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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That’s exactly what they sound like.
Whoa whoa whoa, you can’t judge Redpill Dr. Phil until you’ve read his book forward and backward, watched all of his videos in one sitting, and accepted that he’s a being of perfect goodness, who obviously meant something totally different any time he said something incorrect or absurd.
I don’t think the author understands the “enforced monogamy” concept although I don’t think Peterson used the term “enforced.” This isn’t about women having to put out when the man wants it. This is about social prohibitions against adultery. This might at the margin partly contribute to maintain marital stability
oh my god this comment section is like the 4chan of the left, it’s actually quite funny. I’m glad google recommended me this blog.
Lol! James D disappears with some bad-mouthing after he’s taken apart like a lobster at a seafood buffet; Bobby B shows up, drops a poop and scuttles off. It’s fun how they all say “Free your minds!” as they repeat the exact same things as one-another.
Try again, Bobby B.
<3 Cat Mara! You've got a great knack for cutting right to the heart of a thing, from what I've seen. You haven't lost your touch.
@moregeekthan, you've got it about right. He dropped some interesting sociological papers that had slightly contentious titles but thoroughly expected contents, expected us to be shocked into submission instead of, y'know, reading. When we called him out on it (Viscaria being the sharpest knife in the drawer) he basically went “weeehhh, lookit all you nerds and your reading!” and flounced. Bobby B up there did the same, just skipped a step.
Fun day so far! 😀
Haven’t you guys got anything better to do with your time than running a critique with find tooth comb for percieved infractions against your beliefs. How about rather than tidying your room you come up with an intellectual narrative that persuades me, the masses, everybody of the veracity of your position.
What an overly sensitive little special snowflake you are. Not really buying that you’re the ubermenschen of the world when you’re too weak to even go toe to toe with us!
I’m not sure you exactly count as an expert on this subject in that you don’t realize he did in fact use the term “enforced,” as you would know if you, for example, actually watched the video of him with Joe Rogan above or, you know, actually knew anything about what you’re talking about.
I know he used the word “enforced” in part because I’ve written several other posts on his use of this term and a lengthy piece on Broadly discussing the issue further. You can find links in the list of “related posts” at the end of this post.
Hey, if any of you notice any technical glitches on this site today let me know; my host just upgraded me to the latest version of wordpress.
Also, if you subscribe to posts by email, let me know if you got an email to my latest post, the one about a terrible copypasta on “thiccness.”
@Katamount:
Yeah, I once ended up in a discussion with two friends after a movie, one who had started following Peterson recently (for definitions of recently based on this discussion being early last year) and one who is is actually both a veteran and starting transitioning.
Believe me, between the transitioning vet who had actually read the legislation in question, and me with more knowledge of how the legal system actually works (not an expert, but enough to know when I need to call an expert), we shut the Peterson support down fairly quickly. As I told him, hate speech isn’t really a crime in and of itself, never has been, and couldn’t be without a full-fledged police state. What it does do is act as a modifier to other crimes such as harassment. And, well, we have lots of evidence of how hard it is to get harassment charges treated seriously anyway.
(The one friend wasn’t a hard-core Petersonian, he just has this unfortunate tendency to find new ideas that seem to explain everything and jump on them without considering that they actually have already-known flaws that are why people didn’t take them seriously. Fifteen years ago it was Persinger.)
Goodness, I’m gone for an hour or two and I miss the massacre.
Oh, and I am TheKND and Scildfreja Unnyðnes is my favourite poster on the Citadel. Now can I punch some MRAs and romance the robot?
…
What do you mean “Joker called dibs?”
It’s called “being sceptical”. Try it, you might like it.
We have this thing called “the scientific method”. It’s not very persuasive because it doesn’t give you the happy-feelies, but it tends to work in the end.
Peterson is ready to have a discussion, unless maybe another “Cathy Newman” wants to misinterpret his words.
Please keep us posted on his reply to your request.
(From the first page, from one of the first trolls David set free.)
…
*raises eyebrow*
Interesting misspelling there….
@Redsilkphoenix
Nice catch. Probably a browser extension that changes trumplings to that.
Also, that nym is calling Michelle Obama a man. So….yeah.
JP trolls have no staying power.
It’s the all beef diet. Ruins your stamina.
@Chip:
You rang?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j3adcbEwSM
Yeah, they remind me of him, too. They’re all apes who’ve read philosophy but don’t comprehend one word of it.
Also, I’ve worn dresses with a higher IQ than these…wait for it…RIGHT WING NPCs.
” iIhope some of you girls can understand and cherish the art of war cuz ya’ll are gonna need it.” [sic]
I understand the art of war, quite well, thank you and I suspect I understand it a lot better than you do.
I’m not a girl, but the girls and women who are my colleagues and (literal) comrades-in-arms [some use “girl” to describe themselves, others use “woman”] also probably understand it better than you do as well.
We don’t “cherish” it but we do cherish thinking critically about it, which I suspect you don’t. Do you think only right-wing people like you know anything about the art of war? Those of your political persuasion are usually not a majority among those engaged in the serious study of warfare.
“Better get back to your gender studies course before you miss out on another patriarchal conspiracy.”
Actually, I think I’ll get back to my graduate course on gender and warfare. Real graduate programs in military history have such things. One cannot understand the patterns of armed conflict without the concept of intersectionality.
WOW just look at all these names. ‘Nick J’ ,’Bobby B’, ‘Jason D’ those just scream sock puppets. any more puppets and there will be enough for a really bad children’s show.
@Kuoo,
Thanks.
And I missed that that nym was a derogatory Michelle Obama reference. I thought it was just a Not Your Shield sockpuppet name instead.
The more you know….
I think my favorite of the tropes these guys use will always be the weird combination of ‘open your mind to new ideas’ combined with ‘don’t be so quick to embrace social experiments like birth control and abolishing slavery, the results might (will) turn out very badly for you!’
Just double-checking, because I’d hate to have accidentally missed some context: did even one of the JPers in this thread point to something specific David got wrong/JP got right, or was it all generalized “Wah, David’s being mean?”
I’m assuming the latter, but before I claim that 100% of JP trolls do that, I want to be sure that it’s not actually only 99% of them.
@Podkayne:
“Open your mind to new ideas…which are in fact failed OLD ideas in a fresh, er, NEW, er, PACKAGING (with an awful lot of holes in it)!”
Yeah, doesn’t sound so good when the Numbskull-to-English translation sets in.