any changes and the last wordpress update (applied automatically by Dreamhost) was in February. I’m not sure how to roll back any changes if somehow some got made without my knowledge.
Getting tired of having replies eaten.
Good riddance; I am in no mood to entertain the sort of bloviation Phil favours. “Smug superiority” is my least favourite flavour of ice cream.
Something weird is going on, David. The site isn’t remembering name/email anymore for a good number of us, and some are getting comments eaten. Might be worth talking to your host about!
I’ll get in touch with tech support.
Everyone: if you haven’t already, let me know what issues you’ve been having personally, and when they started.
1) No longer remembers name/email field data
2) Posts don’t show up right away; they take a couple of minutes.
I’m using Chrome version 66 on Android, don’t have any blockers and cookies are enabled.
Edit: This started a couple days ago.
Also, about a month or so ago posts stopped appearing right away in the recent posts section. They take a few minutes to show up there now.
Ok, I’ve retrieved a few comments that got eaten by the spam filter and a few that got sent to trash (not by me). These are problems that happen here periodically, but it’s clear the problems you folks are dealing with now go beyond that.
If you had any comments eaten in the last few days let me know so I can check to see if the spam filter ate them or if they are vanishing due to other problems.
Sorry it’s taken me so long to get to this.
In the future, if you are having technical issues with the site, please email me instead of (or along with) posting in the comments. I’m often behind on reading the comments so I don’t always see it if you report problems there.
kupo, do you mean posts or comments?
Sorry, replace ‘posts’ with ‘comments’ in my message. 🙂
Try some context. Learn to do your research before publishing/re-posting smear campaigns…
On the NY Times & Enforced Monogamy
It’s been a truism among anthropologists and biologically-oriented psychologists for decades that all human societies face two primary tasks: regulation of female reproduction (so the babies don’t die, you see) and male aggression (so that everyone doesn’t die). The social enforcement of monogamy happens to be an effective means of addressing both issues, as most societies have come to realize (pair-bonded marriages constituting, as they do, a human universal.
Peterson is using well-established anthropological language here: “enforced monogamy” does not mean government-enforced monogamy. “Enforced monogamy” means socially-promoted, culturally-inculcated monogamy, as opposed to genetic monogamy – evolutionarily-dictated monogamy, which does exist in some species (but does not exist in humans). This distinction has been present in anthropological and scientific literature for decades.
Whack-a-Troll? ban one and another pops up?
Really? There do seem to be a number of societies that practice polygamy. And a few remain in which all kinship is matrilineal, so there’s no need to determine paternity (each man is responsible for helping raise his sisters’ children.)
What exactly is involved in “regulation” of female reproduction? Does it consist of robust prenatal healthcare and childbirth care, and well-established systems of childcare, in order to safeguard the health and wellbeing of the mothers and the babies? That would certainly prevent a lot of baby deaths!
I don’t quite understand how monogamy achieves this, however? Husbands do not automatically become skilled obstetricians when they are married, as far as I know.
Please elaborate.
@Nathan,
Anthropological findings are descriptive, not normative. He should fucking know that, and the fact that he’s willfully ignorant of the fact is a dead giveaway for how full of shit he is. He’s not an anthropologist, he’s a clinical psychologist. Actual anthropologists and sociologists think he’s full of shit. Here’s one reason why.
The society he’s talking about, American/western European society, already practices enforced monogamy in the anthropological sense. Culturally, we disapprove of non-monogamy, sometimes ridiculously so. Polygamy and Polyandry is not legally recognized and is socially discouraged in almost all cases. (Even if this is morally indefensible)
His original comments on enforced monogamy make no fucking sense if interpreted anthropologically, because we exist in a culture which already has it. He would not be suggesting that enforced monogamy would “solve” the Incel’s problems in an anthropological sense because we already live in a society that enforces it.
His comments only make sense if you use the common form of “enforced monogamy,” as in “forcing women to pair off with men who want sex.”
As I keep saying over the past few weeks to people, learn about what a motte and bailey defense is. Dude’s a squirmy liar of he sort that would make a book-selling creationist shill blush with embarrassment.
