By David Futrelle
I ran across this Tweet this morning from an intrepid Jordan Peterson debunker on Twitter and, well, it’s pretty much spot on:
https://twitter.com/zei_nabq/status/1083015376022224896
For evidence of this, we need look no further than some of the off-the-cuff comments about birth control and the allegedly scary consequences of women controlling their own sexuality that Peterson recently made to a small audience that included, among others, Charlie Kirk, “Bumble Jack” Posobiec, and weirdo MAGA couple Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle at Turning Point USA’s annual Student Action Summit.
As Sam Seder points out in this clip from his Majority Report show, Peterson seems to be pushing the idea that what he sees as feminists’ preoccupation with sexual consent is basically a left-wing “sexual taboo” roughly equivalent to the right-wing “taboo” against gay sex. (Peterson being Peterson, he doesn’t quite come out and say this outright.)
Sam has been taking on Peterson’s nonsense for some time. Here’s another video in which Sam discusses a Peterson appearance on the Joe Rogan show in which Rogan, an oddball in his own right but still pretty sharp, gobsmacks the Canadian beef-eater by pointing out a very basic issue with his promotion of “enforced monogamy.”
While Peterson’s utterances do seem to be getting weirder by the day, he’s been saying awful crap about the often fraught relationship between women and men for years. And for a time, during a sort of pickup artist phase, he did so dressed like a 1930s gangster.
Sam’s got a video on that, too.
And this guy is seen as a leading light in the “intellectual dark web.” It’s really a testament to how fucked up this political moment is that a cornball weirdo like Peterson is taken seriously by anyone at all, much less the adoring throngs that attend his talks and watch his videos and buy his books.
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Its funny only if you believe that men and women care for families equally, which is a societal/biological falsehood. (Although I can see how it fits snugly into your Neo-Marxist utopia where gender is only a construct and their are no biological differences between men and women). I’m married for almost 20 years now and the care for the children is most definitely centred around Mom with myself as a secondary fail-safe. I focus on work while she focuses on family. When our babies were born she took years off while I continued to work, which is the norm for most couples. (although probably not in your hyphenated last name household where daddy drinks soy-lattes and cooks dinner while you take on the world you strong amazon you.) . Its funny when simple truths stare you in the face and yet you still find conspiracy theories of men holding women back in the west. Better get back to your gender studies course before you miss out on another patriarchal conspiracy.
Your NPC attempts at memes are so adorable, almost clever. Almost.
You’re a rube, Jason D. You’re a rube standing in front of Peterson’s Patreon bunco-booth devouring his charlatan’s patter, all the while smugly congratulating yourself on how Really Smart you are compared to the common herd. This empty-headed waffler has been caught again and again coming out with the most egregious bullshit– hell, I just linked to a video where he explicitly states that he thinks that a 1,000+ year old image of human-headed snakes from China is a fucking representation of DNA– but because his garbage comes garnished with a liberal serving of misogyny and right-wing talking-points, so you just gulp it down and bray for seconds like a trained fucking seal.
You’ve been played. All that objectivity, those critical thinking skills you pride yourself on having? They’re not worth anything if you toss them aside when someone plays on your prejudices. What’s that thing your lot are fond of saying? “Facts don’t care about your feelings”? You’d be wise to consider that. But you won’t because, as we’ve established, you’re a rube.
What a garbage article
I love when dudes are like “Uh, actually, women make less money because they choose to??” like that’s the end of the conversation. Why do women choose these less lucrative lifestyles? Do they just hate money? I’m a woman, and I personally like money. It pays for my feminine necessities, like bon bons and lipstick, and can also be used for more frivolous luxuries like the mortgage.
Different lifestyles are not enough on their own to fully explain the pay gap, but they do from part of the picture, absolutely. But that’s half an answer. We need to understand why women and men are making different choices, and if your best answer is shrug women are mysterious agents of chaos, that’s not really good enough.
oooooh bio-troofs!!!!!!
“It’s not sexism, men just don’t feel like taking care of kids.” Yeah, that’s a great argument!
(LOL I’ve never even been to college, doofus. I’m a genuine prole and I still can see through the bullshit.)
