I think this article by Robyn Pennacchia comes closest to explaining Peterson’s appeal. There are a lot of meaty quotes in there if you want to see the evidence, including a great summary of his bogus transgender pronoun complaint, but the conclusion is excellent.
Peterson is telling young men the story they want to hear about themselves and the world around them. That they are “individuals,” that hierarchy and inequality are not bad things, that we live and have always lived in a meritocracy. That people aren’t clamoring for equality because they are good people who want people to be treated fairly and decently, but because they want to manipulate them and put them in gulags. That women are going to be just fine with jumping back into “traditional” gender roles and give them their patriarchy back. That women will not be put off by misogyny. That soon they will be living in a world where they can insult people — and yes, refusing to use someone’s preferred pronoun is insulting to them — and there will be no social consequences for that. That, rather than having enjoyed unearned privileges and advantages, those who have risen to the top of our societal hierarchy did so because they were simply the hardest and best workers. Because they were simply lobsters with more serotonin.
It’s an overly simplistic — and often intentionally vague — worldview that intellectualizes the basest id impulses of men, largely white men, who feel that they have been disadvantaged by the recent successes of white women and people of color and now feel left behind. He tells them they are logical, rational, critical thinkers — heroes, in fact. Even by doing things like talking a lot about the importance of IQ, he sates their desires to feel important and special. Take a moment and think of all the men you’ve ever met who were not doing much with their lives but very much wanted to talk to you about how high their IQ is (even though that’s ridiculous because most people probably don’t even know their actual IQ, for a variety of reasons). This is a thing. He doesn’t have to tell them they have a high IQ (because everyone thinks they have a high IQ), he just has to talk about how it is important, and that makes them feel good.
The thing is, he’s promising these men a world they actually cannot have without the permission of other groups of people. He’s not doing them any favors. If he really wanted to help these “lost men,” he’d help them thrive in the actual world they live in, rather than the way they want the world to be. He’d help them learn to adjust to a world in which the old hierarchies have been dismantled and understand that they’re no more entitled to be at the top of a hierarchy than anyone else is. Or help them learn how to function and love and improve themselves without needing to base that on being “better” than someone else, how to deal with the world in which women don’t want traditional gender roles, and help them to understand that life isn’t a zero sum game in which if someone who has been oppressed gets a right you have, you automatically lose something.
That last paragraph is familiar. It’s the same thing feminists have been saying to men, that everyone has been saying to MRAs, for years: the patriarchy is not your friend. A hierarchy that puts undeserving white men at the top does no one any favors. It’s almost a Petersonian thing to say, that if you want respect, you have to straighten up and earn it…and it’s ironic that his career is all about promising the opposite, that if you’ve got status, you must have deserved it, so don’t let women and minorities make you work for it.
Excellent summary. Is it too soon to refer to Petersonism as a religious cult? The summary shows it has all the hallmarks of other religions.
One of the key messages is that the world is not a zero-sum game. And that is a fortunate fact.
Ugh, oh! You just made a disparaging post about Jordan Peterson! GIRD THEY LOINS FOR THE ONCOMING DUDE-BRO ONSLAUGHT!!!
EDIT, that should have been…
GIRD THY LOINS…
Peterson in a rodeo outfit, riding a lobster over the waves, that made my day.
The article is good too.
Pretty much every statement in that quoted summary is an ignorant caricature of what is being said. It’s disappointing that it is being so mindlessly reproduced here, by supposedly “scientifically-minded” and “reasonable” people. It’s a great example of confirmation bias and herd behavior, though.
@ Akira MacKenzie, #3
And it only took 6 comments. That was fast.
I can’t help but notice that Peterson’s thralls seldom come right out and say what is “being said,” that we’re supposedly ‘caricaturing.’
Then give us the brainwarp version of what is being said. We’re ignorant. You’ve got the knowledge. Aren’t you disappointed that we don’t have it? So share it with us. If you have nothing worthwhile to say, would it be alright if I thought some of Peterson’s defenders are like that?
brainwarp @6:
Call that a caricature? This is a caricature.
Lol, everytime I post on a Peterson video on youtube, all the fan boys say the exact same thing. “You are just too dumb to understand what he is saying”…..yea, some of it is such word salad that it doesn’t actually make sense, but the parts that do are patently stupid.
>> Then give us the brainwarp version of what is being said.
I’m just giving you a hint, the onus is still on you to verify, *if you care*. If you prefer to just take it on faith that Peterson is just this strawman, feel free.
>> We’re ignorant. You’ve got the knowledge. Aren’t you disappointed that we don’t have it?
No, I fully expect you to be ignorant, that’s fine. You’re a random reader/commentator, not Myers, who I’d prefer to have some integrity.
>> So share it with us. If you have nothing worthwhile to say, would it be alright if I thought some of Peterson’s defenders are like that?
I don’t actually care what you think, feel free to stereotype me and everyone else you don’t want associate with.
@brainwarp #s 6 & 11:
You’re here defending the nuance of a man who openly advocates socially and/or governmentally legitimized rape?
What the fuck could one possibly do to such a man’s opinions to bring unwarranted opprobrium upon him?
PZ Myers was reading my mind.
Yesterday there was an invasion of Peterson Pod people on dispatches for a Peterson smackdown and it generated 892 comments before being shut down.
Those people were just plain very stupid and very scary.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2018/05/19/the-vapid-sexist-world-of-jordan-peterson/#disqus_thread
Trigger warning. The Peterson fanboys are truly scary people. I only read 10% of the thread and gave up.
Today I spent some time with Google reading up on Peterson.
No matter how disgusting and horrible you think he is, he is far worse.
Jordan Peterson is a conperson reflecting people’s hate and bigotry back to them for big bucks. Guy is at least a sociopath if not a psychopath.
>> You’re here defending the nuance of a man who openly advocates socially and/or governmentally legitimized rape?
See, I’m not under the impression that this actually happened. I’m interested though, what are the actual statements that this is based on?
>> What the fuck could one possibly do to such a man’s opinions to bring unwarranted opprobrium upon him?
I see people confabulating wild mischaracterization about him, then proceed to draw nonsensical conclusions that. It’s not that I’m surprised or bothered by that, it’s that I *expect more* from people like Myers.
You gave me no hint. What’s his work like? It is sort of like the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, but a thousand times more verbose? Like the Book of Revelation, with fewer hilarious puns? Or is it like something else? A clown car crashing into a burning sewage treatment facility, perhaps? Those would be hints, and there would be something fairly definite for me to verify about it.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Jordan-Peterson-seen-as-misogynistic
The poster below on quora has some Peterson quotes. I normally don’t like to copy other people’s comments but in this case it’s important enough that I will with attribution. The sources are at the original article reached by the link.
My replies are in bold.
Riley May
Answered May 4, 2018 · Author has 70 answers and 83.4k answer views
Because he says things like:
..women have a subconscious wish for brutal male domination
This is bullcrap. He doesn’t know this.
..that it’s unfortunate that men can’t control women who say crazy things because they aren’t allowed to hit them
How about crazy men like Peterson. We aren’t allowed to hit them either.
Peterson admires violence and is frustrated that he can’t be violent towards women.
Guy is a sick puppy.
..young women are outraged because they don’t have a baby to suckle
Gibberish. He doesn’t know this. It’s just a misogynistic insult.
..if a woman doesn’t want to have kids, there’s something wrong with her
Gibberish. It’s an opinion or an assertion without proof. It’s also wrong.
It’s a sick puppy thing again.
..and says “The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.” – despite women lacking basic human rights and legally being owned by men throughout history
True and blatantly obvious.
..says stuff like “Men cannot oppose pathological women because chivalry demands they keep their most potent weapons sheathed” on twitter
That violence thing again. I would be very surprised if Peterson doesn’t have a history of violence against women, children, and pets. Anything smaller and weaker than himself.
There is lots more. Pages and pages of sick garbage like this.
No matter how ugly and vicious Peterson seems, the reality is going to be far worse.
Nuh uh. You misinterpreted all that.
Ah, poor Sam Harris! He put so much effort into building a rabid fan base and Peterson just swoops in and steals all of them.
More sick puppy misogynistic bullcrap from Peterson.
Peterson is also a control freak. He thinks he is entitled to control and police women.
And when they say NO he goes ballistic.
Peterson …and moving on to calling women who wear makeup and heels at work and don’t want to be sexually harassed “hypocrites.”
Guy wants to police women’s bodies, women’s lives, and women’s dress.
Hey Peterson!!! It’s none of your damn business what a woman wears, her makeup or none, or her shoes. Fuck off creep!!!
To put it another way, I don’t give a rat’s ass if Jordan Peterson wears a dress and high heels or combat boots and a camo T shirt. None of my business and no interest whatsoever.
@brainwarp, #14:
Well, I thought you were the informed one, but I guess not. Since apparently you need help, here you are:
At least one woman must not be allowed to reject men who might kill. It’s not clear if the “enforcement” would be social or governmental, but it’s clear that “enforced” means non-consensual, since it wouldn’t have to be enforced if a woman wanted it.
It’s also clear that this isn’t merely a matter of establishing consequences for “cheating”. The man couldn’t get sex. The man must get sex in order to not murder. Someone should enforce “monogamy” the result of which is that the man who wasn’t getting sex now gets sex.
Really, I don’t know why I’m explaining it, it’s all right there. Men are violent thugs if they don’t get laid. Men’s access to sex with women should therefore be “enforced”.
This is pure Peterson. No one is forcing him to talk about the Toronto killings. The only reasonable conclusion from the entire context is that this isn’t self-satire but rather something he actually believes…
…and whether he believes it or not, he clearly has openly advocated it to the New York Times.
This is true but way too polite.
Peterson is a conperson reflecting peoples hate and bigotry back to them!!!
He is a demagogue.
And doing it for money. The guy is making reportly $50-80,000 a month.
We see this every day. He is no different than Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump, the entire Fox NoNews operation, Breitbart, and the rest of the alt-right fascists.
When you actually start looking at what he says, it’s just gibberish and drivel. He’s not even bothering to try to prove any of it. It’s just insults and assertions without proof or data. He also writes obscurely and long windedly in an attempt to fool people that he actually has something worthwhile to say. He doesn’t.
@6 brainwarp: They’re not caricatures. If you think so, it’s plain you did not actually understand what Pennachia was saying, because that’s basically a strawman version of her arguments. It’s your prerogative to remain ignorant of the actual discussion if you like, of course, if you don’t mind confirmation bias. But if you care to do better, you will have to re-read more carefully.
>> Really, I don’t know why I’m explaining it, it’s all right there.
It’s really not, you’re confabulating. “Enforced monogamy” means you only get to have one partner. Our society already enforces monogamy at the legal (“marriage”) level and to some degree frowns upon men with multiple simultaneous relationships. In other countries, having multiple wives is entirely accepted.
Having said that, I think the idea that monogamy can be enforced is nonsense and I doubt Peterson is advocating for any laws here. At no point is there advocacy to *force* women into involuntarily marriages.
You “doubt”? You don’t know, one way or the other? Are you unfamiliar with the work of the person you are accusing others of being unfamiliar with? Seems since you claim to know his work, you should be able to know whether he does or does not advocate this. And you should be able to back up your claims with things like quotes.
Yet you don’t. This suggests you can’t. Prove everyone wrong.
brainwarp
Why are you not using HTML?
>>
is kinda stupid when you could use <blockquote>
“Enforced monogamy” means you have to have one partner.
You have to take it completely out of the context of discussing the Toronto murders to possibly read it any other way. Toronto man has no sex partner, the cure for that is “enforced monogamy”. How does having no sex partners get cured by “enforced monogamy” that merely
That doesn’t matter. I said “socially and/or governmentally enforced”. Even under the “no new laws” interpretation, my statement is perfectly accurate.
@23: That’s hilarious. Tell me another one, browneye.
Seriously, that’s Donald Trump’s Press Secretary level spin.
brainwarp @23
This just doesn’t jibe well with
The only way I can make sense of “enforced monogamy” in the context of the Peterson quote is that he expects women to somehow be forced into marriage. Your interpretation just doesn’t fit.
Is there a support group for those banned from PCC(E)’s mutual admiration society. I had taken some potshots at the top lobsters such as Pinker, Harris, and Peterson without incident, but last straws were apparently questioning the bogey construct of “victimhood culture” and ironically snarking: “Atheism is as much about identity, ressentiment, victimhood, and grievance as any other self-categorization.” Followed by: “And we without the slightest hint of irony will harp on religion as a great instigator of conflict: Northern Ireland, Islam vs. West, annoying proselytizers knocking at our doors. Lose religions and conflict seeking remains with us.” Oops.
And on the royal wedding hatefest I perhaps mistakenly asked: “Is meritocracy much better than hereditary aristocracy given the accidental nature of fortune and and bequeathal of inheritance? Sure there are rags to riches stories, but Gates and Jobs had a leg up in the world. The US has its political, economic and celebrity dynasties.”
Issue was taken with that and I asked if he had read Raoul Martinez’s book Creating Freedom a book he had previously recommended on da blog that ripped into notions of meritocracy. Oops.
Anyway please have sympathy. I am somewhere in Kübler-Ross’s stages here and I am from what I read in good company. I am not much for towing anyone’s party lines and find it ironic given that every speech act is sacred. Enough of that. Over it and laughing.
More topical:
http://sds.utoronto.ca/blog/bill-c-16-no-its-not-about-criminalizing-pronoun-misuse/
Though my identity as atheist causes resent when I read Peterson say in Maps of Meaning:
“Our systems of post-experimental thought and our systems of motivation and action therefore co-exist in paradoxical union. One is “up-to-date”; the other, archaic. One is scientific; the other, traditional, even superstitious. We have become atheistic in our description, but remain evidently religious—that is, moral—in our disposition. What we accept as true and how we act are no longer commensurate.”
Which is basically the same mistake Gould makes in Rocks of Ages.
Crap, my comment not only ended up with borked blockquoting, but I also somehow copied in the wrong quote for the first blockquote and left out a paragraph when copying over from the word processor to the submissions box. The comment should read as follows:
“Enforced monogamy” means you have to have one partner.
You have to take it completely out of the context of discussing the Toronto murders to possibly read it any other way. Toronto man has no sex partner, the cure for that is “enforced monogamy”. How does having no sex partners get cured by “enforced monogamy” that merely
That doesn’t matter. I said “socially and/or governmentally enforced”. Even under the “no new laws” interpretation, my statement is perfectly accurate.
At no point is there advocacy to *force* women into involuntarily marriages.
There is no current “attempt”, I suppose, but there is open advocacy of the concept. Which is what I said.
I didn’t say he was “attempting”, I said he was “openly advocating”.
Are you now claiming that the New York Times is lying when it claimed that his advocacy of “enforced monogamy” came in the context of him finding a “solution” to murderous thugs rampaging after not getting laid?
Read this again:
there’s even more confirmation that he is talking about enforced distribution of women to men previously rejected in this paragraph which I had not yet quoted:
Unless the New York Times is lying about what he said, he does indeed concede that he’s attempting to create “equality of outcomes” – in other words, every man gets a woman to fuck, even if no woman wants to fuck a specific man.
So, back to basics. How, precisely, does one “make sure those men are married”? Peterson provides the answer, “enforced monogamy”. For the clueless, if one is going to “make sure” that “men are married” who have been universally rejected, society and/or the government must force one of the people rejecting these men to marry such a man – one each, until all the potential murderers are married. This is the plain english language meaning of both his words and the New York Times article’s characterization of his words. There is no “confabulation” on my part.
Now, answer the original question: when a man advocates socially and/or governmentally legitimizing rape, why are you defending the importance of “nuance” in interpreting exactly how he’s going to go about “enforcing monogamy” as you do by high-mindedly doubting that this “enforcement” advocacy equates to “advocating for any laws”?
If you do without the laws and simply encourage the population to enforce this without government codification, you may take away some bureaucratic heartlessness, but that also means that the people who do the “enforcement” are going to be emotional about it. This is what you have in places where acid attacks are used to enforce monogamy where the government isn’t involved.
Fuck that shit. That’s not nuance, that’s just accountability avoidance.
Even you reject the idea of enforcing monogamy, yet you’re pretending this man’s public/social policy ideas are remotely moral. Get a clue.
good info, thanks chigau
Yes, I doubt. It’s a good thing, you should try it sometimes!
I am familiar and I’m not aware of any statements to that effect, certainly not in that article. I haven’t witnessed every single statement he ever made though, nor can I read his mind, so I can’t rule it out either.
This sounds like a caricature of what he says. Peterson’s message is actually much more benign. In his 12 steps book, his message really is in the spirit of something like:
– Life is hard and the world is unfair but you can still make something of yourself and lead a meaningful life.
– Don’t compare yourself to others, but take responsibility for yourself.
Really, just good solid advice for young people. Completely uncontroversial, unless you compare it to stuff coming out from certain progressive circles. Things like:
If you’re in a privileged group:
– You suffer from an original sin that can never be washed away but for which you have to repent.
– You can never really truly earn anything because it will only be at the expense of the non-privileged.
If you’re in the non-privileged group:
– Anything negative in your life, anything you didn’t achieve, or anything you don’t have is not your fault – the world is against you.
This kind of messaging is toxic and breeds resentment.
brainwarp @23, I see.
So, do you seriously dispute Peterson characterised the purported problem (1) and proposed a putative remedy (2) as follows?
1. 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.
2. “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.”
You point out that our society already enforces monogamy at the legal (“marriage”) level even though you think the idea that monogamy can be enforced is nonsense.
Since you find Peterson persuasive, so presumably you concur with his (1), but you’re making a couple of points that shows the vacuity of his (2): his proposed remedy is already in effect, and also it can have no effect on the number of available women to otherwise horny and violent men since at no point is there advocacy to *force* women into involuntarily marriages.
Comes across as pretty silly, no?
(With admirers such as you to defend him, he doesn’t need critics)
The NY times article is at least obviously biased against him, you can read Jordan’s own take on this particular thing here:
https://jordanbpeterson.com/uncategorized/on-the-new-york-times-and-enforced-monogamy/
This “redistribution of sex” doesn’t imply “every man gets a woman (by force)” as you say, just like “redistribution of wealth” doesn’t means that everyone gets the exact same amount of money. Again, I think the idea is nonsense, but If one argues for more financial equity, why not argue for more sexual equity? Why not encourage women to donate sex to unfucked men?
Now that shit is a fucking caricature, but a very common one made about progressives.
I do not suffer from some original sin because I was born white, passable for completely straight, and cis. This shitty society is what confers me specific advantages/privileges that I did not earn and cannot be free of without the complete destruction of this shitty society. The duty of anyone actually seeking justice for all is to become aware of how this shitty society confers these privileges on them against their will, and, if possible, to use those privileges to elevate the voices of those without privilege in the fight for justice.
A: “You are a child of the Universe, you have a right to be here.”
B: “You are a fluke of the universe, you have no right to be here”
brainwarp @35:
Because women are people who have the right to make their own decisions about their sexual partners. Money is an inanimate object that has no capacity to choose anything. If you need to be told that, you’re proving everything we say about Peterson and his fanboys right.
The word is right there as a part of “enforced” you dumb bastard.
Peterson, alongside Stephen Fry (!) recently did a debate on “Political Correctness” vs Michael Dyson and Michelle Goldberg. IMO worth a watch just for the literally awesome Dyson. Sorry if I messed up the link.
I did mess up the link. It’s at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxYimeaoea0
>This shitty society is what confers me specific advantages/privileges that I did not earn and cannot be free of without the complete destruction of this shitty society.
The level of subtlety between my ‘caricature’ and your characterization is so slight it may as well be non-existent – and it is certainly lost in articles, debates and conversations that are happening as everyone will have their own tiny spin on the idea. Why not just say we’re saying the same thing?
1. My premise is that “enforced monogamy” is not equal to “enforced marriage” and does not lead to “enforced marriage”
2. Therefore, “enforcing monogamy” does not lead to “marriage by force”, despite the fact that the word “enforce” does contain the word “force”.
That insult would be far more impactful if it came from a person with basic reading comprehension.
@microraptor:
I was going to comment about exactly that line, but I think you’ve got it covered.
On related topics, I love how brainwarp seems to think that Peterson’s statement is a defense against exactly what I asserted:
So, let’s summarize. Men get frustrated when they are not competitive in the sexual marketplace (note: the fact that they DO get frustrated does not mean that they SHOULD get frustrated. Pointing out the existence of something is not the same as justifying its existence). Frustrated men tend to become dangerous, particularly if they are young. The dangerousness of frustrated young men (even if that frustration stems from their own incompetence) has to be regulated socially. The manifold social conventions tilting most societies toward monogamy constitute such regulation.
How is it possible, that in Peterson’s own words “manifold social conventions regulat[ing]” women’s behavior such that (more) unfuckable men get fucked and backed up with the threat of random murder don’t constitute
Let’s imagine this in practice, shall we?
