Here's why Jordan Peterson is the f*cking worst.
The Man and His Myths
Jordan Peterson is a highly influential person, particularly with men. Peterson is a conservative "self-help" "guru" who went from teaching psychology at the University of Toronto to being a notorious leader of the 'culture wars' against 'wokeness' or, as we call it - basic human decency. His channel has 6 million subscribers and boasts almost 500 million views (and that's not even including his interviews or other people's uploads of him).
He rose to cult-like fame through his YouTube psychology lectures and his best-selling book, 12 Rules for Life - and as awesome as it is to tell people to clean their rooms and be good listeners, his ideology quickly morphed into one that reinforces hatred, discrimination, and the oppression of marginalized groups via the erasure of their lived experiences.
Jordan Peterson is a man who refuses to engage with compassion and empathy, which is exactly what happens when someone's response to their privileged position being challenged is to punch "down" at less privileged communities.
His content is deliberately and carefully constructed, covertly hiding his bigotry in his beliefs by grounding his claims in supposed psychological and scientific discourse (and leveraging his Ph.D.). But that's the thing; he's claiming science when at best, it's pseudoscience being catered towards a moral panic to spread his hate and division further.
If someone you know is a big-time Peterson defender, it can be hard to challenge some of their talking points without deep-diving into this guy's problematic history. So, here are some examples of the indefensible and outrageous things Jordan has said, believes in, and supports.
His solution to incel violence is "enforced monogamy"
Jordan Peterson endorses the idea that some men are purposely denied sex by women and that conventionally attractive men are 'taking all the sex' from other 'deserving' men.
As a result, he suggests that by assigning women to men and pressuring them to 'settle' and have sex with isolated men, they wouldn't be so "angry at God" and commit acts of mass violence and murder.
This, as well as criticizing birth control and saying that women would be happier if they just "allow themselves to be transformed by nature into mothers," is dangerous rhetoric that reinforces patriarchal violence against women.eg bullet
Peterson is aggressively against Bill C-16 (on adding gender expression & identity)
Jordan Peterson really rose to prominence in 2016 when he spoke out against Canada's Bill C-16, an amendment that added gender identity and expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.
He announced that he refused to be 'forced' to refer to students by their preferred pronouns, wrongfully claiming that misgendering would lead to jail time and that the bill "violated free speech." Here's a reminder that hate speech is not free speech.
His queerphobic tirade, unfortunately, gave him a large audience - Peterson even spoke at a 2017 senate hearing where he said the bill was part of "the propaganda war."
Jordan Peterson is disgustingly transphobic
YouTube has demonetized two of JP's videos where he said that gender-affirming care was "Auschwitz and Nazi medical experiment-level wrong" - comparing trans people getting life-saving care to the Holocaust that took 6 million lives.
In June of 2022, Jordan Peterson was suspended from Twitter after this derogatory comment where he dead-names and misgenders Elliot Page.
This tweet has been corrected because what Jordan Peterson shared was not only hateful, it was also just wrong.
Jordan Peterson believes that society discriminates against straight, white men 🤨
Peterson consistently uses misogynistic rhetoric that claims that "masculinity is in crisis" because of feminism. In fact, he has stated that the historical oppression of women is "an appalling theory" and that feminists have "an unconscious wish for brutal male domination."
JP is also known for using oversimplified facts about animal biology and evolution to create contrived analogies that justify his backwards worldviews. For example, his whole misogynistic argument is that because humans evolved from creatures such as lobsters that exist in strict hierarchies, we, too, are wired to crave rigid dominant structures. Therefore implying that the inequalities that exist in our societies are not wrong but simply 'natural.'
Jordan Peterson is the worst: Rapid Fire Edition
Called Trudeau banning conversion therapy "moral grandstanding."
Believes that if women wear makeup in the workplace and complain about sexual harassment, they're hypocritical and at fault.
Straight up doesn't believe in climate science and said: "there is no such thing as climate."
Believes "that it's necessary for kids to have models [ie. parents] of both sexes."
Stated that Islamophobia is "a word created by fascists and used... to manipulate morons."
Believes white privilege is "a Marxist lie."
It's giving covert narcissism disguised as "but i have a PhD in psychology"
What Peterson is doing is deciding that he is the expert on everyone. He refuses to accept that other people have different lived experiences, especially people who aren't cis-het white men.
He blatantly denies systemic inequities because how could they exist if he has never faced any?
Instead of engaging with a willingness to learn and seeking to understand, he has picked a path that allows him to remain the expert. On this path, he gets to put on a face of bravado rather than admit he's afraid.
Peterson is afraid cis-het white men aren't the be-all-end-all anymore, and rather than doing the work, he's chosen to remain stagnant - clinging to an era that had white men in charge of and experts in everything, which is almost hilarious considering the considerable power cis-het white men still today.
Final Thoughts: We don't wanna hear 'but he has good ideas too'
Whenever we mention Jordan Peterson, we always get comments about how "some of his points make sense," but here's the thing: JP deliberately uses his history in academia to give his hateful and inaccurate beliefs credibility.
We live in a period of change, and as such - we have a choice to cling to the past or evolve with the times. Talented/intelligent people can be really horrible people. What do we as a society want to be known for? Clinging to the past or evolving so everyone can feel like they belong?
Ask yourself this: If someone is perpetrating harm, even if they are good at other things, should they continue to have a position of influence that allows them to harm people? And if the answer is yes - aren't we saying that we deem the occasional good idea from this person as more important than the community they are harming? Doesn't that make us part of the problem too? What really is the difference between Peterson and Kanye West? Why are we holding Kanye accountable but not Peterson?