“This is just how society works! Except maybe for the parts of society that don’t work that way! Which I disapprove of for no reason given but it’s definitely not sexism, nuh-uh!”
I apologize; I missed the edit window. I see that you do have an answer, and that answer is “biology.” Cool. Do you have some research to back up your assertion that women just innately prefer to spend time in their houses while men (biological fact) like to earn money? Or do you just have your very compelling story about how you and your wife, two (2) people, have chosen to structure your partnership? A story that actually doesn’t say anything about biology?
Oh, and am I actually a feminist if my husband doesn’t drink soy lattes and I prefer to do most of the cooking but he’s more kid-friendly than I am?
Fools rush in indeed.
Welcome to my parlour.
I leave this quote in because you said it, but it’s pretty void of any argument beyond “you’re all a bunch of meanies.” In general, we’ve all addressed these things a thousand times over, and the drive-by of Peterson puppets in the previous page didn’t really give us any reason to think that you were worth more than a giggle.
In short? If you dive into a foreign forum, tell everyone “you’re wrong!” with an air of smug superiority, and are then surprised that the response is hostile? Maybe you aren’t as wise as you claim to be.
Did you actually read that paper?
Says that men are advantaged in poor economies, and the inverse in wealthy ones.
“Aha!” perhaps you cry, “See, reverse sexism!”
Keep reading, my duckling. They measure “advantage” and “disadvantage” through multiple statistics. The “advantage” women get in developed economies is because those societies don’t invest in preventative health care for men as much as they do for women.
(Feminism actually discusses this! When a feminist talks about toxic masculinity, it includes the masculine reluctance to go to a doctor and take better care of themselves – the insistence that they’re tough enough that they don’t need it.)
Keep reading. This paper uses statistics about self reporting. This isn’t problematic per-se, but it does mean that the results are entangled with a lot of things we would like to disentangle. Specifically, social expectations are uncontrolled.
Keep reading. The various metrics they use will lose resolution as they are combined. If a high bias is detected in one metric, but an opposite bias is detected in another one, instead of this sharp distinction being preserved, both are erased. The researchers even mention this happening, specifically, in Saudi Arabia as an example. This creates an illusion of parity.
Here’s a quote:
It is also clear that education is most often the reason for why women and girls fall behind, whereas men’s disadvantage is largely in a shorter healthy life span in the high and very highly developed nations.
This paper is new to 2019 so hasn’t had time to be sufficiently peer reviewed. Older papers from the same authors seem pretty reliable, though, so it sounds reasonable to take as true provisionally. Gosh, I guess we better start working on reducing that macho streak in men or something. It’s harmful!
In short – your erudition needs some work. Don’t think you can just read an abstract and slap it on the table. Some of us actually do this for a living.
Ugh. Where’s your fucking erudition, Mister D? Or do you mean to say that you’re talking about the wage gap without having read the literature first? All of these talking points were thoroughly addressed – in the 70’s. Scientifically. And statistically. If you want to contest them you’re free to, but you have to actually address them, not ignore them.
Lifestyle choices are culturally influenced. MRAs complain, loudly, about how girls are encouraged more in math and science than men, and how they make up a larger proportion of undergraduate classes. But they don’t complain about how women are winnowed out from those courses at an alarming rate, despite having shown the proclivities of success.
This is the point where you say that women can’t hack the rigours of science or some such nonsense, I suspect. Which is funny, because it’s another baseless claim which has been thoroughly studied by actual science. And – guess what – science don’t agree with you.
Feel free to jump into that shark tank if you like, and I’ll gladly give you a schooling.
(yes that’s a double entendre)
No shit they worked, dummy. We’re still here after all.
Know what else worked? Pooping in the river. Farming by stone sickle. Medicine by daubing honey and bread on wounds. I mean, it wasn’t ideal, but it worked well enough that humanity survived, right? Thrived even.
Or maybe pursuing the good means improving ourselves, and we shouldn’t be content with meagre survival.
Or maybe – just maybe – those systems only worked for the people who were in charge, and they were miserable for everyone else, but those people in charge are the ones who wrote the history books.
Take your pick.
I’m curious, you talk about this fifty year experiment, but you haven’t really defined it. What exactly is it that you’re talking about there?