Please.
But moreover, Peterson’s language only emphasize his fundamental immorality. Permit me to repeat:
Even if we accept all that as true, look at what he’s saying: Men are dangerous, therefore we have to regulate women.
I don’t give a fuck if it’s social regulation, religious regulation, or codified governmental regulation by statute. You’re taking the murderous violence of certain people to impose consequences on people who aren’t the murderously violent jerks themselves.
You don’t get to punish me because Karen down the street drove her car 75 in a 35 zone. You don’t get to punish women – you don’t get to take away ANY freedom from women at all, using governmental or social means – because certain men are violent. You don’t even get to punish the non-violent men because certain men are violent.
THIS IS IMMORAL.
What is so broken in you that you can’t see that?
Didn’t close the anchor tag. Sorry. This is a bad day for me and HTML tags, I guess.
Brainwarp @ 43
I’m still unclear, what do you actually think he means by “enforced monogamy”? How would the application of your interpretation alleviate this problem:
Many others here have given their interpretation which leads to forced marriage. Don’t be coy, what do you think he means?
Encouraging someone to do something still leaves them to make their decision, so that objection is invalid!
Money doesn’t redistribute itself, if you argue for financial equity, you have to convince *people* as well!
Even if your point had any merit, this would still be a non-sequitur.
brainwarp @35, that link is a gem.
See, he was just using well-established anthropological language, which has nothing to do with actual enforcement. Humans should not bow down to their evolutionarily-dictated non-monogamy, but should overcome their nature for the sake of peace.
<snicker>
What a wanker.
Yeah, except he didn’t say “encouragement” did he? By his own admission, he said “enforcement”. I don’t give a fuck what power he’s in favor of using to “enforce” his preferred system, you don’t get to lie and call “enforcement” mere “encouragement” without people noticing how ethically bankrupt that switch is.
“Many others” also seem to have a strong confirmation bias to believe the most damaging interpretation.
I’ve already explained what I think he means, I’ve also given a link where Jordan goes into the matter, so I don’t understand why you call me coy.
Don’t get hung up on the term, it really is a scientific term referring to animal behavior. You can look it up on Google Books.
Even if you take Peterson’s “enforced monogamy” to mean “enforced by social convention” instead of, you know, enforced, it’s still not a good look.
Observed problem: Some men are going on murder sprees because women won’t fuck them.
Normal person’s proposed solution: Perhaps we could educate these men to understand that they aren’t entitled to women’s bodies.
Peterson’s proposed solution: Nah, let’s just “persuade” women that they have an obligation to fuck men who aren’t getting any.
Brainwarp @50
Sorry, I missed the link. I still fail to see how that would work in practice without making people pair up against their will. Whether it’s a legal requirement or just social pressure that brings it about you still end up with people in relationships they want no part of.
I also fail to see how it’s a solution to the proposed problem of violent men, the only net result I’d envisage is some poor woman being exposed to such violence on a regular basis up close and personal. I also note you think the idea that it can be enforced is nonsense anyway. So I’m kind of left wondering what is it you see in this guy’s thinking in the first place?
I think the debate over “enforced” vs “encouraged” has distracted from the fact that, regardless, the idea is utter lunacy to begin with.
@brainwarp:
Imposing consequences on one person (like any woman in the world and every other person in the world except one man) because one other person (who happens to be a man) commits a violent crime (or is likely to do so) is FUCKING IMMORAL.
What is so hard to understand about that? The very fact that he’s looking to impose consequences, social or otherwise, on innocent parties in order to address the violent behavior of guilty parties is fucked up beyond comprehension.
And if Peterson is using a technical term from literature about non-human animal behavior, why the fuck is he doing that when humans are by definition not non-human animals?
Further, extrapolating animal psychology research into human social policy is an enterprise fraught with dangers and which Peterson has already proven he does badly. He should know better, and you shouldn’t be accepting the bullshit excuse that insisting he was just talking about doing what hyena’s do is somehow a defense of the morality of his social prescriptions.
And further to the further, if we’re just taking the meaning from the zoological/animal psychology literature the “enforcement” being discussed includes things like fucking biting to injure. That’s violence, in case you hadn’t noticed.
So don’t get hung up on the word “enforcement” and its non-scientific connotations. instead, if you want to actually understand what Peterson is saying, look up an actual scientific definition of the term, such as here, on Page 16:
That’s also not just just advocating that people don’t commit adultery. That is, in fact, exactly what I’ve been saying all along and is in contradiction with what you’ve said. Why are you ignoring the evidence and ignoring what Peterson actually said?
Oh, right:
So you can’t be bothered to look up what “enforced monogamy” means on google books because that might lead to a clear meaning that violates your premise, which confuses “enforced marriage” with “enforced access to women’s vaginas” to your rhetorical advantage.
I said at the beginning, and you contested, that Peterson “openly advocated” using social and/or governmental power to legitimize rape. One animal being “forced into monogamy by the coercive actions of the partner” is, when the animals in question are human beings, rape.
What the fuck is your problem with my statement, when the definition that you and Peterson both insist upon using clearly meets the definition of rape?
And yet brainwarp insists that the ideas of Captain Nuance are being treated unfairly. It’s astoundingly idiotic.
Matrim @53: It shows just how bad braindrain realizes his position is: his arguments hing on people not scrolling up the page to see that he keeps contradicting himself and backpedaling every single time he’s called on something.
Hey, I can put on my Peterson fan cap — it’s two sizes too small, so it constricts blood flow to the brain sufficiently. Here we go… <snap>
So, Word of God:
Since this is incontrovertible, and it’s also Word of God that ““Enforced monogamy” means socially-promoted, culturally-inculcated monogamy” is an intelligent comment, from which follows that socially-promoted, culturally-inculcated monogamy is a cure for incels being angry at God because women are rejecting them.
(I’m feeling cleverer already!)
So socially-promoted, culturally-inculcated monogamy stops the anger at God, anger due to women rejecting them. This surely means that socially-promoted, culturally-inculcated monogamy will stop women from rejecting incels — whereby the category will –poof!– disappear. But how?
Ah… women reject incels because they have other options, and since the ratio of men to women is approximately 1 to 1 socially-promoted, culturally-inculcated monogamy must mean that any woman has at most one man available (it goes the other way too, but by definition an incel would be perfectly happy with more than nothing) and so the pool of potential non-rejecting women will increase. Hopefully, sexually-frustrated women.
…
Sorry, can’t do it. Stupid stupid hat.
(Didn’t even get to the serial monogamy or promotion of gaydom jokes :|)
brainwarp:
Because women are people, autonomous humans, and sex is not a charitable donation. The fact that you think haranguing women to “donate” pity sex tells me much more about you than I’d care to know. Any man can easily avail himself of sex, as much as he wants, if he pays a sex worker. So we already know, this ain’t about sex.
Let’s turn this around a bit. Many men who have great difficulty in obtaining a sex life, often self-determined to be an incel, are often quite violent in their expressions, writing, and actions. Perhaps you should encourage such men to castrate themselves, surgically or chemically. Would that be okay? After all, I’m not going the enforced route. Just noisy encouragement. Why not get rid of their frustrations so they could focus on the rest of their life?
(For the hard of thinking, no, I do not advocate the above in any way.)
As you’re here to sorta kinda defend Peterson, it’s no surprise you’ve shown zero ability to think things through, any more than Peterson. Does it not occur that if all of a sudden, *puff of magic* there’s a large pool of women willing to “donate” sex to such men, that nothing would be solved? In the end, this is not about sex. It’s about relationships. As stated above, many of these man are already disposed to be violent, and have little resource to call upon when they find themselves in an unwanted condition. When such a man is provided with pity sex, how long would it be before the fact that it was pity sex start fueling enormous resentment? Such a man is likely to be grasping, possessive, jealous, and prone to violence. How long before the violence comes bubbling out, and the woman ends up paying for that, most likely with her life? And none of this would cut down on the possibility of mass violence happening, either, as all that anger and resentment bubble over. These men have constant, enduring complaints about women. They don’t know their place, they’re uppity, they need to be modest, shut up, provide sex on demand, and sit in the corner the rest of the time. These men also often write about how they should have access to the “Stacys“, meaning all the beautiful women out there. They aren’t interested in any “plain Janes”. This is a sense of aggrieved entitlement run amok.
Such men rarely bother to turn introspective, or even entertain the idea that if they have problems when it comes to relationships, there could very well be something wrong with their attitudes or behaviour; it’s always women’s fault they can’t have what they want and fantasize about. And most of what they do want is fantasy. Relationships aren’t easy – even when they feel like the most natural and wonderful thing in the world, they aren’t easy. These are men with little inner resource to cope with all the bumps in any given relationship. They aren’t overly interested in give and take, they are preoccupied with take, and what a woman might be able to give.
These are the men Peterson defends as alright, nothing wrong there, nope. Peterson thinks it would be grand to force a woman to be compliant to such a man. Peterson views women as objects, handy masturbatory toys to hand over to a frustrated, angry, resentful man who is prone to be violent. What you are both defending and advocating is beyond disgusting, and that really shouldn’t need to be explained to anyone.
Why is enforced monogamy the best solution? Surely one woman could keep many incels satisfied, thereby saving other women from having to do something they didn’t want? Of course it would be a full-time job, and she would need to be paid…
I am trying to read this thread and listening to a debate about political correctness in which jordan peterson is a participants
he really is a right wing hack what ever he else he is. he is a defender of the way it has always been and just can not admit seeing it as any other way.
he is really a small conceited man with just resentment
to bash with
uncle frogy
Especially since a great deal of the rest of his shtick seems to involve complaining about how horribly unfair and repressive “political correctness” (i.e. encouraging decent behaviour by social convention) is…
it seem to me that it is fundamental, the conservative mind sees the way it is and has always been as society they so identify with the way they thought it was that any perceived change is seen as the threat of utter destruction. They fail to grasp the fact that all societies are based on an agreement it is not based on hard and fast unchanging all wise rules. That agreement is a living thing and is negotiated with every interaction in every individual and it changes over time, all of it. to try and prevent that change is to make society into a cruel dead thing that must resort to more force and repression to exist and even then change will occur.
The problem with peterson is he hides what he thinks behind all this vague blabber if he didn’t he would not be able to cash in on the fame and money. as is illustrated here by someone only hearing what they wanted to hear out of what he is saying but getting the resentment right.
uncle frogy
in politics resentment is the cape with which the Matador hides the sword that he uses to kill the bull
uncle frogy
Actually, I would think Peterson would carefully avoid talk of hyenas, because in hyena society, females are dominant. And we’re a lot more closely related to hyenas than to lobsters.
On the “men get violent if they’re not getting laid, so we should enforce monogamy” point, has Peterson – or anyone else – produced any evidence that, either at an individual or a societal level, this the factual claims involved here are actually, er. what’s the word – oh yes, true? Despite a few recent “incel” outrages, there are plenty of violent men who have one or more regular sexual partners, plenty of non-violent men who aren’t getting laid, and levels of violence have fallen over the past few decades in most rich countries, even as social enforcement of monogamy has weakened.
Maybe one of Peterson’s fanboys commenting here could direct us to the specific places (not a handwave to his entire oeuvre) where Peterson has cited well-conducted and peer-reviewed criminological and sociological research to support his point? If they can do so, I’ll revise my hypothesis that Peterson started with the result he wanted – forcing women back into subordiantion – and fastened on a single recent event to produce a spurious justificaiton.
Danny Husar,
If the difference between your caricature and what is really said is “slight”, why not use the actual words used then? But no, you didn’t, deliberately. You made a caricature of the progressive position, by choice.
A false caricature, because most of what you say is a lie. No, not everything negative happening in the life of someone unprivileged is not their fault. No one is asked to repent for their privilege. No one says that there cannot exist any achievement when you are a privileged person.
We also need to make sure that women that nobody seems to want to have sex with (especially when it’s for the reason that they’re considered very unattractive) get to choose a handsome popular man who then has to be “encouraged” to have sex with her.
I love how brainwarp went from their first post of arrogantly chastising us for ignorant caricatures and mocking us for mindless herd behavior and confirmation bias to now defending ridiculous misogynistic ideas. It’s almost like they just rushed to the defense of their hero without even knowing the things Peterson says. Talk about “scientifically-minded” and “reasonable”, huh.
I always felt his appeal was telling comforting lies to angry men.
Oh, I can do this one too!
Clearly a lot of young men get all violent and murdery because they’re not having sex with other people. Like mantis shrimp do, because Serotonin and hierarchies. Societies in the past (I was going to say “some societies”, but instead I’m going leave it vague so I can pompously wag my finger at any critics who assume I meant all societies) ameliorated this maladaptive praxis (again, “solved it” doesn’t sound nearly Petersonian enough) with enforced homosexual pair-bonding between older men and younger. Mumble mumble mumble culturally ingrained archetypal image of Zeus and Ganymede, mumble mumble Carl Jung, mumble mumble Theban Sacred Band, mumble mumble. What with all the daughters of Lilith being choleric servitors of Chaos and Old Night, and thus fundamentally irrational, we cannot rely on them to provide for the sex needs that our putative angry murderers have. The Adamic race of men are the rational ones, and as like calls to like, a fundamental principle of medieval alchemy, they must be the ones to solve this.
Therefore we ought to institute a system of enforced gay sex (by which, obviously, I mean telling people very politely that gay sex is something they might want to try, 19th century anthropological terminology being so readily and comprehensively applicable here). We should probably do it via some kind of hierarchy too, since those are so ingrained in the fabric of the universe. I propose that the angry murderers are given an IQ test, the unquestioned gold standard of psychological profiling, and then paired up with another angry murderer for sex who matches their IQ score as closely as possible.
There. What could be less objectionable than that? Can I have my £50k a month now?
I wonder what it would take to get Peterson’s fans to notice the doublethink in the defences that they invariably trot out:
1) you have to read JP’s actual words, not be misled by the wiles of caricaturists and haters;
2) you mustn’t just read JP’s actual words, you must let us help you understand what he means through our exegeses and interpretations, and trust that although he may seem to have said something appallingly stupid or cruel, his inner meaning was benevolent.
@65
>But no, you didn’t, deliberately. You made a caricature of the progressive position, by choice.
Matt’s position was essentially the same as my characterization. The original sin of “undeserved privilege” needs to be paired with repentance (“to use those privileges to elevate the voices of those without privilege in the fight for justice”)
>No, not everything negative happening in the life of someone unprivileged is not their fault. No one is asked to repent for their privilege. No one says that there cannot exist any achievement when you are a privileged person.
Honestly, you wouldn’t know it. Just take an honest look at what progressives are telling young people. Is it really to take
responsibility for their actions? Or that if you work hard good things will happen (thereby incentivizing hard work)?
Even the entire idea of what ‘privilege’ is has a warped spin in progressive circles. What I mean by that is that *every* human will have a large set of attributes, some of which elevate him or her, and some which hold him or her back. You might be a tall man (privilege) but an introvert (non-privilege). You may be intelligent (privilege) but grew up in an abusive household (non-privilege). You may be pretty or handsome but dumb as a brick. Etc. But apparently the most important attributes that predict your success in life are the most shallow – things like your skin color and your gender – why? Because that fits within a particular narrative.
Because those are the attributes that this specific society, at the particular point in history, has decided to attach so much undue weight to, you dolt. It’s not like we invented redlining…
Get this: the colour of your skin used to be even more important, because that determined where you could live and work, and whether you were likely to get lynched for looking at a white woman. Further back, it determined whether you could be enslaved or not. At one time, in a different society, whether you were Jewish or not predicted whether you were likely to be herded into a cattle car, carted off to a labour camp, and either worked to death or gassed.
Yes, “every human will have a large set of attributes, some of which elevate him or her, and some which hold him or her back” – so far so fucking obvious. But every society also has sets of attributes which it either favours or disfavours in arbitrary and discriminatory ways, so the social context matters. This shit is not fucking rocket science.
@70
>1) you have to read JP’s actual words, not be misled by the wiles of caricaturists and haters;
I’m listening to his audio book now – 12 rules for life. I’m about Chapter 5. His message is so benign and vanilla in that book it’s crazy that there is any controversy.
>you mustn’t just read JP’s actual words, you must let us help you understand what he means through our exegeses and interpretations,
I think this is a Yannie/Laurel moment. If you ascribe good-will to Peterson and assume he’s a good person with good intentions, you may still disagree (and there’s plenty to disagree with) but there is no way you will see anything nefarious in anything he says or writes. If you already come in primed to think of him as a racist leader of the Alt-Right, you won’t have any trouble finding things to fit your conclusion like a conspiracy theorist seeing the hand of Illuminati behind every event. I think that’s the difference you’re confused by.
I mean, his claim to fame is refusing to use invented pronouns. The concept of invented pronouns is so new, how can you not expect to have some societal resistance. People need to be convinced why your idea should be adopted and that requires patience. The default position (i.e. no invented pronouns) is currently held by 99.9% (and probably a few more 9s at the end there) of the world population – and Peterson is the devil?
@Danny Husar
No, it is not “essentially the same”, not unless you redefine words like “repentance” beyond breaking point. My point stands: if you really believe that what you say is essentially the same, why not use the words that everybody is already using?
Non sequitur. But keep on harping about what those darn progressives say in your head, instead of what actual progressives, like me, say on this very thread
That is simply a lie. We talk about them because those, unlike for example intelligence, are UNDESERVED privileges.
I don’t care that someone who is more intelligent has a better chance of getting a particular job. That is logical. What I do care about is that someone is getting a job because they have an undeserved advantage just because they happen to have an innate characteristic that has nothing to do with anything. Like the color of their skin.
Keep on constructing those strawmen of what progressives believe and say, and then nocking them down. Whatever feeds your dishonest narrative.
Danny Husar, #73
What a load of nonsense. Are you not reading his quotes and what he says? It’s blatant rampant misogyny. What good intentions are you talking about and how come he’s getting the opposite across when he writes and speaks?
@72
>Because those are the attributes that this specific **society**, at the particular point in history, has decided to attach so much undue weight to
Are you sure it’s not just a particular ideological movement that does that?
And why would you resort to name-calling?
>It’s not like we invented redlining…
You can’t just cherry pick facts to prove your case.
I have seen studies that point to other factors as being for more important predictors of success, things like the age when you have kids and whether or not you were raised in a single or two-parent household. This is where the preponderance of evidence seems to point to – that is if you do the right thing, and you work hard, you will do well in life in America regardless of your gender, or race. Do you disagree with that?
Yes.
@74
?just because they happen to have an innate characteristic that has nothing to do with anything. Like the color of their skin.
Or their height, or the symmetry of their face, or their confidence, or their odor, or the sound of their voice, or their level of attractiveness, or their sense of humor, or their weight, or them being an extrovert, or … you get the point. Why are you picking out one ‘UNDESERVED’ attribute and elevating it more than the others? Nobody chooses their height, and yet there is height privilege?
Also, Danny, ALL pronouns are “invented”. And he is not even balking about using new pronouns. He is balking about people asking to be addressed by an existing pronoun. A courtesy that seems fairly trivial.
And why is he put up as an example, when quite a lot of people have the same thoughts? Because he publicly espoused those ideas. And people react to that. Again, seems very trivial. But in your comment, it becomes again that he gets cast as “the devil”. As you already shown above, you have a penchant for using loaded language to ascribe the positions of your opponents. Which is not the behavior of someone who wants to engage in a honest conversation.
Seriously, if your goal here is to show the dishonesty of the Petersonians, you couldn’t be doing a better job.
Danny,
Actually, for example, height discrimination is a thing, that does get studied and discussed. Maybe not as much as racial discrimination but that does seem like a much bigger, issue.
Cryp Dyke, I’m not arguing for “nuance”, I’m saying your interpretation is flat-out wrong. Enforced monogamy means *at most one female per male*, not *at least one* (and vice versa with the sexes). I understand that you have a strong urge to make Peterson look like he’s advocating rape, but he isn’t.
The fact that *I disagree* that society should be enforcing monogamy, even at the legal level, is just me being liberal on that front. I don’t have to agree with a person 100% just to defend them against what is practically libel (“JP advocates rape”).
Having said that, maybe a society with “enforced monogamy” really *is* more stable and cohesive. It seems entirely plausible to me.
I understand your position, you simply can’t concede that you misinterpreted the term (“cognitive dissonance”) and therefore you need to find more connections in the text that support it (“confirmation”) bias. Your conclusions would be fine, but *the premise is wrong*.
It’s not just non-human, “enforced monogamy” is also in anthropology. We *do* have enforced monogamy at the legal level. It’s probably because some big shots of time immemorial were hoarding wives like war trophies. That’s just an *explanation* by the way, not *advocacy*.
In any thread criticising Peterson as a reactionary cult-leader, his fanboys will show up to demonstrate exactly why such criticism is valid and necessary.