Peterson’s an equivocating blowhard that should recall what hard-won knowledge feels like instead of spewing his opinion across the internet like a fertilizer truck. You might think it’s nourishing milk from the tit of heaven, but really, it’s just a spray of horse shit from a rusty nozzle.
I’m just going to leave this here.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/2018/05/25/i-was-jordan-petersons-strongest-supporter-now-i-think-hes-dangerous.html
Allow me.
Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, and Peter J. Richerson. “The puzzle of monogamous marriage.” Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 367.1589 (2012): 657-669.
The puzzle of monogamous marriage
In other words, there are benefits to monogamous cultures compared to polygynous cultures.
(Note, @Nathan, that most cultures are polygynous, historically. Not “almost all are monogamous.”)
There’s nothing wrong with these findings – our society is normatively monogamous, after all.
Why would Peterson be suggesting that we should encourage this? We already have it.
Also, notice that in the above, women are basically a resource to be competed over, and not – you know – actual fucking human beings. Male competition for “brides” reduces inter-male violence, male focus on family support encourages children – women are fucking invisible non-entities in this analysis. Quelle surprise.
The term “enforced monogamy” isn’t often encountered anthropologically, incidentally. It’s encountered biologically. Enforced monogamy is when a experimenter enforces monogamy on a population – usually of beetles or cockroaches – to see what happens. For reference:
Montrose, V. Tamara, W. Edwin Harris, and P. J. Moore. “Sexual conflict and cooperation under naturally occurring male enforced monogamy.” Journal of evolutionary biology 17.2 (2004): 443-452.
Rice, William R., and Brett Holland. “Experimentally enforced monogamy: inadvertent selection, inbreeding, or evidence for sexually antagonistic coevolution?.” Evolution 59.3 (2005): 682-685.
Martin, Oliver Y., and David J. Hosken. “Costs and benefits of evolving under experimentally enforced polyandry or monogamy.” Evolution 57.12 (2003): 2765-2772.
are a couple. Generally, they discuss genital configuration and offspring fitness.
No scientist worth their salt would ever suggest that experiments on flies and fucking beetles should be used as a principle for organizing a society.
That’s what it’s about, @Catalpa! I hope that helps.
@Scild
That implies that he actually knows what hard-won knowledge feels like, or ever did, a proposition for which I have seen no evidence. First, that proposition assumes he actually knows much of anything whatsoever, the only evidence for which is his possession of a degree and a job in academia. This is rather tenuous, as skill at bullshittin and connections to an old-boys network can adequately procure both of these things. Then there is the idea that whatever knowledge he may have took him great effort to acquire, rather than simply skating by with a superficial understanding supported by the aforementioned bullshit. Now if he was a psychiatrist, maybe; a lot of the med/premed program is not nearly as susceptible to bullshit (Ochem is not for the faint of heart, or of will and skull sweat).
Huh. While I was out to dinner, I missed some crucial info. I thought I was a nearly middle aged woman with a genuine sex drive. I was wrong. I’m a young whippersnapper with a fake sex drive. Good to know!
And Nathan, if enforced monogamy is necessary for curbing male violence and we’ve recently gotten away from that, how come violent crime has been going down the last few decades?
I mean, the reason so many women were involved in the temperance movement 100 years ago is because their husbands would get drunk after work, bring home STIs from sex workers, and beat their wives. Kind of like the good old days weren’t that good. But what do I know? I’m just a silly little girl!
Thanks for the explanation, Scildfreja! I’ll admit I was being disingenous in my innocent, curious wonder of, gosh, what on earth could ‘regulating female reproduction’ consist of?
I felt like seeing if I could get trolly-boy here to say his odious views on women more clearly. (I was also curious if he would reveal a pro-life stance and consider abortion to be “causing babies to die”, and that’s why woman’s reproduction has to be regulated out of their control).
I still feel like calling monogamy “regulation of female reproduction” is inaccurate. It’s not like polygyny didn’t also
treat women like objects to be controlledimpose regulation on how women reproduced.