(Incorrect is a single word. The dash is superfluous, Mr Erudite.)
We don’t have a marxist utopia, far from it. That’s just a pathetic jibe and insult of your own, though, so I’ll ignore it.
Do you want me to invalidate one of Peterson’s assertions? Do you have a favourite one? I’d like you to supply one, the assertion of his that you feel is strongest. See, I’ve done this before, but every time I’ve done so I’ll be told that I’m cherry-picking. So you can pick the cherry. Which one would you like me to invalidate?
Aheh, that’s a fun little block of text.
See, my duck, in science we can’t just say X is caused by biology or Y is caused by social forces, we have to actually show it to be the case. And it turns out that showing those sorts of things is really, really hard. So we tend to hedge our bets by saying our conclusions are suggestions, and we basically never talk about anything having an inherent biological background unless we’re – you know – actually fucking biologists. In that case we’d want some microbiologists on our side, or something of the sort, because you can’t say “genetics!” unless you can – you know – actually show which genes.
As for the “lifestyle choices”, that gets really complicated and, again, I’m happy to explain it to you if you like, but I’m sort of curious. And interested.
See, I thought this block of text was fun because you’re sneering at sociologists at the beginning, then you’re supporting sociologists in the middle, provided that those sociologists find the conclusions you like. You did it above too – G Stoet et. al. in “A simplified approach to measuring national gender inequality” are doing sociology. You seemed to like them when you thought they were agreeing with you.
Could it be – possibly – that you don’t really care about the science, and just whether it supports your belief? You’ll happily throw it under the bus if it disagrees, but if you think that the abstract gives you some sort of support you’re all for it. That doesn’t suggest that you’re much of a fan of science. How very erudite.
This blog is about making fun of bigots. He’s a bigot, we makes fun of him. If you want intellectual takedowns, read the white papers; he’s a scientist after all, you can j –
Oh, wait, he’s got almost no actual scientific publications, mostly just lectures and layman’s books. Maybe – if you’d like to challenge yourself – go to google and search “criticism of Jordan Peterson” ? I bet you could find something there that would give you a reply from Jordie P’s field.
Or, y’know, you could keep up your hero worship because he’s saying things you want to believe anyways.
Anyways, looking forward to your reply! Perhaps try the newfangled technology of paragraphs next time. Great for organizing disorganized thoughts into a coherent whole.
Might even reveal that you can’t corral that incoherent mess into something sensible, though. So be careful. Good for personal development at least.
Toodle!
Lets be clear on one thing, I’m not a “Peterson-Type”. I’m 50 years old and successful in both career and marriage (with 4 children and a happy wife) and HAVEN’T given the man one red-cent. I dont need self-help. I do however see some wisdom in some of his exposition. I have strongly suspected some of his assertions to be true which fly in the face of PC norms nowadays. I am increasingly worried that the left will succeed in dividing our society to the point where it is irreversibly weakened and unable to counter the stronger mono-cultural social-collective giant that is China. Please read the paper and get back to me with your thoughts. Its all I ask for.
@Jason D:
Alas, my primary degree is in Electronic Engineering and I also hold an MSc in Software Engineering. I cannot pretend to any qualifications in the esteemed discipline of Gender Studies but I can imagine how an applicant for the Milo Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant might get the two areas of study, as they do with much in life and this world, confused
I’m picturing the sea gulls from Finding Nemo yelling, “NPC! Neo-Marxist! Womens’ studies!”
Lobsters? Not a big fan of those. Why couldn’t we have had a Dungeness crab invasion instead?
@Jason D: *seams
Hey Viscaria,
Wow your world view is going to be rocked:
http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-19763-004?doi=1
AND THIS:
https://ifstudies.org/blog/straight-talk-about-sex-differences-in-occupational-choices-and-work-family-tradeoffs
And this:
https://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-girls-3848156-Feb2018/
I can get more if you want. Read, digest and get back to me if you still think its bullcrap.