Yes, I disagree with that. You might do well, but some people have much better chances than others, depending a number of arbitrary conditions of their birth, including (but not limited to) gender and race. Social mobility (both inter- and intra-generational) is much lower for people of colour and for women than it is for white men.
brainwarp, #81
I’m totally shocked that you don’t understand rape either. Enforced monogamy is rape.
Of course even before we get to the “enforced monogamy” garbage, his premise is bullshit to begin with too: That these murdering white bros are murdering because they don’t have good gentle women to tame them. It’s almost like a stereotypical caveman treatment of men. Also, you could be desperately needing sex and your murders will still be on you. It’s a non sequitur to say the murders are because of the lack of sex. The murders are because you decided to kill people. Killing people is not a reasonable step you take to getting sex.
Sure a single murderer-to-be’s life path might be radically changed if he had a wife and kids. But adopting three orphans might do that too. So could moving to Vietnam and managing an elephant sanctuary. Or volunteering the majority of his free time at a youth center.
Peterson is viewing women as tools for men. He’s just being a megaphone for incel complaints.
You have provided no evidence that that is what Peterson means. And if it is, it would of course be ineffective, since a lot of men would still be left unpartnered. This is what has happened in Russia, where in the face of a culture that identifies masculinity with heavy drinking and refusing to share housework and childcare, large numbers of women prefer to remain single, or to seek partners abroad, despite heavy social pressure to conform to traditional gender roles and “find themselves a man”. Only by making life hellish for unmarried women – particularly unmarried mothers – and making escape from an abusive marriage virtually impossible, could women conceivably be forced into accepting and remaining with those undesirable men Peterson is so very concerned about.
Someone posted this over on We Hunted the Mammoth, but after reading this thread, I thought it needed to be here too. (I don’t know how to embed images here, so this is just the text)
I think I’ve seen all of these in this thread but the last one. So far…
That is not actually true, he is against the idea that the government can sanction you for not using someone’s preferred “neologous” pronoun e.g. in a workplace situation. As far as I can tell, this is the situation now in Canada with bill C-16, at least for workers in public service. He’s on the record saying that he’ll use the desired pronoun (she/he) on transgender students, but I have trouble finding that clip right now.
When it comes to the “new pronouns”, he considers enforcing their usage “compelled speech” and he’s against it on principle. You should also consider that most people outside the progressive bubble are not keen on using a pronoun for every individual person. If I insisted you address me by “his glorious highness” and that if you didn’t, I get to call you an asshole and possibly sue you, would you think that’s fair? Well, that’s how it looks for people outside the bubble.
You can’t make up 30+ new gender identities and expect broader society to just accept it within the decade. I would focus on just a third one and settle on a pronoun for that. If it catches on, that’s totally fine. If the government has to enforce it, I think it’s *not fine*. That’s *just an opinion*, you’re entitled to your own opinion, of course.
No. You don’t understand my position.
My position is simple: YOUR position of enforcing monogamy as a “no more than one” enforcement is STILL HORRIBLY FUCKING IMMORAL.
When I protest imposing consequences on someone because of some other person’s violence, it doesn’t matter if you rationalize it as someone having too few lovers or too many. Peterson is advocating imposing consequences on a non-violent person for the violent actions of someone completely different.
And YOU are defending a man who is advocating imposing consequences on the innocent because of the violence of entirely different people.
That is immoral – and horribly so.
Bullshit.
I correctly interpreted the term as presented by the NYTimes. It’s the ONLY reasonable interpretation of the quote in the context of the NYTimes article. Peterson insists that the NYTimes presents him in a context that is misleading, and I’ve taken the definition that he prefers – from animal psychology – and it still leads to terrible places.
And yet, my argument doesn’t depend on this at all. You think I can’t change my interpretation because I haven’t changed my conclusions about Peterson despite my flexibility in interpretation. I can happily accept your interpretation and Peterson still is advocating immorality on a horrible scale. Why should a man who likes to fuck lots of women, a woman who likes to fuck lots of men, or anyone who likes to fuck around with anyone, have their freedom curtailed because some unfuckable jerk is threatening murder? The conclusion – that Peterson is advocating horrible immorality on a vast scale – doesn’t depend on accepting my initial interpretation or yours. Both interpretations lead to Peterson advocating that society systematically impose social punishments on innocent parties to control behavior that is not harmful as the ransom paid to the violent for withholding (conditionally) that violence.
Your interpretation is that peterson advocates that people are socially punished if they fuck wrongly. My initial interpretation was that Peterson advocates that people are socially punished if they don’t fuck, because how else would the unfuckable get fucked, but also socially punished if they do fuck wrongly. You keep saying that even your interpretation is indefensible on some rational level, but refuse to concede that it’s indefensible on a moral level because you’re the one who has no ability to reflect on your own position and consider new information.
I’ve considered it. Peterson is an immoral ass either way.
What, in your ethics, makes his preferred schema where the innocent are punished for the sins of the violent remotely acceptable?
Not “just”? Listen to yourself. You’re saying it includes everything in the definition I’ve quoted and more. You’re not even arguing that what he’s advocating doesn’t include what I said. You’re not arguing that because you can’t.
But again, it doesn’t matter. Even in some pretzel-reality where Peterson insists that he’s only speaking anthropologically and didn’t want anyone to think about the definition in animal psychology when he’s the one who brought up animal enforced monogamy (and that’s not what he’s insisting), imposing consequences on the innocent for the sins of the violent is still wrong. Horribly horribly wrong.
Again:
What, in your ethics, makes his preferred schema where the innocent are punished for the sins of the violent remotely acceptable?
Finally,
Anthropologically speaking, social enforcement of monogamy in the sense of making sure that women especially but also people generally don’t fuck the wrong people includes long-standing traditions of throwing acid on the faces of women who marry the wrong man, try to divorce, have an affair, or get raped by one person while married to another. This is ***horrible***. Peterson could google how monogamy is enforced in the real world for 5 minutes and find this out, if he doesn’t know this already. He could even do what you accuse me of being unable to do: reexamine his position in the light of new evidence, and then retract it if he doesn’t agree with acid attacks and other ways that monogamy is “enforced” (anthropologically, of course) in the real world. Has he done that? No? How long should I wait before critiquing the ethics of his proposal? Three more days? A week? A year? How long do I lose my free speech rights so that Peterson doesn’t have to face “unfair” criticism?
But it still doesn’t matter. He advocates punishing the innocent for the sins of the violent.
What, in your ethics, makes his preferred schema where the innocent are punished for the sins of the violent remotely acceptable?
brainwarp, #88
All of a sudden he has an issue with enforcing things. Weird.
@ Brainwarp
“That is not actually true, he is against the idea that the government can sanction you for not using someone’s preferred “neologous” pronoun e.g. in a workplace situation.”
What I said is true. He does not want to use those pronouns. That he also rails against some (perceived or not) government compulsion is another matter, which was not addressed in my comment because it was not addressed in the comment I replied to.
If you’re in public service, the government is your employer. And it is generally the case that your employer can make rules about the language you use and the ways you interact with others in the workplace.
Why the fuck would it matter to me if someone for whom I have zero respect called me names? As for suing, even you must know perfectly well that neither the Canadian law, nor any other passed or seriously proposed anywhere, would give such a case brought by an individual the slightest chance of succeeding.
It is not. That’s my whole point. We’re arguing over the definition of a word. If you define “enforced monogamy” as “rape”, you win. Congratulations, you win a trophy for intellectual dishonesty.
The context here isn’t just *any* murdering “white bro”, it’s the Incel guy that went amok in Canada. Incels believe that for biological reasons, they will never find partners that are true to them. Some of them are so vengeful that they advocate violence. If these people grew up to find that it’s not all about biology, that a woman will stay with them if only they are “being a good person”, then they would not become Incels. Would a society that holds monogamy in the highest esteem cause less Incels to be “produced”? Seems plausible to me. That doesn’t mean I have to argue for it, I’d much rather have more casual sex.
I’m going to link *again* to his response: https://jordanbpeterson.com/uncategorized/on-the-new-york-times-and-enforced-monogamy/
That’s not so clear, marriage rates have gone way down, divorce has gone up, single parenthood is way up, all within just a few decades, because the idea of “monogamy” is seen as archaic. Now, I’m not saying that this is a bad thing per se, but it *does* leave more men unpartnered.
brainwarp, #93
You’re grasping. Fine. We’ll do semantics:
Enforced monogamy is an instance of rape.
You’re buying into the incel talking points without thinking critically about them. You also have no grounds for saying that society is raising men to be this way since such a small portion of male society is incels. Sure society does push toxic masculinity and unhealthy ideas about gender and sex, but that’s not what incels are about. You also have no reason to say that if incels had partners they wouldn’t have these vile views of women. Not being able to have sex or find partners isn’t reason for mass murdering. For some reason, you’re taking violent misogynists at their word.
Also, since you’re being such a stubborn defender of this bullshit enforced monogamy concept, you have to present some sort of feasible plan. So let’s say 50 years from now, what exactly are young boys and girls being expected/encouraged/enforced to do with regards to this monogamy? What’s your workflow? Is the government doing this or is it every parent’s responsibility? Are girls being told that at age 18, for every 3 rejections they hand out they need to agree to one proposal? What exactly are you defending?
Also, it’s hilarious that you don’t get that using the term “enforced” along with anything to do with sex is pretty rapey.
@Saad 66
We also need to make sure that
womengay men that nobody seems to want to have sex with (especially when it’s for the reason that they’re considered very unattractive) get to choose a handsome popular man who then has to be “encouraged” to have sex with her.Fixed it for you.
Peterson left out gay men who are you know, potentially homicidal men if they don’t get sex.
Something tells me that in Peterson’s fantasy hellworld, he and his homophobic fanboys aren’t going to be volunteering for this chore to keep society safe.
That’s not your original position. You have moved the goalpost from “JP advocates forced marriage (rape)”. I’m not arguing for enforced monogamy at all, in fact I’m against it.
That unfuckable jerk isn’t “threatening” murder, he is *commiting murder* and *you can’t stop them*. There’s no “right or wrong” here, it’s a tradeoff of personal liberty against public safety. I fall squarely on the side of arguing for liberty in this case, but it’s not inherently *immoral* to curtail individual liberty for public good, don’t you agree?
I’m not saying that at all. It’s entirely defensible, I just don’t happen to support it. What’s the “new information” here, anyway?
If you can concede that Jordan Peterson does not in fact “advocate rape”, I’m fine. You can argue that his presumed advocacy for monogamy is “horribly immoral” all you want, I don’t care, that’s an entirely different ballpark than “advocating rape”.
So let me just check that I’ve got this straight…
“Enforcing” the use of trans / non-binary people’s preferred pronouns: a form of oppression similar to that practised under Stalin or Mao.
“Enforcing” monogamy: totally fine, and a perfectly reasonable solution to the problem of some men being so filled with hate for both themselves and others that they go on murder / (attempted) suicide rampages.
Sure. Fine. Whatever. You people aren’t even trying any more, are you?
Quoted for truth!!!
On Ed Brayton’s Jordan Peterson thread, referenced above at #13, there were 892 comments after the invasion of Peterson Pod People. None of them had any intellectual content. Just assertions, insults, excuses, and endless logical fallacies.
Peterson is just a conperson reflecting back hate and bigotry to the undeducated, the mentally slow, the flat out crazy, and the haters.
As you’ve seen in this thread, they are immune to the truth and logic.
It’s an emotional attachment to a cult leader who feeds their hate back to them and impervious to reality.
You won’t get much out of engaging them using reason, facts, and logic, so consider carefully how you want to spend your time.
@brainwarp:
The context here isn’t an effort to reduce abstinence or celibacy. That’s the means that Peterson proposes. The context here is an effort to reduce murder.
What reason do you (or does Peterson) have to believe that potential murderers don’t murder if they get laid?
And don’t say, “it sounds plausible”, because that simply means “I have no fucking evidence at all that this would work to reduce violence, and neither does Peterson, but we’re willing to seriously consider policy proposals that have zero evidence behind them, so let’s all have an intellectually rigorous debate about the zero evidence that supports curtailing freedom in order to get murderers’ dicks wet, okay?”
What is the **evidence** that sacrificing freedom will actually reduce murder? What is so special about monogamy that people willing to murder for sex will, in this new reality, be unwilling to murder for a different reason?
Yeah, but your argument – and Peterson’s – is that a return to enforced monogamy will reduce murder … or at least that it is plausible to believe so. But here’s the thing: his assertion is not just unevidenced. It runs counter to a huge body of evidence that we have on murders in the US over a time period that saw serious changes to how monogamy is viewed in US society.
As monogamy enforcement has gone down, murders of women by men intimate partners have declined a tiny amount while murders of men by women intimate partners have been cut drastically. Though not all the data is as sound as we might wish, the best estimate is that these murders have been reduced by approximately 2/3rds. It turns out that the vast majority of that decline, if not all of it, is a direct result of making it possible for women to leave relationships and in other ways reducing the enforcement of monogamy.
If Peterson knew fuck all about murder rates over the last few decades he’d know that returning to enforced monogamy would be very, very likely to increase murders of men in the US by thousands per year. All that so that murderous incels would no longer be incels … but with no guarantee that they wouldn’t still be murderous.
The plan is stupid in addition to forcing consequences upon the innocent for the sins of the violent. It’s not “intellectual” to argue reducing murder through means that our best research shows would increase murder.
But also:
What, in your ethics, makes his preferred schema where the innocent are punished for the sins of the violent remotely acceptable?
Why not? How do you know? Don’t mix up “reason” for “justification”. I don’t see *any* “justification” for mass murder, but if you see your life as worthless because you cannot procreate and if you identify “women” as the cause of that *and* if you seek revenge at all cost, *that’s a reason* to murder. People murder for all kinds of reasons, even rather petty ones, so why shouldn’t that be one?
Just because they’re violent misogynists doesn’t mean they aren’t able to tell you why they do what they do.
There in absolutely nothing new or original about Jordan Peterson’s thoughts.
Peterson is just a conperson reflecting back hate and bigotry to the undeducated, the mentally slow, the flat out crazy, and the haters. For a lot of money.
He is no different from any alt-right demagogue.
Such as Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Fox NoNews, Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulus, Breitbart, any fundie xian televangelist, Donald Trump, most of the GOP congresspeople, and the rest of the right wingnut reality bubble.
My guess is he will end up like Milo Yiannopoulus, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh etc..
A cult like demagogue with a small rabid fanboy base that the rest of us pay no attention to except to hope they stay in their reality bubble and away from our society.
They are a destructive force in our society, not a positive one.
What an asshat you are.
You claim I can’t reconsider my position in light of new evidence, but I have, and have asserted something about which maybe you can have an intelligent conversation since you refuse to even consider that in the real world enforced monogamy results in rape. Then, when I take that new position – in light of new evidence including the link you wanted me to read – you accuse me of goalpost-shifting?
So: if I do not respond at all to your arguments and continue saying the same things over and over again by rote, I’m intellectually incapable of revising my position.
If I listen to your arguments and digest new information then respond in ways that take the new information into account, I’m acting with intellectually dishonesty in the form of “goalpost-shifting”?
You really love you some “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose” arguments, don’t you?
Give me one good reason I should consider your statements here to be in anything like good faith.
Finally, don’t ask me if it is ever moral to sacrifice freedom for safety. Produce an argument that Peterson’s proposal is moral.
I can produce an argument that saying words is moral. That doesn’t mean that hiring a hitman is moral just because I did it by saying words.
Peterson has made a specific proposal. I have said it’s immoral.
Do you or do you not assert that his proposal is moral? If not, why the fuck do you have any objection to Peterson being described as immoral? If yes, what is your argument defending the morality of Peterson’s proposal?
@Dunc, #99:
QFT
It’s really amusing that people who are clearly *massively* biased towards some ideology (“progressivism”) believe that *their* side is “truthful” and “logical”, while the “other side” is just being stupid and cult-like. Guess what, the “other side” sees you exactly the same as you see them.
JP is not my “dear leader”. I don’t support the idea of “enforced marriage” at the social *or* legal level, in any form, even insofar as it already exists. I don’t support many other “conservative” ideas he may find beneficial for society. I believe that JP is a terrible debater when he isn’t playing little league (like the “Cathy Newman” interview) and that he has trouble expressing his concepts when it’s not in the form of hour-long lectures (see his terrible first interview with Sam Harris). Surely there are cult-like followers of JP, but you’re not talking to one of them.
You don’t have to agree 100% with a person to defend them against what are basically unfounded allegations and extremely prejudiced interpretations. I used to be part of this whole “progressive” thing until I found that the people in it are intellectually dishonest and very quick to denounce anyone for holding the “wrong opinion”. I guess that’s just human tribal nature, but if “progressivism” can’t overcome it, it’ll probably fail on its actual goals.
So Long!
brainwarp, #
Fine.
A serial killer killing because their dog tells them to is also “reason”. It doesn’t mean we accommodate him based on that reason. Peterson even suggesting that women must do a thing to solve this problem is grossly misogynistic. Coming up with a system in which girls are raised to be expected/encouraged/enforced to have sex is a rape culture. What are you not getting about that? I think your lack of understanding of rape is due to some misconceptions about autonomy, women, misogyny and sex at a very fundamental level. I don’t know who can help you with that. People like Crip Dyke are far better equipped to put those concepts into clear words than I am.
Wait a minute… Do you drive a cab for Tom Friedman?
I hope someone confronts Peterson with this bloody fact regarding male expectations of women:
MISOGYNY AND THE SANTA FE MASS KILLING
I’m sorry then, it’s not clear to me what your current position is. Is your current position “JBP advocates rape” or not? By what you just wrote, I could come to the conclusion that it still is. I could also come to the conclusion that it is not, but that he is advocating for something that will result in more rape. I can accept that, but it’s a far less strong statement, there’s no direct connection anymore.
For example, if I advocate for more liberal drug laws, that probably increases the amount of rape cases. Let’s just assume it does, for the sake of argument. Is it therefore *immoral* to argue for liberal drug laws? I don’t think so, it’s a *tradeoff* of personal liberties you can be willing to take (or not).
I don’t have an objection to you describing it as “immoral”, I have an objection to you representing it as “rape advocacy”. If you have already moved on from that position, then I apologize and we’re good. I’m not interested in further debate on what’s moral or not, morals are subjective.
One criterion I observe when evaluating political positions:
Whether the people being picked on by government and society is the complainers – or whether those being picked on are other people.
One would think people who say their model is Jesus Christ would be supporting the needy and against the Righteous rich. But they so often are complaining that the undeserving want what they have.
starfleetdude, 109
Yeah, if only one of other girls in the school had volunteered to go out with him (against their actual enthusiastic will, which is totally not rapey btw).
@Braindead
Compelling someone to use their body for the use of another without consent and recompense, whether by formal law or informal custom, is rape, if not outright slavery. It doesn’t matter how much someone needs a shag. Here’s a wild suggestion: How about you stop measuring your worth by the notches on your bedpost and measure it instead by the value you add to the world?
Maybe you might make an argument that compulsory education (for example) is the same thing but it really isn’t. There are rules protecting the safety and rights of the students and there are ways to opt out. A full response would take more time and effort than I have time or interest for, obviously, but the thumbnail works fine for now.
As a side note, I have got to do a post about JP on my own blog. I want in on this circular argument page hit bonanza.
brainwarp@93,
I followed your link. It provides no evidence on whether Peterson means, by “enforced monogamy”, what you claim he means. It does say he means it should be “socially enforced” but he does not say whether women would be “socially forced” to take partners they don’t want – by, for example, stigmatising unmarried women, particularly unmarried mothers, and making it difficult for single women to make a decent living, enjoy a satisfying personal and social life, and so forth. Note that this is exactly how monogamy was socially enforced in the west until recently. Clearly, that (at best) is what Peterson wants.
He does provide two links of his own. The abstract for the first (I can’t access the full article) says:
So according to his own link, it’s not “men who are not sexually active” who are most likely to be violent, and who “reduce their risk of violence” if they have switch to having fewer partners (there’s nothing to show that this connection is general, or is causal, or if it is, in which direction causality runs). There’s certainly nothing there to support the claim that “enforced monogamy” – whatever the interpretation of that term, would reduce violence; and as I’ve already pointed out@64, the last few decades have seen a simultaneous fall in violence and in the social enforcement of monogamy in multiple rich societies.
The second link is to a nearly 20-year-old piece of “evolutionary psychology” speculation, from which Peterson has chosen to include the following jem, presumably because he thinks it makes his point:
One wonders what counts as a “non-predatory rapist”. But in any case, it’s surely become abundantly clear to anyone not warped by misogyny that plenty of “higher class and status” men, who could readily get sexual partners, are nonetheless sexual predators.
Er, “unmarried” does not mean “unpartnered”. Many unmarried people, including “single parents” actually have partners, they are just not married to them. I don’t have statistics for the proportion of men who are actually unpartnered, but if it has gone up, this has happened simultaneously with a fall in violent crime. I’m still waiting for you or one of the other Peterson fanboys to show where Peterson supports the factual claims necessary for his blethering about the need for enforced monogamy to make sense, which I requested @64.
I don’t really advocate prostitution (a lot of exploitation certainly goes on), but if it is really so important for these “incels” to have sex couldn’t they just visit one?
You’re simply missing the point. You’re *desperate* to miss the point. You are talking about a different topic. Monogamy is not about the minimum amount of partners, but about *the maximum*. In “enforced monogamy”, women can only pick *one mate*, they can’t be one of a dozen of mates for a single man. If anything, women are encouraged *not* to have sex. “Enforced monogamy” does not mean *every single man gets a women* by force. It doesn’t mean that in anthropology, it doesn’t mean that in non-human biology and it doesn’t mean that it Jordan Peterson’s interview. Most human societies have evolved monogamous arrangements as the default, so it’s reasonable to believe that there’s societal advantages to it.
There’s a clear math issue here: If one man can have 20 partners at the same time, there’s 19 men that can not have a partner at all, even if they’re good people. In our modern society, that “at the same time” isn’t really a common thing, but there’s certainly men that have dozens of sex partners consecutively, while some men have zero. That’s at least in part because “male slut shaming” isn’t really a thing. You’re focusing a lot on women’s choices, ignoring the fact hat *men* can make a choice to not have sex as well. Why would a man refuse sex though, if there’s no societal pressure against it?
Now, before you jump ahead, make me clear that I am *all in favor* of uninhibited sluttery of all genders, I’m fully sex-positive, even if that turned out to be damaging to society as whole, in some way.
[Kermit voice] Clean up your room like the mighty lobster, Bucko, or else the cultutral marxists that embody the dragon of chaos will destroy western civilization.
brainwarp@106,
Do you really think we’ve not noticed that? And are you stupid enough to think that because they think that, there must be some justification for it.
No, no. of course not. That’s why you’re prepared to spend hours defending him.
*Yawn*.
brainwarp, #116
Oh, I see. Thanks for finally describing what you mean. So not rape but still controlling women’s (and men’s) bodily autonomy. Sounds so much better!
So, let’s look a a society like America. Would this mean we encourage people to have one partner at a time? Like you can break up and move onto another or is it just one partner in your whole life?
Isn’t the former already the norm? I’m pretty sure general society frowns upon cheating and polyamory. Speaking of which, under such a system, will there be a crackdown on polyamorous people?
When you look at this enforced monogamy system, it sounds like a hellish scenario out of 1984 or something. Peterson is coming across like quite the ignorant, unscientific fool here.
It’s not so much about sex, it’s about partnership. A lot of Incels had partnerships that broke down, where they felt the woman betrayed them. It’s also partly a “biological conspiracy theory”, they believe that it is *impossible* for them to have lasting partnerships because of plain biological traits. Coming to this realization is called “the black pill” (as opposed to “red”/”blue”), that nothing you can do is going to change anything. In a nutshell, it’s a form of nihilism. They aren’t all horrible people, they just happen to believe that stuff. You can find them here: https://incels.me/
brainwarp, #116
Another glaring issue here.
Those dozens of women probably want to be having sex with that one man. Why do you think they’ll want to have sex with one of those 19 men who have no partner at all?
brainwarp, #120
Believing that stuff and especially translating those beliefs into behavior makes them horrible people.
The reason they can’t find a partner is because they’re being shitty to women and then turning around and blaming it on them.
You’re acting like you’re not on their side but then posting apologia like this.
It’s interesting that this sentence isn’t even coherent – women only being able to pick one partner (or more often, having one partner picked for them) is quite compatible with a single man having dozens of mates. But assuming that you meant that no-one can have more than one partner, as I’ve already pointed out, that is not going to ensure that all men who want a partner have one, because many women may choose not to have one if they can’t get one they want (or of course they may prefer another woman as partner, but I have a suspicion Peterson is not keen on that option being open to them). So even in the least offensive interpretation of “enforced monogamy”, it would not solve the problem of unpartnered men – and as I’ve pointed out, no evidence has been presented that solving that problem would actually reduce violence.
My God! This guy is a Peterson fan or is it Jordan himself. I haven’t read this much bullshit since intelligent design proponents would routinely invade blog comments and cut paste arguments from AiG or Disco institute
@115 While prostitution carries it’s own share of ethical dilemmas, it wouldn’t solve the problem. I think that would only create new sources of resentment for these types to chew on. The first one to charge extra for a Dutch Rudder or refuse them for a downstairs waft that can strip paint is just going to start more whining. Besides, this is about not wanting to make an effort, so paying is right out.
I’d say they need to reconsider their beliefs about biology (which definitely doesn’t involve some weird kind of conspiracy theorizing), as well as their expectations of what a relationship should be with a partner of the opposite sex.
@brainwarp:
First: my initial position was perhaps not clear. My initial position was not that he “advocated rape”. My initial position was that he advocated socially and/or governmentally legitimized rape. The meaning of that statement is not that he’s screaming, “Yay, Rape!” The meaning of that statement is that he’s arguing for the legitimization of behavior that is currently illegitimate. One possible manner in which that might happen is through assigning women to specific men who then get to fuck those women whether they want it or not. Another possible manner in which that might happen is by declining to prosecute rapes which are perpetrated by one spouse upon another. Another possible manner in which that might happen is through policies – social or otherwise – which makes divorce significantly harder, forcing abused spouses to tolerate violence, including rape, longer before escaping (if, indeed, “enforced monogamy” permits serial monogamy at all – his position is so vague he doesn’t make clear at all whether serial monogamy is or isn’t acceptable).
In any case, the bolded portion was also part of my original position, and still is the more important part of my position to me. If a policy results in more rape, even if that rape is seen as illegitimate, the harm of the rape is not removed by the opprobrium suffered by the rapist. So, sure, I believe that in the real world his position as represented by the NY Times is advocating for a systematic response to human behaviors that will inevitably, in the real world, result in more rape. I also believe that position is advocating for a systemic response to human behaviors that will inevitably, in the real world, lead to more violence being tolerated as the barely acceptable, but nonetheless acceptable, excesses of a necessary and important system of consequences for violations of monogamy rules. In other words, some rapes will be legitimized that are not now legitimized.
Further, we know from very good research that men justify rape (and murder and acid attacks and … and… and…) based on perceived violations of a given culture’s monogamy rules. In my original position I included in that the effects of making sure that violent assholes get laid, which is pretty clearly spelled out as his goal in the NYTimes piece.
My revised position is that I don’t trust what he says on this issue (because he appears to want to assert multiple contradictory things*1) but if you want to insist that he’s not actually desiring that women should be coerced into sex with violent men, I have no problem going with that. (Especially since I didn’t actually assume that he celebrates rape in my initial position.) You’re just insisting that he is openly advocating a morally horrible idea that is somewhat different from the morally horrible idea that the NY Times article had him quite clearly advocating.*2
While it’s always nice to get one’s facts right, that’s nothing of a defense of Peterson. He’s advocating moral horrors. He should be called on it.
As an aside, I find his clarifications of his position as represented in the NY Times to be rather weak. Reading your link, he has two principle objections.
First, he says that he wants to use non-governmental power/force/suasion/”enforcement”/whatever. Okay. But I said social and/or governmental, so that doesn’t undercut my assertion in any way. Also, the NYTimes did not say he intended to use the government, so it doesn’t even do anything to change the meaning of what the NYTimes wrote. It only means that people (unlike me) who were willing to assume that the only possible type of “enforcement” is governmental are now being unreasonable if they insist on that interpretation in light of his clarification. Okay, but it doesn’t apply to anyone here I don’t think. It certainly doesn’t apply to you or me.
Second, he says that he doesn’t want women allotted to men “one to one” using any means. Okay. But you’re still advocating a policy that results in actual rape. The policy’s entire purpose is still designed to make sure that unfuckable guys get fucked.
How does that happen?
Peterson provides no details.
You’re free to conclude that Peterson is not someone who
and thus that my original statement was wrong. But there’s still good reason to think that this statement is correct. A huge assumption on the part of enforced monogamy – using your limited definition – for centuries has been the idea that husbands cannot rape wives. Thus rape within marriage is rendered legitimate, by both technical and colloquial definitions.
But finally: Peterson is here criticized for advocating horribly immoral policy. Whether you support the policies of Peterson or not, is there any reason we should not recoil in horror at a policy that – in the real world – has every likelihood of increasing murders and legitimizing many rapes?
If there is no reason not to recoil in horror at such a policy, then what the fuck is your point in this thread?
Peterson is an immoral asshat who puts the responsibility for ending men’s violence squarely on the pubis of women. Yes, the details of his proposal are entirely lacking. But also yes: we have good evidence from, among other fields, anthropology that murders will increase rather than decrease*3 and in any case justifying punishments (social or otherwise) inflicted on the innocent for non-harmful behavior based upon the violence and threats of violence of entirely different people is grossly immoral.
Recoiling in horror from Peterson’s policy proposal is the correct response.
============
*1: and you also give this appearance since you want to say it’s about the animal psychology definition, then when that didn’t turn out favorably you reassert that it’s the anthropological definition that is most relevant, or at least equally relevant, without ever addressing the consequences of having asserted the animal psychology definition is relevant in the first place. Interestingly, what seems most important to Peterson about these other definitions is not the technical details of what is included, but rather to rebuff the assumptions of some (I’m not sure who) that “enforcement” will be carried out by government. But the fundamental unfairness, immorality, and, yes, evil of Peterson’s plan isn’t who holds the power to coerce women. It’s that coercion of anyone – regardless of gender – is an inherent part of the plan. Whether that’s accomplished through ape or canine style violence or through acid attacks or through shunning, it’s all still horribly immoral. Government wouldn’t make this plan immoral, and the lack of government involvement doesn’t make it moral.
*2: You seem to think that he’s poor at communicating his ideas in many contexts, certainly in shorter-form contexts, so your position is consistent with the NYTimes reporting accurately some statements by Peterson that he actually made, in a context that gives them clear meaning, but which meaning doesn’t represent his intended meaning due to his own communication failures. That’s another reason to dismiss Peterson as deserving of significant media attention: if he can’t actually construct a proper representation of his ideas, why should we listen to him?
*3: the number of incel rampages isn’t that large compared to the thousands-per-year reduction in murders over the past five decades
@124 How much do you want to bet it’s PZ, inflating his web traffic. I can’t have been the only one to think of that.
They’re misunderstanding me again! When I said “we should gas the Jews” I was, of course, using the well-established scientific definition of the word “gas”, meaning any fluid of a certain degree of rarefaction, and in no way referring to the policies of the Nazis with xyclon B. I was just saying that we should ensure that all Jewish people get high quality air to breathe – what could possibly be controversial about that?!
I just checked my Patreon. I’m nowhere near £50k for the month yet. I’m clacking my claws and gnashing my chelicerae in frustration.
Well, substituting the honest “criticising” for “defaming”, you really must be fucking stupid if you don’t understand that. It’s because he’s a reactionary cult leader, spewing racist and misogynist poison (along with obscurantist mystobabble and jejune self-help tips) in order to make a lot of money. He is part of the “alt-right” proto-fascist offensive against freedom and equality. Why the fuck would any decent person not be prepared to spend time countering his lies?
brainwarp, #126
Sure, but it’s an all or nothing thing. It’s like saying “it used to be lynching but now it’s being kicked out of restaurants which is much better”.
This is where the enforced monogamy system makes no sense. Promiscuity doesn’t mean you’re only having sex with that one man though. Why can’t 12 women have sex with that one man and seven of those women also be having sex with some of those 19 men. While six women from another group of women that were having sex with another man are having sex with some of those remaining men, and so on.
Also, you’ve yet to show that the reason some men aren’t able to have sex/relationships is because women are tied up. Aren’t there plenty of women constantly looking for relationships? And why do you think women will just want a relationship with just any man? That’s not how any of this works. We’re not talking about empty seats in a theater.
@Saad
If that one guy can only have one partner, then the other 19 women have two choices: No partner at all, or one of the other 19. They will go with the best option they can get. That may well be “no partner” at all, but the likelyhood that at least some of them will “settle for less” is high. In effect, there would be more partnerships total.
@KG
These are two disjunct predicates wrapped into one sentence, I agree it could’ve been written better.
No it isn’t, as I’ve already admitted. No form of social intervention solves any problem completely. Welfare doesn’t eradicate poverty. That doesn’t mean it has no effect whatsoever. Now, you can argue about the tradeoffs, but as I have made abundantly clear: I don’t believe the tradeoff is worth it.
After 125 comments, it is obvious.
Braindead is a troll!!!
I’ve never seen a Jordan Peterson fanboy that wasn’t a troll.
I don’t see why everyone is focusing on Peterson’s horrible enforced monogamy plan.
He’s said a whole more that is just as bad or worse.
Just another garden variety alt-right misogynist, racist, homophobic, reactionary.
Peterson’s fantasy society would be a routine totalitarian hell on earth.
[Kermit Voice] Jungian archetypes show that women who wear makeup and buck the system are agents of chaos and must be opposed. We don’t know what the rules are, and feminism is a product of the same totalitarian ideology that slaughtered millions in the mid-20th century.
brainwarp, #133
No, you’re not being consistent with your own points. Are we talking actual relationships or are we talking one-night stands and casual sex with no strings attached? What do you mean by partner? If you mean a relationship then the number of men having simultaneous relationships with several women is a very small percentage of men. And having multiple actual relationships going simultaneously is already strongly discouraged in American society.
If you’re talking casual sex and one-night stands, then this promiscuity doesn’t tie down women to one man. If a woman is being promiscuous, then she is having sex with more than one man. So what’s the problem there with regards to these important boners not being serviced?
Going back to your weak defense of incels:
Incels are the way they are because of their behvaiors, not because of women’s autonomy and choice in partners. That Peterson is suggesting that the victims and subjects of incel’s vitriol should have to make some changes or compromises is misogyny plain and simple. “Can we at least agree on that?”
@brainwarp:
And enforced monogamy changes this how, if not through blocking, at least temporarily, normal avenues of divorce and/or separation?
Apart from the manner of enforcement, the only way to ethically prevent relationships from breaking down is to teach relationship skills and hope it works out. Everything else (that I can think of) is horribly immoral. “Enforced monogamy” is not a cure for this problem.
And having “enforced monogamy” will only mean that instead of feeling betrayed, there will be rules or guidelines that provide an objective standard to “prove” that there were betrayed when a woman leaves a man (who was an involuntarily celibate how, if he’s not celibate until after she leaves?)
For incels who rejoice in the murders committed by Elliot Rodger and others, “If I can’t have her nobody will” is already the central justificatory thinking they apply to incel-committed murders. Having society tell them, “Yeah, you really were betrayed” isn’t going to make men who buy into incel philosophy think that they definitely *shouldn’t* murder. If anything, enforced monogamy in the context you’re discussing actually makes the murderous rationale more compelling.
Finally:
What? No. That’s not math. That’s not even english.
If there are 20 men and 20 women and one man happens to have 20 partners, then the other men are limited to a maximum of 39 other partners, assuming we’re not counting one’s self as a sex partner. Now, if all the partners of that first man who only has 20 partners are women, then he doesn’t have any men as partners and thus the other men are limited to a maximum of 38 partners.
Now THAT is math. Maybe you should try it sometime.
Or they can have an orgy in the women’s locker room, and still they aren’t fucking any of the 19 guys they didn’t want to fuck the first time around.
It occurs to me that there are women who are also “incels”. But we don’t hear about them gunning down those who ignore or reject them on what’s become a tragically regular basis. If there’s a biological component to such violence, it’s one of human males resorting to violence when they lose the self-control that keeps such urges in check.
I *don’t* think that. I don’t even believe in promoting monogamy. I’m here to dispel this idea of “rape advocacy”, not to support monogamy. I’ve spent some time disentangling the two, pointing out some of its purported merits in the process. If we can move away from “rape advocacy”, I’m totally fine.
I’ve already spent way too much time on this, so I’m really going to call it quits this time. So Long!
Let’s see if this flounce sticks.
My money is on “No”.
brainwarp, #140
Did you quote the wrong post? Where did I talk about rape advocacy in that post?
Peterson might have a point in a world where there were no single and available women. But that’s not the real world. Incels are single not because there aren’t any single women available. They’re single because single available women don’t want to be with them. And enforced monogamy will do nothing to fix that since those two are completely different things.
And that’s not even touching the even bigger problem that having girlfriends is not the solution to their behavior. They have no girlfriends because of their behavior.
And this is why I post in one or two sentence insults to these people. These people show up, stubbornly stick to their defense of their favorite “intellectual” dudebro, shift some goalposts along the way and then act like they’re the one voice of reason in here and play the flounce card.
When the 19th iteration of a brainwarp or a billyjoe shows up, what’s in it for me to waste hours on them and type all this again?
Saad @142
Or because they don’t want to be with the single available women. Because they feel entitled to have a “better” one.
zenlike, #144
Yes, good point. Why are they assuming that the incels aren’t being picky and looking past women that would want to be with them?
*sigh*
I’m not talking about any one post, I’m talking about the totality of the discourse we’ve had in this thread, where the words “rape”, or “legitimized rape” occur over 60 times, where it is alleged that somehow Peterson advocates for rape when he talks about “enforced monogamy”. If you just re-read the whole thing, you’ll probably find out what I mean.
You now seem to be looking to drag me into a “proving” that “enforced monogamy” works, even though I’ve said right from the beginning that *I don’t believe that it works*. That doesn’t mean such arguments can’t be made, or that it’s immoral to make them.
If I’m “a flounce” for not spending full days on arguing against multiple people in the comment section of “Pharyngula”, then I guess I just can’t live up to your standards. Sorry about that.
brainwarp @133
“They will go with the best option they can get. That may well be “no partner” at all, but the likelyhood that at least some of them will “settle for less” is high. In effect, there would be more partnerships total.”
Nope. That’s not what you & your buddy JP are talking about. “Enforced monogamy” means forcing people to be in relationships. You can’t suddenly change the definition to be “well women can either only fuck one man in a lifetime or be celibate.” Not the same thing.
And for the record, with women currently able to choose only long-term partners without their financial well-being involved, the number of unmarried women in the US is at record highs, as is the number of single-person households.
Lastly, and this is one of those things none of the incels or their apologists like you ever mention, MEN WHO ARE IN RELATIONSHIPS ARE REALLY FUCKING VIOLENT RIGHT NOW. Monogamy or partnership does not magically cure men of violence. The entire premise that a man who has access to a sex slave is going to be less violent is demonstrably false on its face.
I mostly disagree with much of what Jordan Peterson says. At the same time, I spent several years living in a culture in which arranged marriages (which are enforced monogamy by any reasonable definition of the term) were the norm. Wise parents would take their children’s wishes into account, but ultimately it was up to the parents to decide who got married to whom. If your parents decided you were getting married, you got married. If your parents decided that the person you wanted to marry wasn’t right for you, that marriage would not happen. Sons who wanted to marry were as much under the authority of their parents as were daughters. And it was my observation that, for all the bad things to be said about such a system (and I have lots of bad things to say about it), it simply substituted one set of problems for the different set we have here in the West. So it’s a case of deciding which set of problems is preferable.
In that culture, you did not have a rash of children growing up in broken homes. In fact, it was virtually unheard of for a child to grow up in a broken home. Every little girl had a mother in the home; every little boy had a father. You did not have one-third or one-half of marriages ending in divorce, because the parents, being less emotionally involved than the children, did basic research into who was this person that their child wanted to marry. So a lot of bad marriages simply never happened. Daddy can tell if his little princess is on the verge of marrying an abusive philanderer, and mama could tell a hot-tempered shrew from a mile away. You also did not have a large population of never-married people with no family ties and no familial moorings, with all the resulting social problems that creates. And, of course, people (both men and women) who are partnered are less likely to engage in anti-social behavior. And in fact, people from that culture engaged me repeatedly in conversation about what are Westerners thinking in allowing kids to make their own marriage choices when the negative consequences of that policy are so apparent.
Now, does this mean that Jordan Peterson is right? Absolutely not. I could write just as eloquently about the problems in such societies. No doubt there were a lot of good marriages that never happened because of parental disapproval, and parents don’t always get it right either. But what it does mean is that traditional social mores evolved for a reason, and before casting them aside, maybe it’s not a bad idea to see what they will be replaced with.
By the way. I’m a retired family law attorney. Whenever I represented a woman in a marriage that was not just bad, but catastrophically bad (i.e., physical or sexual abuse, sexual abuse of the children, drug or alcohol problems) I made a point of asking her what her father had thought of her fiancee. In cases in which there was a father in the home, the uniform answer was that her father hated her fiancee and did everything he could to keep the marriage from happening. Yes, she has the right to make her own choices, but sometimes listening isn’t such a bad idea.
starfleetdude @139 – ironically the term “incel” was coined by a woman who wanted to create a space for people to talk about difficulties they were having with finding sex/relationships that went beyond “I just can’t meet the right person.” She was horrified by what the dudebros who showed up in the discussion space were saying and basically shut it down and walked away.