And for your information , Sweden is the ultimate showcase for true gender equality and the GROWING gap between the choices genders make in their respective favoured jobs. Yes, thats right, more women are enrolling in socially based work environments given the choice and more men are choosing the STEM fields. Its the gender-equality paradox and it PROVES all that I’ve said above and all that you find so distasteful in it because it doesnt fit snugly into your little Neo-Marxist utopia. Sorry NPC# 10994, You wont have much to say after this.
and
What country do you think most of the commenters here live in?
And, more importantly, what definition of “Marxist” are you using? Because it sure as hell ain’t the actual one:
You’re not just a crappy writer, you’re also a dumbfuck.
I notice that you completely ignored Scildfreja, @Jason D. Hmmm… I wonder why that is….
HMMMMMM…..
Oh gosh, more papers! Is it Christmas again?
You hold tight, @Jason Dee, I’ll do some reading and get back to you. Everyone else: I’m taking bets on how many of these links actually support his position!
Dude, I haven’t been ROCKED THAT HARD in years! WhooOOOOOOOOOaaa!
I don’t want to spend $12 for the study, but the abstract you linked to doesn’t mention biological factors at all. It does include this line, for interest’s sake.
The blog post you linked does suggest sex differences are biological in nature, but doesn’t explain why that’s a more compelling explanation than any other.
The article discussing a study that you linked does not suggest biology is the underlying cause of the fewer female STEM grads in countries with greater gender equality.
Yeah, these types always know, deep down inside, that they’re completely full of shit, and they try so hard to avoid engaging with people who obviously know what they’re talking about.
I’ve found that if you throw a few insults at them first, they’re far more likely to respond; then, once they’re hooked, you can bust out the knowledge and watch them suddenly stop responding to your posts.
It’s a guilty kind of fun to make the stupid little puppets dance….
Scildfreja’s a much better person than me, because she doesn’t indulge in those petty games.
LOL, some of you apparently have time to write grammatically correct novellas in response to my casual little quips. I care could less aboot Gramer or spelingg you pedantic little twates. The information to refute some of your sad beliefs is out there if you are interested in truth. JP backs up all he says with study after study (carefully referenced) if you care to follow it up. I’m going to leave you sad little Neo-Marxists in your pleasant liberal echo-chamber. Please learn Chinese as they will be your new over-lords in about 20-30 years as you folks weaken and emasculate what was once the greatest civilization in the history of the known world. I hope I’m wrong but they do say the next century is Chinese and I hope we survive the lefts attempts to divide/weaken us both by gender and class. iIhope some of you girls can understand and cherish the art of war cuz ya’ll are gonna need it.
Here’s some gems for you to help explode some of your cherished, albeit ill-informed, ideologically driven views:
https://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-girls-3848156-Feb2018/
http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0017364
So long, good luck in your Amazon Utopia!
Jason D could own us all and answer our every argument, but sadly he must now return to his home planet. ? We will never receive his bountiful wisdom.
Perhaps if he had stayed longer, he might have explained to us why careers with a greater percentage of men pay better in the first place, or why the important childcare work his own wife performs is unpaid. Unfortunately, that knowledge leaves with him.
Shorter Jason D:
“I know that I’m utterly incapable of rebutting any of your criticisms of either Peterson’s claims or my own, so I’m going to pretend that I won and flounce off.
“Also, I know that I’m utterly incapable of writing well, so I’m going to intentionally make my writing errors worse so I can pretend that they don’t matter, and that if I were willing to spend a few more minutes of my precious, precious time on my writing, it would be totes perfect.”
I’ll only accept your apology if you try harder in future.
These kind of mistakes are understandable, and only worth pointing out when the writer has an inflated of opinion of themself. You call it “pedantic”, I call it “rigorous”. Such rigour would be useful when, say, linking to a study that you think delivers an awesome truthbomb — you could read the whole of the abstract and see if it actually backs up your assumptions.
“quip: a clever, usually taunting remark”. So you’re reminding readers that you think you’re witty. Combined with your later “NPC” jibes, it also suggests that you’re not here in good faith. Next time, could you make it clear which parts of your post are serious (and deserve a response) and which parts are intellectual trolling (and should be laughed at)?
I summarised your own words, to show how you weren’t saying anything new or inciteful. If you think the result is “neanderthal-like”, you should think more about what you’re saying, as well as how you say it.