Current incels of course insist women aren’t capable of being involuntarily celibate, never mind that they themselves would rather cut off their own dicks than consider sex with a woman who wasn’t an HB10.
Sigh that “And for the record, with women currently able to choose only long-term partners without their financial well-being involved” should not have the “only” in there.
So a lot of young women got raped, but hey, let’s not get bothered about tiny, unimportant details like that!
Note the emotive terminology here: single-parent homes can be, and often are, just fine. And of course a big reason why couples stayed together would be that – mostly for the woman but sometimes also for the man – no other option was available, apart from suicide or murder (which, indeed, did get chosen). But again, hey, trivial details.
They generally “evolved” to suit those with the power to enforce their preferences. And let’s be clear, thirdmill301: do you think it was a bad idea to “cast aside traditional social mores”, and make those changes which have occurred in western societies over the past two centuries – which basically come down to treating women as people with a right to decide who they will live with, marry, and have sex with?
There’s a simple solution to at least part of this. If we want JP to drop his resistance to using the 99 pronouns I made up last night (haven’t posted them yet), we just have to find someone to commit violence or be willing to commit violence, and then he’ll be all for it, in a voluntary enforced way.
Hey Peterson! Use my pronouns, or Larry the Lobster gets it!
I love being right.
thirdmill301, #148
I’m also from a culture with a very strong arranged marriage system. I think you’re wrong in thinking that absence of divorce suggests a happy marriage. When divorce is taboo and women are heavily disadvantaged in seeking divorce and women’s prospects post-divorce are quite bleak, you’re going to have a low divorce rate.
It’s also wrong to look at a system where life-changing decision are forced upon young adults and call that a good quality of the system. Many arranged marriages are also horrible because parents aren’t choosing what’s right for their son or daughter but for what’s right for them and their image in society. Love, relationships, sex are personal things that should absolutely be up to the individual, whether it’s the best thing for them or they come to regret it later.
@Prorivil
Oh, but to what benefit?
For what it’s worth, I found your parody of Jordan amusing and pretty accurate.
I’ll still be reading this thread, but I can’t keep typing out walls of text against other walls of text, especially when I have to keep repeating the same thing over and over again.
For example:
@drst
So, you sincerely believe you know “what I mean” better than myself, even when I have explained a different meaning three times over? Isn’t that the epitome of delusion?
Christ on a fucking bike… I just need “slavery had some advantages too!” and I’ve got a full house.
Oh, and yeah – child of a “broken home” here (nice pejorative turn of phrase there), and I firmly maintain that getting divorced was the best thing my parents ever did for me. And before you ask, I get on fine with both of them, and they get on fine with each other these days too. Still, I think that the only improvement society could have made would have been making the divorce process quicker and easier. Divorce is not necessarily a bad thing.
@155
Personal satisfaction and a nebulous amount of money, owed to me by anyone foolish enough to take my bet.
I like you.
@ Porivil Sorrens
Don’t forget a mild chuckle from the regulars! Or is that just an unintended consequence?
@158
Consider your favor rebuffed.
@159
Any humor provided is wholly coincidental. I’m in it for the cash.
@brainwarp @155
Delusion is thinking the word “enforced” means anything other than “to constrain or compel” as you have tried to weasel-word your way out of for this entire thread. I notice you didn’t address the issue of domestic violence. You guys never do.
@thirdmill
“You also did not have a large population of never-married people with no family ties and no familial moorings, with all the resulting social problems that creates”
Wow. So I have no children and no spouse, what exactly is the social problem that I am? Aside from being the only person paying a full share of taxes since I don’t get special incentives for being married, having kids or being a homeowner?
This is a peeve of mine, but human social mores don’t evolve. Societal rules aren’t the result of millions of years of descent with modification, but what those with power wanted to impose over their society. It’s not therefore surprising that many traditions were biased in favor of men, especially with regard to property rights, to women. That the rules became less biased towards women after they won the vote isn’t surprising. We’re currently seeing a backlash in the form of the MeToo movement against the pervasive abuse that far too many women have had to suffer from men, and it’s about time.
Well, yeah, it is enforced, but it is not enforced enforced, you know? See, “enforced” does not mean what it means, it means something else. It has nothing to do with force. Nosir. Anyway, men are entitled to sex, so Peterson is right, and you’re all too dumb to understand. /s
@drst
You’re “cleverly” omitting the other word there. “Enforced monogamy” means “to compel” subjects to have *only* monogamous relationships, *if they have a relationship at all*. Nobody has denied this. It does *not* mean compelling all subjects into having relationships. It just doesn’t. You want it to mean that, because if it didn’t mean that, you would be wrong. But it doesn’t mean that, sorry!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogamy_in_animals#Enforcement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogamy#International
We already have a concept for enforced relationships: “arranged marriage”. If I wanted to argue on the merits of arranged marriages, I would use that word.
@Porivil
That’s fine, I like you anyway.
@130
Lobsters have mandibles not chelicerae.
I think we’re mischaracterizing the enforced part of monogamy. As brainwarp explained earlier, the “enforced” is about the “mono” and not the “gamy” in monogamy.
So basically people have to have sex with just one person no matter how badly they feel like having sex with another person, because incels will start killing again if they do, so it’ll be THEIR fault.
On the subject of enforced monogamy, I take it they’ve never heard of Elizabeth Taylor or wonder why there’s such a thing as serial monogamy. ;0)
@brainwarp
#1, what did quotation marks do to you that you abuse them like this? Jesus wept.
#b) ““Enforced monogamy” means “to compel” subjects to have *only* monogamous relationships, *if they have a relationship at all*”
No it doesn’t. You’re interpreting it to mean that because it avoids the consent issues you’ve belatedly realize you can’t defend. Doesn’t make you right. The words “enforced monogamy” say to me that everyone is going to be compelled to participate in monogamous relationships. There is nothing in those two words any indication that only people who want to participate have to participate. There’s no indication that people who are asexual or aromantic can opt out. (Even if there was, you’re advocating forcing polyam folks into doing something they don’t want to do. You really, really need to start reading up on consent culture and what it means.) And please stop with the bs that there’s some special meaning to these two words that peons don’t understand. It’s not like you’re speaking Latin or even in some sort of technical jargon.
Oh and I can prove you are interpreting and projecting your personal interpretation onto this entire concept because not once in this entire thread have you ever discussed homosexual relationships being part of “enforced monogamy.” You, like your hero, are so deeply mired in your heterosexual mindset that you can’t even address the reality that a good portion of the human population isn’t heterosexual.
And yet again, no response on the issue of domestic violence.
Damn, too bad I’m late. I could have quickly cleared up the issue of what “enforced monogamy” meant. If it looks like that is still needed, I’ll post something here.
@73: you’ve missed the point.
It’s funny, I don’t know many dumb people. I know some men whose conversation is all about microbrews and the latest strain of weed at their dispensary, men who talk nothing but baseball and cars, women who are celebrity-obsessed, people who are simply boring and unfunny, inane name-dropping flibbertigibbets, people who are deeply neurotic or OCD or ADHD or bi-polar, people who don’t get jokes, people who have an oddly disjointed view of what’s interesting (I have one good friend who will say stuff such as “so I was walking downtown yesterday afternoon”, and you wait, and you wait, then you prompt him “and?”, and he’ll nod and say “yep, I was.”), people who haven’t read a single book since high school or college, people who are somewhat anti-intellectual, etc. I know teenagers who get appallingly bad grades. And I’ve worked many times on projects with cognitive impaired and TBI persons.
But I swear, the only time I ever think “Gawwwd, what a fucking idiot!”, or “that’s the SINGLE DUMBEST THING I’ve ever heard!”, is when talking with racists/sexist/MRA/PUA/Peterson-Harris-Thunderf00t Fanboy/Alt-Right/uber-Libertarian/4-Chan types. It’s Dunning-Kruger writ large, so convinced are they of their superior intellects and incisive logic and command of higher truths (that liberals and women and blacks and LGBTQ+s are too wrapped up in identity politics and victimhood to grasp), that it makes them sound all the more foolish. You almost expect them to start convulsing from the overdoses of cognitive dissonance they must ingest 40 times per day.
I’ll start with the general point that it isn’t uncommon for terminology to mean something other than what it seems to mean. Think of terms like “dictionary atheism”, or metaphorical “spoons”.
What Peterson claims to mean (seemingly: the prevention of polyamory, NOT handing out women like food stamps) is well in accordance with how others have used the term in the past. And those others also, not coincidentally, go on to make the same claims about how this prevention of polyamory makes civilization better and reduces violence and whatever else. One book even briefly speculates that laws against polyamory might have helped with the development of Democracy in ancient Athens!
Earliest appearance on the Wikipedia page for monogamy in animals, December 2016
This book, copyright 2014, says (page 88):
“Western European, American, and East Asian societies live in relative peace and prosperity because they honor and enforce monogamous marriage, as did the earliest human societies.
[…] The monodamy practiced by successful modern civilizations is “normaitve”, sustained by societal rules and the benefits they bring.”
Goes on to claim many of the same things Peterson does about the benefits of monogamy being the norm (list on page 90). It’s clear this is exactly what he’s talking about. Also speculates that normative monogamy “may have helped create the conditions for the emergence of democracy” (end paragraph of page 90).
Says it is a form of “egalitarianism”, probably similar to how Peterson points out that it is a sacrifice, the well-off (people who are most desirable) sacrifice for the benefit of everyone else, including the less well-off.
This book also seems to equate “enforced monogamy” to common regular boring old western marriage, monogamy-centrism, etc.
@#87 I wrote:
raven @137 wrote:
Yahtzee! I just didn’t expect it to come from the anti-Peterson side, let alone comparing him to himself! lol
::sigh:: that should have been @ 134.
@drst
Look, I can totally understand how you arrived at that interpretation, but that’s not the meaning that is being conveyed by me (or JP). It’s not the meaning of the term in anthropology or biology. This misunderstanding had already been cleared up multiple times by the time you entered the thread.
A lot of the fuss in this thread is about the equivocation of “enforced monogamy” with “enforced marriage” and consequently the equivocation of “enforced marriage” with “rape”. That’s the whole basis of this “rape advocacy” allegation and it’s one giant non-sequitur. Of course, it feats neatly into the “Jordan Peterson is an alt-right idiot” narrative, so you are wont to believe it…
Yes, there’s tons of things I haven’t discussed. There’s dozens of paragraphs that I haven’t individually responded to. It’s impossible to deal with everything.
There lots of issues with “enforced monogamy”. I’m not in favor of it, which you would know if you had read my comments. However, I’m not so sure though that domestic violence really occurs less in an environment where relationships instead are more casual and disposable.
KG, No. 151:
“So a lot of young women got raped.” Note the emotive terminology here. And I say that to make the point that while some of the responses to my comment have been thoughtful, a lot of others have been, well, emotive terminology.
I already said there are problems with arranged marriages, but goddess knows there are plenty of problems with our system too, so it really comes down to which set of problems do you want to have. Ultimately I think I prefer our system, but one of the reasons Jordan Peterson is so popular is because he does such a good job of identifying real problems that our “me too” “it’s all about me” culture has created, not just for men, but for women too. And for those for whom divorce worked out just fine, either as a parent or a child, I’m happy for you, but there’s plenty of social science data that says that overall, our high divorce rates have been catastrophic. If your parents got a divorce and you’re happy, then I’m happy for you, but as my statistics professor used to say, data is not the plural of anecdote. And ultimately, if the volume could be turned down, this is one area in which I think the left and the right might have things to learn from each other.
And assume for the sake of argument (even though I’m not sure it’s entirely true) that traditional social mores are entirely for the benefit of the patriarchy. (Actually one of the important functions of traditional marriage was to ensure that women would have financial and other support in raising children, which does not strike me as being pro-patriarchy, but I digress.) My point still remains that before you throw them out, have a look to see what’s going to replace them. Sometimes the devil you know really is better than the devil you don’t know.
@thirdmill301 #176:
It’s not the “me too” movement that created the problem though. MeToo is a movement that’s a reaction to the harassment and worse that women have been subject to from men for far too long. Peterson is popular not because he’s identifying real problems, but because he’s excusing the problem of sexual harassment for a male audience that wants to hear it.
[somewhere above]
*snicker* Awesome. Taking points off, though, because you can’t acronymize that to “lobster”.
Let’s assume that “enforced monogamy” means “encouraging people to have one, and only one partner in their lifetime.”
The stated problem is that men get violent when they don’t get sex. Which, you know, cool, really says a lot about us men. Therefore, the goal is to subtly arrange things so that men who might get violent in its absence get the sex they need.
“Enforced Monogamy” achieves this goal, far as I can tell, by essentially reducing the sex pool. If someone has had sex with someone else, both are unavailable for sex from then on. This means that each hot guy will get paired up with one gal and be taken off the market, so women will have to find other men to sleep with to get the sex they want. The hope, therefore, is that these sex-deprived women will eventually settle for violent-without-sex men.
So many questions, but here are a few that come to mind.
Should the violent-without-sex men really be considered safe to date? If they’re gonna shoot up a school for not getting laid, aren’t they likely gonna be abusive to their partners if their partner isn’t feeling up to sex at the time? I know I absolutely would not want to date a woman who I know would start gunning people down if she didn’t get the sex she wanted. And I absolutely absolutely wouldn’t want to marry such a person.
What’s stopping women from remaining celibate? In a non-“enforced monogamy” society, women can sleep with multiple men and men can sleep with multiple women. Women could very easily choose to sleep with these “violent-without-sex” men if they wanted, but they don’t. Whatever those reasons may be, they don’t go away in an “enforced monogamy” society. Plenty of people, men and women, don’t end up marrying in our current society. Why would you expect any different in another version? Or would you be assuming that women would get too horny to be comfortable with celibacy, and since all the hot men are taken, they’d settle rather than remain sexless?
Setting up a society designed with strict laws to make the only “options” for physical intimacy ones that are currently unattractive to women, even if you don’t see it as rape, is at least a little rapey, isn’t it? Again, women are currently not choosing to have sex with certain men, for whatever reason. So you aim to create a society where women can either not have sex at all or have sex with the men they currently reject, both bad choices. Hell, you do the same thing for men as well, and since men are apparently particularly violent-without-sex according to Peterson-types, you’re forcing men into situations where they either are prone to go violent or they are stuck inside a relationship they wouldn’t normally choose to be in. The whole thing is very “I’ll make you and offer you can’t refuse,” which absolutely involves a restriction or coercion of consent. Rapey, at best.
Some men are violent-without-sex. Most aren’t. Some men are violent-without-complete-control-over-another-being. Most aren’t. Some men are violent-without-good-grades-in-school. Most aren’t. Some men are violent-without-a-sizable-paycheck. Most aren’t. Are we really going to base a whole society around people who threaten violence if they don’t get what they want? Isn’t that… ya know… terrorism?
And to brainwarp@175:
Good. It’s a bad and toxic idea.
The question is, are the people in a relationship happy to be in that relationship? If one or both are incapable of leaving the relationship, chances are the answer will be “no.” If both are capable of leaving relationships they don’t find satisfying (or they find abusive, or negative for whatever reason), then chances are the answer will be “yes.”
Now, extend that to a relationship where one partner ends up abusive. If “monogamy” is “enforced,” then either the other partner is stuck in that abusive relationship, or they are doomed to be alone if they leave. That would enable the abuse to continue.
thirdmill301,
“Traditional marriage” also ensured women’s ability to support themselves financially were taken away. So they needed to wholly depend financially on the patriarch. Funny how that tidbit gets left out.
Also, non-consensual sex IS rape. There is nothing “emotive” in pointing this out. And it is hard to argue that forced-marriages lead to consensual sex in the vast majority of cases.
@176
Uh, how about instead of trying to pre-arrange marriages and force people into joinings they might have zero interest in, we stop treating marriage and child rearing as an inevitable obligation and stop pressuring people to seek out relationships that won’t work out just because they’ve been told that they have to be married by 25?
I can’t believe it’s 2018 and we still have to have the argument over whether or not feudal-ass arranged marriages are a thing we should re-instate. What’s next, arguing about converting the working class into serfs because, hey, they were super safe when they had to stay within a kilometer of their master’s castle and couldn’t own anything but farm equipment.
For someone who wants to focus so hard on the real, hidden meaning of things, you don’t actually seem to be able to read very well.
All the times that the republicans wanted to kill Obamacare and others protested, the republicans were routinely accused of being “against healthcare”. Their opponents were portrayed by supporters as “for healthcare”
The republicans tried to say, “No we’re against entitlements,” or “No, we’re for freedom,” but their opponents weren’t talking about their personal preferences about healthcare. Their opponents were saying that they’re advocating a policy that results in less healthcare. And we have real-world data to show that they are, in fact, advocating policies that result in less health care.
Peterson stands accused of advocating social policy that either increases rape and/or increases the ability of at least some rapists to get away with rape, to justify rape to their social peers, in other words, to “legitimize” rape.
There is a ton of data that shows that underreporting of rape was worse when good-ol’ American “enforced monogamy” of the 1950s was in full swing. We can also point directly to the laws that upheld and/or expressed the social desire for monogamy to have a primary and special meaning: they included laws against no-fault divorce and laws barring the prosecution of rapists who were married to their victims. We have research showing a real impact on laws like this on the ability of rapists to get away with their crimes.
We assert that Peterson is advocating for more rape and/or more legitimization of rape in the same sense that the Republicans were advocating against healthcare.
And we contend that the same rhetoric that is perfectly acceptable in that conversation is also acceptable in this one: If Peterson is for policies that increase the legitimization of rape, then Peterson is advocating for the legitimization of rape. If Peterson is for policies that increase the total number of rapes, then Peterson is advocating for rape.
Any advocate for Peterson that wants to claim they’re interpreting Peterson reasonably is going to have to explain why they don’t interpret Peterson’s critics reasonably and consistently with how public rhetoric is used during every other public debate on social and/or governmental policy.
The 1950s US version of “enforced monogamy” had dramatically less reporting and dramatically more rationalizations for withholding consequences of raping from actual rapists.
Under the interpretation of Peterson most favorable to Peterson and his supporters, 15 million separate lines of research indicate that a return to that style of “enforced monogamy” is associated with more rape and more rapists getting away with rape.
THIS IS OVER AND ABOVE THE FACT that Peterson refuses to rule out which style of “enforced monogamy” he wants. I do not here claim he wants mandatory marriage, but merely that he goes out of his way to insist in his clarifying document that he does not want government’s “enforcing marriage” but instead wants social enforcement. However, he never specifies that he only wants US-style or Canadian-style enforcement. In the same anthropological literature there are many, many cultures represented and they enforce monogamy in pretty horrible ways. Acid attacks and murders, for two. Given his unwillingness to limit the acceptable methods of enforcement beyond just “don’t let government do it”, people are also deeply suspicious of exactly what would be acceptable to Peterson if it advanced his policy of monogamy enforcement.
But leave that entirely aside.
In public rhetoric, Peterson advances a policy that we have every reasonable expectation will increase at least the legitimization of rape. Therefore, people reasonably asserted that he
He’s taken government off the table. Although the statement would still be true with only social enforcement, that increased information allows us to say
is more accurate.
Fine with me, but it doesn’t help Peterson much.
This is rhetoric 101 type shit. You don’t need a degree in psychology or political science or even english. This is what words mean when people say them.
But, and these last two things are specifically for brainwarp, even if Peterson means whatever the fuck you think he means – currently I think I understand you to be saying you’re only advocating for a return to 1950s sexual morality, but whatever –
You say
Do you admit that “rape advocacy” in public rhetoric can be synonymous with public advocacy of policies which will increase rape, and not personally cheering on the thought of rape or arranging a specific rape to take place? If you do, then you can disagree that “rape advocacy” should be used in this instance, maybe you think this rhetoric is overly prejudicial or something, but unless you deny that public rhetoric is used in the way that we all know it is commonly used, your effort to dispel “this idea of rape advocacy” is nothing more or less than trying to control the rhetorical style of your opponents, not educate them. We know the facts. We think Peterson is an immoral asshat and deploy our rhetoric according to both our knowledge of the facts and the intent of our advocacy.
Second, we know that you don’t advocate his social policy, but why don’t you recoil in horror from it? Even understood as Peterson wants it understood, and even going farther than that and granting “only” 1950s style Canadian and/or US practices of enforcing monogamy, nearly everyone here finds that not just undesirable because they wouldn’t have as much sex (which you have asserted is your reason for rejecting his proposal), but also highly immoral, not least for the reason that it places the burden for curing men’s violence on someone other than the men committing and/or threatening violence and no one should bear the punishment for someone else’s crime.
Knowing that:
What, in your ethics, makes his preferred schema where the innocent are punished for the sins of the violent remotely acceptable?
Like, fucking sorry, the debate has been settled. Arranged marriage is shitty and archaic. Might as well be supporting geocentricism or spontaneous generation.
Was slavery really that bad? After all, the slaves didn’t have to worry about tribal wars and wild animals! Sure there were a few downsides, but if you look at the data, being attacked by wild animals happened way less in cotton plantations!
I think this is one situation where the left and the right need to come together.
No, it’s not the whole basis fo the rape advocacy allegation.
It’s the easiest aspect of the rape advocacy allegation to explain to people, because if it were true, then anyone would easily understand that mandatory marriage results in more rape. Therefore, when explaining/defending those allegations, it’s the natural first place to turn.
But it’s not the whole basis of the allegation. The whole basis of the allegation is that we have a huge amount of research on rape, mostly done by feminists btw, that gives us every reason to believe that the policies for which he advocates – even mere 1950s style Canadian/US enforced monogamy – are associated with increased rape.
Also, by the by, increased domestic violence which includes but is not limited to rape.
Also also, by the by, the increased murder of men by women in the context of romantic/sexual relationships because women who want to leave a relationship and can, simply do. Women who feel they can’t leave a relationship will sometimes murder a partner to end the relationship. If monogamy is enforced 1950s style, then we would not facilitate the ending of relationships with the resources and encouragement we currently provide. More women would then feel stuck in relationships.
Murders of men by intimate partners have fallen by about 2/3rds since around 1970. Data aren’t very trustworthy farther back than about 1975 and are definitely not trustworthy beyond 1965 (in part because police reports didn’t necessarily identify women as being in an intimate relationship with a man they murdered if the two weren’t legally married, but also for general record-keeping and record-storage reasons) so we can’t say for sure beyond 1970 and even 1970s stats aren’t what you would call precise. Still, the biggest drops were in the 80s, and 2/3rds is a lot.
It would be perfectly fair to explain long-hand that Peterson advocates a return to social policies strongly correlated with the increased murder of men by women. It would also be perfectly fair to rhetorically shorten that to
Yes. It’s dramatic. But it has real meaning, and the meaning happens to be true.
I keep hearing people reference this “traditional marriage” business, but I don’t think I’ve ever really seen evidence of it. Marriage customs have varied hugely over space and time. You simply cannot say that there is one, basic, standard form of “marriage”.
The Romans, for example, had at least three different types of marriage that citizens could engage in, as well as informal unions that slaves partook of. Divorce and remarriage were common and unremarkable in Roman society, at least during the Republic. The main purpose of Roman marriage was the forging of political ties between families. The legitimacy of heirs was not really an important consideration, since Roman families frequently adopted children as heirs and dispensed their estates as much to their friends and patrons as to their descendents.
In Athens, however, marriage was strictly for citizens, heavily regulated by the state and focused almost exclusively on the legitimation of male heirs to inherit a citizen’s citizenship. The Athenians who owned Attica were obsessed with keeping the land and political power within the same ancestral families – so citizens could only marry citizens, and marriage was essentially the long-term loan of a package of financial and social benefits (woman + dowry) from the father’s family to the husband’s.
In neither society, however, was monogamous marriage supposed to mean that the male participant was only allowed to have sex with the female. Men in both Greece and Rome were generally free to have sex with prostitutes, foreigners, other men, and particularly with their slaves. In Rome even free women were able to partake of the sexual availability of slaves. And not everyone bought in to the culture of monogamous marriage – even when, under the Principate, it was coerced by legal benefits and penalties. A famous Roman tombstone from the 3rd century AD proudly records the household of one Alia Potestas, who lived with her two male partners as a happy threesome until her death (which the two men commemorated for posterity with an impressive piece of marble).
Christians, meanwhile, have only been in the marriage game since the late Eleventh Century at the earliest. Even then, for most of the Middle Ages, it was only aristocrats and the elite who bothered with Christian marriage ceremonies – ordinary people pair-bonded as was their wont in all kinds of informal and imaginative ways.
Even supposing “enforced monogamy” is merely meant to be refer to societies forbidding particular sexual choices, like how many societies enforce heterosexuality, it’s obviously both 1. still a case of wanting to deprive women of autonomy and 2. something that definitely is intend to to push women into relationships with men they would otherwise not want. Whether or not it falls under rape in a formal legal sense should be beside the point.
And even if Peterson didn’t quite intend to suggest allowing rape in that formal legal sense, he still phrased in a way that could be interpreted like that, because on-line you can see a lot of his fans have been taking it that way. This is still a problem, because it still promotes the idea. Peterson may stop short of actually saying the worst versions, but you can see from his responses he isn’t concerned about how he normalizes them, so why would that excuse him? His support is going to get people hurt either way.
In fact, whenever I hear people talk about the alleged “benefits of enforced monogamy”, it makes me think of the emperor Augustus and his successors, who made a concern for enforcing their idea of “traditional” Roman marriage a firm pillar of the moral aspect of the role of Roman Emperor. Augustus’s entire focus in this regard was derived from a deeply pessimistic Roman mindset that viewed his own age as decadent and corrupt compared to the fine, moral and upstanding Romans of centuries past. The ones who were too poor for any of this luxury, kept on their toes by Hannibal at the gates and as yet untarnished by all that horrible Greek effeminacy that Empire brought with it.
Juvenal was satirising this dreary and tedious mindset in the 110s AD. Why on earth are people giving it credibility now?
Reaching back to the initial idea that violent single men wouldn’t be violent if they had a partner. In my experience, violent single men who get partners stop being single and keep being violent, they just have a more convenient target now.
@116, brainwarp
Uh, no. I’m not sure you understand how having multiple partners works. You’re assuming that women only choose a single partner but men choose multiple partners. That’s not how it works at all. So, poly time, I have one primary partner and several secondary partners (it should be noted that secondary doesn’t denote a lesser relationship, just one that for reasons of time, distance, or paramour issues is less prominent in one’s life at this time), each of my partners have several of their own partners, who often have several partners of their own. The fact that I have five or so (the line blurs a little bit when you start getting into friends and acquaintances in the poly and BDSM communities) partners doesn’t mean that there are four (or so) men out there going unpartnered. My primary partner sees two other men currently (she used to see a woman as well, but they drifted apart), one of my secondary partners sees two other women, one sees four other men and three women, one sees two men three women and four NB people, another of my partners sees three other men, and so on. Monogamy wouldn’t allow other men to partner in this instance, in fact it could actually leave people unpartnered depending on how the chips fall.
Obviously, the real solution to the problem is enforced pansexual polyamory, which will open up far more potential relationships than monogamy could ever hope to. /s
I dunno, because they’re not in the mood? Because they have stuff to do? Because sex gets dull if that’s basically all you’re doing? I mean, sex is fun, but it’s not the end all be all. And, besides, I thought this wasn’t about sex, it was about partnership? You know, there’s this thing where people form close relationships with other people, often irregardless of whether or not sex is in the picture. And these relationships are generally not limited by gender or relationship status, you can have just about as many as you want with whoever you want (although, it can be a lot to juggle huge amounts of them). These partnerships are often as strong or stronger that romantic relationships, in fact I’ve had a couple that have lasted almost 5 times longer than my longest romantic relationship. I’m not sure what the kids these days call them, we used to call them “friends.”
@drst:
Actually, you’re wrong in this case drst, but only to this extent: “enforced monogamy” can mean what you’re saying it means to you, but that’s not at all what Peterson intended.
i don’t mind holding the fuckwit accountable for his intended communication in this case because his intended meaning is morally intolerable for the same reasons his obvious, plain meaning as portrayed in the NYTimes is morally intolerable.
But, curiously, I’ve seen many interviews between newspapers and PhDs in my time. Though I never lived in the eastern US and never made reading the NYT a regular thing, I’m sure that they are not less skilled than others.
Other PhDs, when using professional jargon with a specific meaning in a specific nomenclature will clarify as they are speaking, e.g. technical term as elaborated by Smith & Smith is desirable because”.
The fact that Peterson repeatedly fails to communicate any of this to his audiences is evidence of his lack of communication competence, not his lack of morality. That’s evidenced by plenty of other things.
@Matrim:
That is indeed the conclusion that a great deal of research tends to support.
What you said @148 was:
That’s actually a description of forced marriage. And if a woman or girl was not able to say “no” to themarriage, or to sex once married (and I’ve never heard of that being an option in a forced marriage) – then she was raped.
No, he really, really doesn’t. And the elision of “me too” with “it’s all about me” tells us all we need to know about you.
Maybe your statistics professor might also have told you to look at the actual statistics, which show decades-long declines in various markers of antisocial andor self-endangering behaviour by young people, occurring at the same time as these soaring divorce rates.
I know, by the way, this is nothing that Crip Dyke and others haven’t been saying, and there is no real reason for someone to listen to me if they’ve been thoughtlessly ignoring them. But seriously. We already have laws against bigamy and norms against cheating; it is inconceivable to me how you could take a call for some kind of additional enforced monogamy, explicitly to provide sex for more men, as anything but an attempt to curb women’s ability to live their own lives.
But even the interpretation you’ve described makes him an alt-right idiot. Of course, that’s also leaving aside the rest of the shit he spews.
“Me too” was a typo for which I apologize. What I meant to say was “it’s all about me”, which of course is a different concept entirely.
Whether arranged marriage, and the sex that’s expected is part of it, is rape depends; the whole concept of consent has a lot of cultural baggage and means different things in different places. If you’ve been raised to believe it’s expected, and something to look forward to because it means you’re now going to be a wife and mother, then it may not be as non-consensual as you think. Don’t impose your Western concept of consent on other cultures where it simply may not apply. In the US yes, it probably would be rape, but if you were raised with different expectations it may not be.
@Crip Dyke
No, I don’t admit that. Again, let’s take the example of narcotics laws: Imagine you’re advocating for liberal narcotics laws, and I accuse you of being “pro rape”, because the evidence suggest that the more drugs that are used, the more rapes happen. Would it be be acceptable if I called you a “rape advocate”, as result?
Don’t forget that when you formed that expression of “advocating for governmentally or socially legitimized rape”, you were under the impression that “forced monogamy” was tantamount to forcing people into marriages. Now insofar as forced marriages result in non-consensual sexual encounters, advocating for forced marriages really *is* tantamount to advocating for rape. Your characterization would’ve been accurate! It just rested on wrong premise. It was a misunderstanding and you could’ve just move on.
What happens instead is that now your brain is trying to construct a chain of reasoning where you would’ve been right all along. This is cognitive dissonance at work.
Now, I wouldn’t deny that domestic abuse was a much bigger problem in the past, but how does that relate to all the other rapes? How do you know that a 1950’s style society produces less rapes total than the less monogamous society of the 2010s? How about the fact that child abuse is massively more likely in a family where the male partner is not the biological father? What if the statistics were actually in Jordan’s favor here, do I get to call *you* a rape advocate for being *against* “enforced monogamy”? This line of reasoning just doesn’t help your case.
We here a Pharyngula had a long discussion on sexual consent, and have rules listed as Crystal Clear Consent. How clear is the consent in an arranged marriage, with a certain compulsion being applied???
KG@114
That’s what I’m taking away as well.
Peterson isn’t advocating for the Handmaid’s Tale. His whole stick is to appeal to a past where, according to him, things were better, more ordered.
His “socially enforced monogamy” is a return to a world where not being married wasn’t an option for women.
FFs, it’s not like women have declared boycott on men, no matter how much they deserve it. Many women still want heterosexual long term monogamous relationships, with or without kids, but they also know that they are no longer the only option. They have a choice, they can support themselves and if the men available don’t actually look like boyfriend or husband material they decline.
brainwarp
So, if that were what Peterson meant, how would that solve the problem of Incels in any way? Clearly at a point when women can have many different men they choose not to have these men. If they are now “encouraged” to guard their pussies more carefully, logically even more men are going to miss out.
Question’s only for whom. Most human societies also have evolved slaveholder societies and/or indentured servants.
Oh, I right, I forgot, Peterson thinks that the idea that women were oppressed in societies that traded them like cattle is preposterous…
This idea supposes that the women only have sex once. What’s to stop them from fucking another 19 dudes?
thirdmill
I don’t know if I’m supposed to laugh or cry. Having a father and mother home does not mean not having a broken home. Having a home that people think is wonderful does not mean not having a broken home. It just means you’ll be well groomed and people won’t believe you.
Crying.
Definitely crying.
Because women are in no way trapped in abusive marriages in those places.
Chris J
Banning vibrators, I’m sorry, I meant socially enforced non-masturbation.
Matrim
QFFT
###
Since the recent misogynist mass murder killing spree was in a high school again, at what age does Peterson think we need to “encourage” marriage? Do girls get to turn 14 before they’re expected to sexually service whatever dude wants them? Or is preventing men from murdering innocent people for lack of wet dick such an important task that every girl past primary school is fair game?
And who actually thinks that “he could turn into a mass murderer if you don’t fuck him” is a compelling argument to get closer to that person and not one why you should run away?
Yes, because right wingers in general and Peterson in particular never use euphemism to obfuscate their views. Postmodern neo-marxism is dressed up cultural marxism without explicit anti-semitism (yet, give it time).
thirdmill301
Even within the context of an arranged marriage, consent means exactly the same thing worldwide. There really aren’t hidden grey areas in yes, lets have sex, or no thanks. A women who consents to sex with her husband for the purposes of conception is in fact consenting.
Why are you bringing other cultures into it? (dear muslima) Again, consent to sexual intercourse is not a grey area that varies by culture. Most of the non-western cultures I know of are pretty sex-positive, and don’t actually value monogamy much, or at all. They do value stable, commited marriage as a tradition of family and children and knowing your parentage, but open marriage is the norm in the three I am most familiar with.
In traditional Hmong culture, rapists and abusers are summarily killed, lest their violence infect others.
braainwarp do I understand you to be saying that you do not believe in enforced monogamy and disagree with peterson on it and that he is not really advocating enforced monogamy in the way “we” seem to understand from his own words he is.
I am also unclear as to what you mean by rape. As I have come to learn rape consists of none consensual sex or sex in which the consent is not voluntary but is coerced in some way. it is also clear that some kinds of prostitution have definite overtones of involuntary consent as well.
please make it clear for those of us who are getting rather confused by the seeming contradictions and vagueness.
uncle frogy
Nothing more progressive than erasing the suffering of women in nonconsensual abusive arranged marriages and declaring that consent is a concept that their poor foreign heads just can’t seem to wrap around :(
Yeah, I mean, why listen to, say, Indian feminists when there’s a white dude who can tell you that they actually don’t want to decide whom and when to fuck?
@Brainwarp:
Fine, you disagree with us on the uses of political rhetoric in this case.
But you never answered the underlying question: do you concede that republicans were said to be against health care when they didn’t necessarily feel a strong negative emotion about health care per se merely because they advocated a policy that would decrease the provision of health care?
YES. I would definitely want to know if there were sound statistics showing that enforced monogamy prevents rape. If I was convinced by the research, I would abandon my former position as immoral to hold in the face of evidence. And if in some make-believe world (where I no longer prioritize all the things I prioritize today) I continued to hold that position in the light of evidence showing my preferred policy increased rape, then I would fully expect feminists and others to use rhetoric describing me as advocating rape. At that point I would have to grapple with the hard task of convincing people that my position was correct even given the expected increase in rape.
This is how political messaging is done. This is what words mean. Advocate a policy that increases dairy consumption and you’re for increased dairy farm production.
It’s a natural consequence of the policy and you can fairly be said to support the natural consequences of your own policies. Even when the consequence is as emotionally laden and rhetorically dis/advantageous as rape. There’s no special rule for rape that says that words in public policy debates that include discussion of rape magically mean something different than they do in public policy debates that do not include discussion of rape.
So I’m really curious about your answer to the underlying question: did you understand what proponents of Obamacare meant when they said that Republicans were “against healthcare”?
If yes, then why are you against using the same interpretive process when some here said that Peterson is “for rape” or anything similar?
If you really didn’t understand the criticism of Republicans when it was made … well, i actually doubt you failed to understand it, but I suppose that’s possible. Mostly I think you’re just using special pleading for the case of rhetoric involving rape because … ??? Rape is too “emotional” maybe? I’m not sure.
But aside from that, even if Peterson’s policy were rape neutral and you or someone proved it to me with at least a preponderance of the evidence, I would take back my assertion that Peterson advocated the social legitimization of rape, but the policy that he advocates would still be morally reprehensible.
What, in your ethics, makes his preferred schema where the innocent are punished for the sins of the violent remotely acceptable?
Okay, let’s take a completely different tack.
Let’s talk about socially enforced homosexuality.
If the group of men and the group of women aren’t desiring sex in ways that lead enough men to get their dicks wet, and if for some percentage of men not fucking directly caused murders, then the solution is obvious, isn’t it?
All those dudes who aren’t fucking any women need to fuck each other. Of course, they’re still free not to fuck anyone if they don’t actually want to fuck anyone, but if they do want to get laid, society will simply enforce a homosex-only norm. That way all the men who want to get laid can, and no murders-for-lack-of-sex will occur.
I leave to others whether there should be an early age-period where heterosex is allowed, an early age-period where heterosexual marriage is allowed, but so long as it lasts all heterosex is accepted, or if we’ll just do away with heterosex altogether as biologists and anthropologists have repeatedly shown that competition for mates is a source of violence. In all three options men can whack off at a sperm bank and walk away knowing that their chances of passing on their genes will not in any way depend on conflict.
Finally, I also leave vague (for now) exactly which methods of enforcement will be employed.
Is there anything at all wrong with this proposal? brainwarp or any Peterson defender can feel free to chime in.
@unclefrogy
I’m not sure I disagree with JP on the merits, I probably disagree on the tradeoffs. JP talks about “social convention favoring stable pair bonding”. I personally favor promiscuity, I don’t favor marriage and I was raised by a single parent. I’d prefer a society that isn’t judgmental about that. However, there are countless arguments to be made about how promiscuity and especially single-parenthood has negative effects on society. I recognize this as a personal liberty vs. public welfare tradeoff.
I consider rape as “unconsensual sex”. I’m not sure what to make of make of “involuntary” or “coerced” consent, that seems kind of oxymoronic.
I don’t see the vagueness and contradiction, I feel like I’m repeating the same things over and over.
@Giliel
Where’s Pinker? Isn’t violence decreasing despite the sexual revolution? (yes, according to every result I saw on google) As for relatively large and common USA gun deaths, that’s an aberration caused by their aberration of inadequate gun laws and such.
brainwarp, for someone who’s repeatedly claimed that you don’t actually support Peterson, you’re arguing for him awfully hard.
If I have just the right number of tabs open, the name of this thread truncates to
Why is Jordan Peterson
@206, brainwarp
Right, but cherry picking means you do work to show that your cherry picked scenario is of general consequence.
Because I can give a contrary illustrative example: those 20 women are like that, but others are not. Others become attracted to more than one guy, and often are attracted to relationships that work best when they aren’t like your harem scenario. More one on one time, or whatever.
*cherry picking means you need to do work […]
Brainwarp
Do you actually believe that this bears any resemblance to the world we live in?
Maybe I know the wrong women, but I don’t think I know any who’d choose that scenario.
ZOMG, I just noticed this myself about 30 minutes ago. There are so many things we have in common, chigau, it’s sometimes hard to believe we didn’t grow up together.
Except for that thing where you know at least one entirely different language than I know. That one’s kinda different. Still and all, raising a mug of tea to your sense of humor.
It is amusing that JP’s fanbois assume that marriage implies sex. I assume that they don’t believe that marital rape is a valid concept. Character is highly attractive to me, and as a gay man I wouldn’t give a hardcore incel or JP fanboi the time of day. No one owes them anything. May they reap what they sow.
And how could I forget, the opposite will surely happen too: one woman with many men.
And similar situations for gays and lesbians.
@Crip Dyke
Will I concede that “some people said” that republicans are “against healthcare” because of *something* they said? Well, yeah that probably happened. I don’t think I get your point.
But you wouldn’t have been “advocating rape” in the meantime! That would be total nonsense. If you sincerely believed something *reduced rape* and you advocate for it, then it turns out what you advocated for actually *increases rape*, you would still have been *advocating to reduce rape*! You would’ve simply been wrong, but you wouldn’t have acted *immorally*, assuming you had acted in good faith.
This is really a core problem, people get so polarized over a politics that they immediately come to think the opposing side is just being stupid or literally evil. That’s generally not the case, it’s way more likely that they’re acting sincerely on information and beliefs that you happen to not share.
Isn’t that already kind of the way it is? If you can’t get a woman and you’re willing to settle for men, you’ll just have gay sex. Nothing wrong with that.
CD
We don’t really know who the other is.
Maybe we did grow up together…
Have you ever been to Churchill?
well maybe there is another word for consent given in reaction to psychological, emotional, financial or societal coercion I do not know.
Thanks for answering that while personally do not support enforced monogamy
you are defending peterson and his ideas just the same and everyone who is disagreeing just does not understand.
my suspicions were correct you and he are not making sense and may be leaving out something important or you just do not even understand what you are saying and are just reacting from resentment primarily. how dare those others criticize (group think?) or ask these difficult questions it is some kind of war of political correctness run amuck. of course you do not actually say some of that out loud
resentment has been described as taking poison and expecting it to effect someone else.
uncle frogy
@microraptor
I never said I don’t support him, I said I don’t support “enforced monogamy”. I clearly support him in the sense that I’m still sitting here, against better judgment, arguing in a comment thread where everyone seems to think he’s some sexist alt-right clown.
@unclefrogy
There’s such a thing as seeing the same coin from both sides. It’s not a contradiction and it does makes sense. Yes, it’s possible that you still don’t understand. Sorry about that.
“Whether arranged marriage, and the sex that’s expected is part of it, is rape depends”
No, Thirdmill, it doesn’t depend. It’s rape. Period.
@Brainfart. Let me ask you this: Why would anyone want to have someone who was in any way compelled to be with you(and I don’t doubt it is you that you have in mind)?. In other words, why would you be with someone who hates your guts? Are you a masochist? A sadist? Are you imagining some 1950’s “breadwinner” scenario where you have economic and legal leverage over your partner so they absolutely have to stay with you? Or – and this is the Handmaid’s Tale-level horror here – does it not even occur to you that your hypothetical comfort woman is even capable of any feelings at all? Would you really not even consider the thoughts and feelings of the person who’s obligated to hide your sausage?
@Susan Montgomery
Have you *actually read* my posts? I’m pretty sure you’re arguing with a caricature of a person that only exists in your head, because you haven’t read the thread.
I am glad that you can do that I guess. I do not see how it is possible to argue both sides of an issue and still make any sense unless there are some other unspoken things that are intentionally left out which leads me to distrust those making such arguments as not likely to do me any favors.
uncle frogy
@Brainworm
Yes. I’ve read them. And read them and read them. And read them. You’ve posted the same damn thing over and over regardless of what it is that you’re responding to.
And you haven’t responded to mine. Of what value is a partner who is compelled – actively or passively – to be involved with you?
[kermit voice]
When I say “enforced monogamy” I am not saying that women should be raped. Only that I want society to limit sexual freedom so women will be encouraged to have sex with men they don’t really want to have sex with.
Yes, because people had the same damn misunderstanding over and over, regardless of whether I had already explained it. It’s almost as if people can decipher the words, but then their brain refuses to process them.
You’re still talking to that caricature…
The point is, though, that there are cultures in which the entire notion of consent is a meaningless concept, and not just in the context of sex. If you grow up in such a culture, you simply don’t think about it because it has nothing to do with anything you’ve ever been exposed to. One might equally as well try talking to a honeybee about leaving the hive and becoming her own entrepreneur — she wouldn’t be interested even if she could understand the concept.
And I’m more than a little amused that people who normally are outraged at cultural imperialism suddenly find arranged marriages to be an exception. Well they’re not. If it’s wrong to tell another culture which religion to practice, then it’s just as wrong, and for the same set of reasons, to tell it how to organize its family law.
@Khantron Dear “BOB” tell me that’s sarcasm. It’s officially become impossible to tell anymore.
It is sarcasm
It’s also the best case scenario for what Peterson hopes “forced monogomy” will accomplish.
I would have thought the Kermit voice gave it away! :P
But yes it could be difficult to tell, because that’s basically it completely.
Susan Montgomery @113, @221 & @224: How about using people’s pseudonyms without the clever little alterations? At the very least, it can make searching through a long thread just that much more tedious.
Sorry “enforced monogomy”
The point is, though, that in our culture, consent means a lot – and yet, still not enough. That there are people who are happy with cultures where their consent means nothing is immaterial. That these cultures are learning that there are other ways of living is, yes, sometimes regrettable in that unique folkways do fade away. I’m not sure that any tradition that measures a man’s worth by his virility or measures a woman’s worth solely as breeding stock really should be saved.
@Rob I’ll try but I my “sarcastic bitch quota” won’t fill itself.
It could also be that Peterson knows that “enforced monogamy” won’t help get any noxious incel a relationship but it will suceed in limiting people’s (let’s be real, mostly women’s) sexual freedom and he’s just trying to trick the worst people into passe conservative Christianity.
I’m a fan of tricking people, but this is still pretty grim.
@227
I am wholly unbothered by the “cultural imperialism” that is supposedly inherent in ending arranged marriages. If you showed me a culture that thought 5 year olds are valid sexual partners for adults and they “had no concept” of an age of consent, I’d have zero problem with ending that establishment too.
“Cultural imperialism” isn’t some magic word that means I have to support rape when it happens in a different country.
Furthermore, given that there are an increased amount of people from these cultures speaking out against the institution of arranged marriage, I reject the idea that these poor helpless women can’t possibly understand the concept of consent.
@Brainwimp (sorry, Rob). I give up. You win. Take me now you mad fool and ravish me. Fill me with your inscrutable wisdom of how Mobile Suit Gundam is so much better than Cowboy Bebop. Regale me with your stories of your time pwning the guys at the comic shop at Magic The Gathering. Let me gaze upon your unopened Star Wars action-figures so that I may be consumed by your limitless Alpha Male Dragon Energy and become your love slave.
Yikes.. Came back from work and this is still going on, and on, and on..
Well, I really don’t feel like wasting an hour going through everything to “find” if this point was brought up, but.. we have clear historical records, and even of men who where married, committing horrible, violent, acts, 200 and more years ago, when a) monogamy was actually enforced via the existence of laws that could get you jailed if caught breaking them, and b) 99.9% of all marriages, among the people whose “men” where committing these horrible acts of violence (including the murder of an existing wife, so they could replace her), where “arranged”, which meant, to as much as an extent as possible, they where also “forcing” women to pair up one to one, with someone they didn’t choose.
And, as is always the case with narrow minded harbingers of the status quo, and prophets to the return/creation of “better times”, Peterson ignores all historical, social, anthropological, or even psychological (from any and every one else in his field), in order to make lots, and lots, of money, selling insanity to the desperate and foolish. Gosh… color me surprised. Its almost like the old adage that the love of money (or the love of acquiring it in any case) is the root of all evil is still true today, and it doesn’t matter if the evil appears to be a tepid as weak tea, but promotes madness, or raving lunacy, its still evil.
227-thirdmill
That arranged marriages are imposed and negate choice is a bummer for me. Maybe each person would prefer to stay single (asexual or childfree) or to have an unconventional relationship frowned upon by tradition or simply choose their partner. Though imposing a view upon another society is wrong especially by force I reserve the right to scowl in their general direction based on my biased assumption of universal human rights. Arranged marriages probably don’t rank up there with the absolute worst ways to impose edicts handed down by the old folk, but they don’t sound great to me.
That interfaith, interracial, and same sex marriage are accepted (or at least tolerated) in some places is a positive thing, no?
thirdmill
How did you come to this conclusion? Where in the world are there women who are not only unaware that not having an arranged marriage is a thing, but are entirely lacking in a basic human behavior? (self-determination in mate selection) Also FYI, bees have entirely different social systems, and are a wildly inappropriate comparison to human behavior. A bee hive is made up of a Queen and her various exclusively female/sterile offspring. Drones are only made for the purpose of mating any new Queen when she flies.
Rome fell quite some time ago, so I think we are safe from Imperialism. There are so many different permutations of “arranged marriage” that taking a blanket condemnation approach would be closed-minded. There are plenty of ‘western’ people who still practice arranged marriage within their various religious sects. It is you who are acting as if it is a cultural relic only practiced by backward/foreign/muslim/otherpeople. However, the issue here is JP thinking that womens bodies are a commodity to be redistributed to needy assholes, not arranged marriage. Maybe you should stick to the subject instead of splaining that everyone keeps misrepresenting you?
From an atheist point of view, it is very hard to begin to take JP seriously. “Does God exist?” to which JP responds that he doesn’t like the question! This is how you would expect a five year old to respond to a yes/no question! Maybe JP does not like the concept of a straight answer either.
( Interestingly, I learned about this video from the Youtube’s racist doe guy. He has posted a good purely atheist take-down of JP).
So JP can’t answer a most basic question, but his ideas are capable of generating more than 200 comments on an atheist blog. Why?
Or take this wealth distribution vs sex distribution thing these thinkers on the right have been promoting recently. It is so crazy and irrational on the face of it that one cannot escape the conclusion that it has been designed for an ulterior purpose. “Enforced” monogamy might made have sense if we were all living in middle ages. The good old times when men could sell their wife (with her own consent!) Hey, while we are talking about a wife’s fiduciary worth, we can also debate if we should count the horse’s teeth!
So what is going on?
To understand the logic behind these seemingly crazy arguments, one should note that the keyword here is not “sex” but “distribution”. The whole argument is designed to trip “the lefties”. The idea is “the lefties” love the word “redistribution”. So let’s troll them by talking about sex redistribution. It is crazy. But it seems to be working.
These irrational arguments about race or IQ or monogamy are generating enough controversy to sustain them and the intellectuals behind them.
It is fine to confront the charlatans. But more importantly, maybe time to think about how to help the right restore its mind and find some semblance of rationality and morality again.
lol You are right. They want so “badly” to be “fair” about making sure every dick has a place to stuff his tool, but, at the same time, think that the only “fair” way to distribute wealth is, “To whom ever can hold onto it with the tightest grip, and the most lawyers.” Lets play the game of, “Well, if you want to be ‘fair’ about things!!!”, they say, and what.. we are supposed to respond, “Well, gosh, sure, but how about spreading around a bit of the cash too.”, only to have that idea laughed at just as much as they laugh at women being autonomous.
They’re trying to sell speed boats sales to people in a desert, on the theory that the ones they are trying to sell them to keep babbling about unfair distribution of water. Whom ever taught rudimentary logic to these people never got past the, “No, the thing doesn’t disappear and reappear magically, just because it passed behind something!”, stage.
Is there any precedent for a rational or moral right?
brainwarp @219:
At least you concede you are a Peterson supporter. The last few found it hard to do so.
It’s not just this thread, either. I refer you to my #9.
And hey, I do get you. You think you are not defending his ideas, but rather critiquing misconceptions about the nature of his ideas. There is therefore no onus upon you do justify the merits of his actual ideas, only to dispute they are either sexist or that he personally is some sexist alt-right clown.
(That he’s popular among sexist alt-right clowns is merely incidental).
—
Your very first comment [which was uncannily predicted]:
Then we get to actual, specific quotations, such as the one which you dispute has the significance that supposedly “scientifically-minded” and “reasonable” people* think it does.
So, Word of God:
So, you do not dispute this is a ridiculous contention, you merely think it is unfair to characterise it as misogynistic. And there is no suggestion therein whatsoever about those angry men getting more sex, much less that any woman would thereby be placed in an, um, unsavoury situation.
Arguendo, let’s concede it’s neither misogynistic nor rapey.
Now it’s just a very, very stupid thing to say, which you half-heartedly try to avoid stating.
Not only is it in no way a plausible cure for the ailment, it’s already been the default for centuries. And that he went on to assert that the default for centuries is what is needed now and simultaneously that its very basis for being is the ailment.
Hm. Just for you:
A long, long time ago…
* There was violence due to sexual frustration by men (the ailment)
* There was an emergence of monogamy due to this
* And the years passed, and monogamy was enforced.
* And now there is violence due to sexual frustration by men (the ailment)
* So the cure is monogamy. Enforced monogamy. Though it cannot now emerge, being extant.
Incidentally, it’s precisely what the Catholic Church preaches. The Vatican approves.
Since it hasn’t yet been overtly noted, it is suggestive that the claim is (sexual frustration → anger at God → mass murder), not (sexual frustration → mass murder).
(But hey, let’s not call him religious just because he pointlessly brought God into it — perhaps he refers to the unfeeling universe, which is an established usage God help me)
—
One thing which amuses me is that the whole thing was brought about by you requesting an example of his misogyny. You clearly remain unconvinced that it does, but I note you don’t care to suggest it’s an example of a very, very stupid claim. With added Goddishness.
So it’s been an excellent opportunity to laugh at Peterson and play with a defender.
[raaak, I wrote “Since it hasn’t yet been overtly noted” about the overt goddism prior to reading your comment. FWTW.]
I look at that statement made by brainwarp, and, hypothetical though it may be, the entitlement and cis-male fantasy leaking out all over my keyboard is going to be one hell of a mess to clean up. Seriously? “He’s the bigshot”, and that is all it takes? But I most especially love “when he can get all, he takes all”. He takes it!! Stellar partner-material. Much bigshot. Very swoon.
Also I like how that scenario is a 100% one-to-one mapping of what Incels are like right now (they’re all bigshots, right, so why ain’t the women come running?), which is exactly why the reason they don’t each have, like, 20 partners is such a mystery.
thirdmill, #227
Consent is at an individual level, not a society level.
In societies with strong systems of arranged marriage, people are just going along with being married like that because there’s little other choice that doesn’t carry with it strict consequences from society. When you’re raised with these expectations and pressures and the entire community around you reinforces these same expectations and there is no second option, of course most people will go along with it. You’re presenting quite a false image of arranged marriage. People aren’t being arrange married because that’s how they want it; they’re doing it because it’s not a free choice and they have no desirable alternatives available.
thirdmill, #227
This is just false. Forming an attraction and a bond, falling in love and wanting to be with a person you encounter in your life is a universal human thing. In all societies with strict arranged marriages, people are going against their will to marry someone chosen for them (and to forego marrying someone they love).
I’m from an arranged marriage culture. I don’t know why you’d try to mislead people here. I know you know better.
Correction to my post above:
By universal human thing I don’t mean found in every individual person, but widely seen in every society. Didn’t mean to imply that about asexual/aromantic people. Apologies for the generalization.
thirdmill
You show me that society where there is no difference between rape and adultery (regardless of how ridiculous the standards for being a “true rape victim” are.) You’re also the Western chauvinist here because you are the one ignoring the feminists from those places and cultures fighting for their rights and against rape. But apparently those women know neither their own culture nor their own mind.
BTW, 50 years ago the concept of marital rape didn’t exist, yet women still knew that what was happening to them wasn’t right and they fought to have that recognised. The concept of date rape is damn new, too, and we have tons of stories from older women who say “finally I’ve got the language to talk about what happened to me 50 years ago!”
brainwarp
I know this is a lot, so maybe you didn’t see my question, so I’ll rephrase it:
Do you believe that the 1 dude 20 women who are happy to share him is an adequate description of modern society? Are, to use other MRA and Incel talking points, 80% of women just fucking 20% of men, leaving the other 80% of men to compete for the unwanted bottom 20% of women?
Stone me, but you really are a complete strawmanning idiot. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with having and expressing an opinion on how any culture is organised (and if you or anyone else wants to call that “cultural imperialism”, I don’t give a shit – you can go on arguing with that straw-lefty in your head as long as you like). There are even (rare) cases where organised and if necessary violent intervention in another culture can be justified, if it is to prevent ongoing gross violations of human rights and is very likely to be the lesser evil. What is wrong is, precisely, imperialism: the conquest and exploitation of one society by another.
The concept of consent does not depend on culture. Its meaning is pretty straightforward. How some cultures value consent is a different question, though.
See American conservatives for example. And the Taliban. And some sports players. And incels.
@brainwarp @ 175
“However, I’m not so sure though that domestic violence really occurs less in an environment where relationships instead are more casual and disposable.”
Apparently you’re unable to Google, which explains a lot:
“Tapping into the national database of death certificates, Wolfers and Stevenson traced suicide rates before and after divorce reform and found a statistically significant reduction of nearly 6 percent in the female suicide rate following a state’s change to unilateral divorce. There was no discernible change in male suicides. Looking longer term, they found close to a 20 percent decline in female suicides 20 years after the change to no-fault divorce.
The researchers then turned to national crime data and family violence surveys that were conducted in 1976 and 1985 by sociologists Murray Straus and Richard Gelles. Wolfers and Stevenson found that domestic violence against women declined from the first survey to the second in the states that had adopted no-fault divorce laws between 1969 and 1983, whereas it had increased in nine states that either had historically had unilateral divorce or had never enacted the reform.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20040608005406/en/Stanford-Business-School-Study-Finds-No-Fault-Divorce
@brainwarp:
sorry about the bad formatting above.
I also wanted to emphasize Giliell’s excellent questions from #250:
Though some emphasis is added, I don’t mean that the remaining portions of Giliell’s comment don’t deserve attention or answer.
And, I think I’ll just add again here that your statement above that (to paraphrase) “1 man fucking 20 partners leaves 19 men with no fucks is just math” is just a stupid statement.
Do you even realize that you left the partners of that one very busy man entirely ungendered? Do you even acknowledge that the 19 “unpartnered” men can fuck each other? Do you even acknowledge that if that one man can partner with 20 people, then one or more of those 20 can also partner with more than one person? Do you even acknowledge that it’s possible that one woman can fuck more than one man?
When asked that way, I would think your answer would be “Claro!”
But here’s the thing: despite the fact that these things are completely fucking obvious to anyone who considers the question, you (and Peterson) failed to even consider these questions when constructing an analogy for the problems you perceive to exist in human society.
Because of this lazy thinking that ignores the reality of human sexual relationships, Peterson is also being just plain dumb and here’s the thing:
Supporting Peterson is making you dumber too, because you have to sacrifice the obvious truths in order to defend the already oversimplified metaphors of the man and community you defend.
I could call you an idiot (again? Have I done so already?) because you have engaged in idiocy like saying that 1 man with 20 partners means 19 men go without partners because math. But let’s try a different approach:
If you have to ignore reality, if you have to make your arguments more and more idiotic over time in order to defend the people you choose to defend, then maybe they aren’t worth your defense.
I still have to ask what part off the peterson and followers ideal and proposals left out of the public discussion?
Brainwarp here can apparently argue both sides at the same time he has said as much.
The only way to do that, to implement any of that given the variability of human response in the real world as apposed to the straw world is some form of absolute control. Are we then being led step by step if we accept any of this shit as having any validity toward the some champion of order to bring us (them!) into correct behavior. There is in none of this any semblance of an appeal to individual determination or liberty, certainly not any equality as far as I can see there is only some ideal that all must adhere to. Just how we are to maintain that ideal is left unsaid other than is hinted at by enforced as in enforced monogamy.
I do not trust any of that as far as this old man can spit.
uncle frogy
Just skimming through this comment thread, in summary, it seems that Peterson’s latest bit of pseudo-intellectual wankery is to suggest that the cure for violent attacks is ‘enforced monogamy’, which would ensure men have partners, and thus wouldn’t carry out these attacks because of their sexual frustration. This led some people to make the (very reasonable, IMO) assumption that Peterson is therefore advocating forcing women to marry these men, even if they do not wish to do so, so Peterson is being both an idiot and a misogynist. However, others here have said that this is a misrepresentation of what Peterson is talking about, and what he’s talking about is a return to the world of the 1950s, where it is unacceptable to have more than one partner (well, certainly if you’re a woman), which would encourage there to be enough women to go around. This would mean that Peterson is not being quite as virulently misogynistic (though still somewhat misogynistic), but, given that simple past experience shows that this does not eliminate such violence, and causes all sorts of other problems, it shows that Peterson is being an utter imbecile.
So, the question is – is Peterson being a bit of an idiot and a fairly extreme misogynist, or a bit of a misogynist and an extreme imbecile?
I have no idea what peterson is but his position as he has expressed it and as it has been defended here is extremely misogynistic and utterly imbecilic.
uncle frogy
just to add here that that is why he so f’n popular in some quarters.
uncle frogy
@Crip Dyke
First of all, it took some effort to get the perception of the participants to move from “JP wants to force-marry women to psychopaths” to “JP is advocating for a return to 1950s style monogamy”. I’d call that a success already, but one step at a time.
You seem to have this idea of a “plan” that JP is trying to realize. If you ask me, there’s no such plan. What’s the actual statements that JP made on this topic? All this hysteria seems to be based on this short segment out of the NY times interview:
This is foremostly an explanation of why “enforced monogamy” exists in the first place. Here’s what JP says on twitter about “enforced monogamy”:
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/998088964719464449
So, the worst you can work with, while still staying true to his actual words, is a that he is advocating a “social convention favoring stable pair bonding”. Now, what exactly does that mean in practice? Nobody knows, he doesn’t specify it. Your brain is left to “fill in the blanks”, so naturally you’ll go for the worst plausible scenario you can imagine. In this case, it’s apparently the marriages of the 1950s, which probably only exist as cartoons in your head. Jordan Peterson doesn’t have a plan to make this happen, because no such plan can exist. Social norms don’t change “according to plan”. He’s made an off-handed remark on the virtues of monogamy, that’s really all there is to it.
Now, I’m not interested in arguing for monogamy of any kind, or for “social conventions favoring stable pair bonding”, simply because *I personally don’t prefer it*. If it turned out that monogamy caused less rapes (or violence, as JP insists) then I would *still* favor promiscuity, because I prefer to trade off personal liberty against safety. It’s however very important to understand that the opposite view is neither immoral nor stupid.
It’s also important to understand that *you lose credibility* when you use strong terms like “advocates for (…) rape” and then, upon further investigation, this turns out to be an extreme distortion. You may dismiss this as “that’s how people talk”, but it’s alienating and completely unconvincing to anyone outside your echo chamber.
By turning JP (and others) into caricatures, you’re doing your “progressive cause” a big disservice. You don’t get strong by fighting straw men – when the real fight comes, you will lose. You’re all having a big circle-jerk while public opinion is shifting rapidly against you. I’m not sure think I’ll like the eventual outcome of that.
Correct. He is not saying anything new or even specific. There is no meaningful or substantial proposition. There is no thesis, not even an argument. When he makes at least a little bit of sense – and that requires the most charitable reading of his word salads- JP is just rephrasing a very trite proposition (monogamy) with words that will surely lead to controversy; words like “enforcement”, or “distribution”.
By the way, using JP’s logic, why stop at vaguely “enforcing” monogamy? Why not “encourage” and “enforce” covering women from head to toe like Saudi Arabia or the Islamic Republic of Iran? Let’s pay cash to women who cover themselves, and while we are at it, let’s “encourage” and “enforce” women to forego the right to divorce. Won’t that also “solve” the problem?
First:
Yeah, except you’ve refused to condemn Peterson. He can fall back on “that’s just how anthropologists talk” and he can even be right about that, but he’s talking to every reader of the New York Times, not an anthropology conference.
I’m using rhetoric that is standard across the United States and Canada on many, many different issues: that it’s fair to say that someone’s advocating for the predictable results of their policies.
Peterson is using rhetoric that is standard among professional, academic anthropologists.
My rhetoric in an internet comment is inflammatory if you’re unfamiliar with, like, all political rhetoric in the US for the past 10 years.
Peterson’s rhetoric in the New York Times is inflammatory if you’re unfamiliar with graduate courses on the anthropology of sex and marriage.
If we’re being bad here, you should absolutely LOATHE how Peterson is making an ass out of himself by presenting his position as mandatory marriage to every NYTimes reader other than those who happen to be academic anthropologists. We’re making a caricature of Peterson?
Peterson did that without our help by his incredibly stupid rhetorical choices. If you have the voice to critique us for using rhetoric that’s standard across the political spectrum in many different media, where the fuck is your outrage for the stupidity of Peterson in using a technical term known only to a few when communicating with a readership of hundreds of thousands?
Do you even stop to think at all about how we apply our criticisms to ourselves, but Peterson and his supporters – including you – apply your criticisms in only a one-sided way?
You may not agree with me, but my position is consistent. Your position is that Peterson isn’t to be condemned for his rhetorical use of inflammatory language in the NYTimes that in *other* contexts wouldn’t be inflammatory because … why? What’s the excuse? And how does that jibe with condemning my use of what you consider to be inflammatory language that is nonetheless far more widespread than Peterson’s usages … in a fucking BLOG COMMENT?
Really? The hypocrisy, the inability of you and yours to even pretend to hold your side accountable for the same sins you rail against in others is so shocking, so jarring, that it’s surprising it hasn’t been measured by local seismometers.
Second:
Bullshit. The worst plausible scenario is free reign for honor killings and acid attacks, the closing of anti-domestic violence shelters in large parts of the country who don’t want to be seen as contributing to splitting formerly-stable couples, the outlawing abortion, and no-fault divorce. The religious right already tries to outlaw no-fault divorce every year or so, in case you didn’t know anything about US politics. There are 50 states, and that bill is introduced in one of them fairly often. I looked into that a while ago and the longest period I found then without a bill being introduced in one state or another was 3 years. So the idea is still prominent enough to get legislative proposals. Ending no-fault divorce is certainly as plausible as returning to 1950s sexual morality.
There are already rapists who get away with rape because people refuse to think a guy who does good things in the community could also be a rapist – hell, priests have been getting away with child rape for decades.
The worst plausible scenario I can concoct is a social norm towards acid attacks and honor killings similar to the social norm towards domestic violence in the 1980s where it was incredibly difficult to convict a man of violence toward his wife. The barriers were numerous and functioned at every level. Cops didn’t want to get involved in a family matter. Juries didn’t want to judge a complicated family situation where it seemed there must be more going on. Prosecutors were afraid of losing cases before naive juries. Judges allowed prejudicial evidence because, like juries, they thought the “whole story” should be told, which permitted every metaphorical burnt pot roast to become part of the court record in the defense’s attempt to justify the defendant’s actions.
DV cases in the 1980s were a complete cluster fuck. Go read some transcripts if you haven’t worked in the field for 20 years like I have.
Combine the lack of no-fault divorce with the social conventions against single pregnancy that have always been part and parcel of socially enforced monogamy with the ban on abortion the right already wants desperately to enact and which would fit in perfectly well with the logic of enforced monogamy (why would you need abortion if you’re in a stable marriage, and why are you reproducing outside a stable marriage, because we’re trying desperately to encourage you to be in one stable marriage for your entire fucking life), and what do you get? You get the suicides and botched-abortion deaths that we had in the 1950s.
Then think of immigrant communities committing honor killings and acid attacks and how, if those norms really did confound efforts at legal accountability the way that norms interfered with legal accountability for domestic violence. Oh, and by the way, legal accountability for domestic violence would also regress, because the police wouldn’t want to split up a couple – actions which split a couple up would be stigmatized, would HAVE TO BE stigmatized in a society that enforces monogamy.
In that situation, women immigrant and otherwise would be forced to remain in abusive situations more often – for certain specific women likely to face, say, acid attacks, the motivation would be higher, but for all women the situation would be worse than now.
What happens in those situations? More women kill themselves. More women kill their abusive partners. We know this from the research.
1950s white bread culture being the worst plausible scenario? Fucking hardly. yes, abortion was illegal in lots of places back then, but openly embracing enforced monogamy under the logic that lives are literally at risk from mass murderers should our norms fail can lead us ***much*** worse places than 1950s white bread misogynistic paternalism.
Puh-leeeze.
Finally:
You’re still refusing to address the morality of imposing consequences on the innocent for the sins of the violent.
I gave you every chance, and you’ve refused to condemn this. I can now only conclude that you openly hold the punishment of the innocent for the sins of the violent guilty to be a morally praiseworthy act. You have announced your position through your naked avoidance of the issue.
Fuck you and your morality.
It’s actually very nearly impossible to caricature someone simultaneously as vile and as absurd as Peterson. His dishonest schtick is to say things which he knows will appeal to the crudest misogynists and racists, while leaving himself sufficient wriggle-room to accuse anyone who objects of misrepresenting him – and have his fanboys do the same. It ought to be obvious to anyone that if someone is “misrepresented” so often, it’s at least possible the problem is with the things they themselves say or write. But many of the things Peterson says are so gob-smackingly stupid – see this thread – go to about 5 minutes in – that it’s clear anyone who takes him seriously is simply a fool.
Yeah… no. This is a classic example of “concern trolling” – supposedly friendly advice that no-one with any sense will take seriously, because it is known to come from an ideological enemy – in this case, you. It is utterly pointless to pretend that vileness is not vile, that stupidity is not stupid, and you’re not going to convince us to do so.
Time will tell. Sure, the fascists and their fellow-travellers such as Trump and Peterson are in a state of near-terminal smugness at present, but in every poll I’ve seen, the bulk of their support comes from the older age-groups. Of course there are plenty of young fools and scumbags, but they are in a minority.
And somehow, you don’t see this as a problem with what Peterson says and how he says it. That makes it quite clear that you are either a fool, or dishonest – or, of course, both.
Enough of his fans do, too. It’s a problem. If that isn’t his intent, he should really learn to communicate better.
https://xkcd.com/1984/
Here applied to progressives, of course. The opponents of progressives fight strawmen all the time – as exemplified by Peterson’s versions of pronoun laws or what motivates feminists – but they don’t have to worry about losing because it. As always, the culture war is entirely a matter of the left conducting itself politely; any negative things that happen are always because it was too strident, never because people failed to oppose them.
@Crip Dyke
I’m not going to condemn anybody today. I also don’t care about whether anybody is saying something inflammatory, that’s not the point. JP certainly says inflammatory things all the time and some people are just desperate to be on fire.
I’ve thought about it a bit more and I’ve come to the conclusion that the name calling and strawmanning probably is going to be more effective for you after all. So just keep at it.
Oh, come on. Don’t be silly.
I’ve already mentioned this here somewhere, he’s not very good at getting his ideas across in less than an hour-long lecture. I totally agree that a lot of his fans are probably hearing the exact same distortion that the “progressives” hear, except they’re all in favor of it. People are going to hear what they want to hear and it’s indeed scary.
The question is, must the “rationalists”, the “skeptics”, the “scientists” all join in with the strawmanning for “moral reasons”? It simply lacks intellectual honesty.
I understand this contention, but it seems to me like “public outrage” is somewhat of a finite resource. At some point, people just stop caring. Eventually, they start becoming reactionary. If you declare too many people public enemies, the public is going to become your enemy.
brainwarp:
<snicker>
That question, leaving aside your infelicitous use of scare quotes (heh), presumes this asserted strawmanning is going on. You certainly haven’t established that case in this thread, so your presumption is premature.
(Speaking of straw dummies, your scare quoting of “moral reasons” indicates you did not find the adduced reasons moral — which by self-ju-jitsu ironically means you’ve vindicated CD’s contention, the one you handwaved away)
—
But fine, we get your position; Peterson merely says banal (and stupid, as noted above) things in an inflammatory manner and is caricatured thereby.
brainwarp #261:
Well, if you simply assume that he is using those words in what appears to be the appropriate dictionary sense in this context, whilst bending over backwards to be as charitable towards him as possible, and assume a complete lack of misogyny, conscious or unconscious, he appears to be advocating…well, basically, what already exists. So, even if we take what you have said about his position as being correct, and what he has subsequently tweeted about his comment, we are still left in the position of him saying something with no real purpose, meaning or substance, which is also really rather monumentally stupid, using language which, at best, is very poorly chosen, and, at worst, deliberately inflammatory. Frankly, though, I actually think he’s now claiming that what he said was misinterpreted, when the reality is it wasn’t.
@brainwarp
The outrage is not because Peterson has something really interesting to say. His nonsense causes outrage just as Deepak Chopra or creationists elicit outrage.
It is amazing that Peterson does not like the binary of {God exists /God does not exist}(*) but risks using such inflammatory and stupid rhetoric based on the premise of existence of other binaries (e.g. {society should be monogamous / polygamous}).
I will start taking him seriously when I see him apply his “skepticism” and dislike of the question of God to the question of “sex distribution”.
——————————————————————————
* Remember: he doesn’t like the question. It boxes him in!
@brainwarp
The outrage is not because Peterson has something really interesting to say. His nonsense causes outrage just as Deepak Chopra or creationists elicit outrage.
It is amazing that Peterson does not like the binary of {God exists /God does not exist}(*) but risks using such inflammatory and stupid rhetoric based on the premise of existence of other binaries (e.g. {society should be monogamous / polygamous}).
I will start taking him seriously when I see him apply his “skepticism” and dislike of the question of God to the question of “sex distribution”.
——————————————————————————
* Remember: he doesn’t like the question. It boxes him in!
@brainwarp
The outrage is not because Peterson has something really interesting to say. His nonsense causes outrage just as Deepak Chopra or creationists elicit outrage.
It is amazing that Peterson does not like the binary of {God exists /God does not exist}(*) but risks using such inflammatory and stupid rhetoric based on the premise of existence of other binaries (e.g. {society should be monogamous / polygamous}).
I will start taking him seriously when I see him apply his “skepticism” and dislike of the question of God to the question of “sex distribution”.
——————————————————————————
* Remember: he doesn’t like the question. It boxes him in!
@brainwarp
The outrage is not because Peterson has something really interesting to say. His nonsense causes outrage just as Deepak Chopra or creationists elicit outrage.
It is amazing that Peterson does not like the binary of {God exists /God does not exist}(*) but risks using such inflammatory and stupid rhetoric based on the premise of existence of other binaries (e.g. {society should be monogamous / polygamous}).
I will start taking him seriously when I see him apply his “skepticism” and dislike of the question of God to the question of “sex distribution”.
——————————————————————————
* Remember: he doesn’t like the question. It boxes him in!
@brainwarp
The outrage is not because Peterson has something really interesting to say. His nonsense causes outrage just as Deepak Chopra or creationists elicit outrage.
It is amazing that Peterson does not like the binary of {God exists /God does not exist}(*) but risks using such inflammatory and stupid rhetoric based on the premise of existence of other binaries (e.g. {society should be monogamous / polygamous}).
I will start taking him seriously when I see him apply his “skepticism” and dislike of the question of God to the question of “sex distribution”.
——————————————————————————
* Remember: he doesn’t like the question. It boxes him in!
Me:
brainwarp:
Isn’t that cute. brainwarp still can’t tell the difference between a person and an idea, but thinks we’re the misguided ones.
Yes, brainwarp. You’re so very smart. Everyone thinks you’re amazingly rational. I’m sure it’s only the most educated and thoughtful people that get confused between a sentence and a human being. Is it possible you might leave us your autograph?
As for the rest:
So, Peterson is a terrible communicator and his fans are every bit as guilty of the sins of strawman creation and exaggeration as those of us here commenting, except they’re also horribly sexist and in favor of the very policies that brainwarp has said he opposes.
That’s why brainwarp is here educating us about the failures of this tribe and how proud he is to be a supporter of Peterson.
Also: he refuses to condemn punishing the innocent for the sins of the violently guilty. Because brainwarp is superior to us.
Such a pleasure it is to gain a small glimpse of the expansive wisdom found in this brainwarp.
Zmidponk #270:
I think you’ve summed up Peterson pretty well. He makes what is almost certainly an intentionally inflammatory statement, which can be anywhere from horrifyingly misogynist, to moderately misogynist, to utterly banal and pointless (but still at least a little misogynist because it still lays the responsibility for solving male violence at the feet of women). And at the root of all of it is an ignorant oversimplification of the problem at hand, which is obviously wrong to anyone who has thought about it for even 5 seconds. There are plenty of single women in the world. The reason violent misogynists can’t find fulfilling relationships is the the same reason they kill: THEY’RE VIOLENT FUCKING MISOGYNISTS, AND WOMEN AREN’T IDIOTS! But his pseudo-intellectual bullshit is really impressive to dimwits like brainwarp, so he’ll never lack for funding.
Checked back to see if there was anything new to address in this thread. The latest defense of JP has been dissected quite thoroughly by the horde , and even raaak contributed a well written comment with on point logic about other traditions and social customs that only apply to women. . Out of curiousity I searched to see how the topic of arranged marriage got introduced, and was not at all surprised to see that brainwarp first brought it up at #126. Glad that it got dropped from the discussion, as it’s such a digression from the harmful nonsense that JP actually advocates.
It now appears that brainwarp concedes that JP’s stated ‘solution’ to some terrorists calling themselves incels and threatening social violence due to blueballs is not going to be fixed by giving them sacrificial female victims. This is not actually a widespread social issue, or womens problem, and zero woman should be compelled to have any association with said terrorists.
This enforced monogamy thing is just a clever little dog whistle. Using the language of academia to dog whistle to his incel and rightwing followers that he means forcing sexual slavery on women for them. Why do I think this? Well this tweet from 2016 should shed some neat little light on his thinking.
If that along with his more recent quotes doesn’t scream forcing women into marriages against their will to violent assholes by the government, I don’t know what does. He’s a dishonest orator wielding plausible deniability in the form of academic language to cover his awful ideas and nasty right wing dog whistles.
yeah, I think so as well.
I have no proof, and even the most generous interpretation of his words is immoral, so I don’t feel any need to present the complicated and at best persuasive (not conclusive) evidence to someone like brainwarp.
But yeah. I think he hides behind ambiguities.
Certainly he fucking flat out lied about what bill C-16 said and what it would do. But I think mostly he relies on ambiguities.
@Arawhon, So Tired of Everything
It doesn’t. That’s all in your head. A more plausible interpretation is “banning promiscuous relationships”, as it is done in many other societies. In his lectures, he talks about society as a whole as “tyrannical” – even ours. He’s talking to his twitter followers here.
Look, I know it’s really difficult for you to not see JP as this cartoon villain, but not everyone does, certainly not the broader public. You keep shouting “immorality”, but that won’t get you far, at least outside of your own bubble. Morals fly out the window as soon as there’s a perceived threat, be that illegal immigration or sex diseases or drug epidemics. That’s why so many countries refuse refugees, even though helping them would be a clear moral imperative.
At the start of this thread, somebody predicted an invasion of JP fanboys. I guess *I’m that invasion*, one guy. That’s all you get, isn’t that sad? You’re so obscure that you don’t even warrant a brigade of trolls. I’m only here because I remember PZ from way back and his blog showed up on my feed.
I think you should be worried about this. Like I said, I’m not sure I like the outcome of “your side” losing out completely.
@Crip Dyke
See, if *he* is strawmanning, it’s “a flat out lie”, but if you’re doing it, it’s “just how people” talk.
Am I wrong in being unable to get over the fact that there’s a whole segment of male society that goes out and more or less trumpets to the world that they’re not getting any? I’m used to the male of the species being anxious to the point of lying to make sure nobody thinks they’re out of the game like that.
It reminds me of the criticism of a popular comic artist who draws anatomically impossible women: “Most men would never admit they haven’t seen a woman with her clothes off, and this guy advertises it in every panel.”
It would be like witnessing a march from a group that calls itself “The Undersized Dicks Of America.” Seriously, who does that?
@Kip
If you’re referring to the Incels, that’s not really what it is about.
Being an Incel means you hold the belief that you lost out on the genetic lottery, that you possess all the wrong physiological traits, to the point where no female would ever be willing to be your partner *except in order to exploit you*. It means that you never will have a true loving partner, a genuine long lasting relationship with anyone, ever. That’s quite a bummer, don’t you think? It’s not really about sex, at least not about the kind of sex you can get from a casual encounter or a prostitute.
The simple explanation that you’re all looking for is “these people are just unfucked misogynist idiots (with small dicks)”, even though many of them are neither unfucked nor violent (or poorly endowed). They may be misogynist, but if you define “woman” as “person that is only out there to ridicule or exploit you”, then misogyny *makes sense*.
To further vilify these people does no one any good, it would be much more beneficial to provide some evidence that their theories about relationships are wrong. That alone is going to be really difficult, because people are *really hard* to convince that their perceptions are distorted. This thread is clear evidence for that.
“Involuntary Celibacy” means all that? Huh. So, in addition to everything else, they’re really bad at coming up with an appropriate name.
brainwarp, #278
What a fucking idiotic statement.
If you define immigrants as people who are coming here to steal your jobs and kill you, then xenophobia makes sense. Boo fucking hoo.
@Saad
You got that right, congratulations! See, if you want to cure people of xenophobia, you need to convince them that immigrants in fact *do not* come here to kill them and steal their jobs. Your strategy of declaring xenophobia as a “crime against morality” doesn’t work when people stop caring about morality and start focusing on their own vital interests (which includes having a job and not getting killed).
You have no game plan on how to deal with people’s fear, that’s why you literally got yourself Donald Trump elected. Your game plan really only works in an environment of stability and abundance. As soon as people see the “barbarians at the gates” (real or imagined), they’re just going to completely ignore your moral appeals. Then what?
brainwarp
I guess I won’t be getting an answer to my question, probably because it’s a bit embarrassing for you, so let’s move on:
If this aptly describes incels, how come that their hero Roger Elliot explicitly stated that he is “the supreme gentleman” and that the women will get punished for choosing inferior men over him?
Seems kinda contradictory to me.
And if they truly believed that they are really so inferior that they’re undatable, how does it make sense to blame women for that?
brainwarp, #281
Oh hell no, I don’t. They’re responsible for fixing their bigotry. Besides, how did they get convinced that immigrants are coming to steal jobs and kill them? Answer that question and you’ll see who the burden and responsibility is on. Fuck this noise about putting the responsibility and work of fixing bigots on us.
They’re not fears. I don’t buy into their narrative for a second. You don’t get to go “I’m afraid of babies” while punching babies. What sort of gullible asshole would fall for that.
Pardon my ignorance, I was under the impression you are looking to *improve society*. I now realize you’re just out to make sure that blame is fairly distributed. You unwilling to *take* responsibility, you just want to sit around complaining and denouncing, achieving nothing. After all, it’s neither you nor the xenophobes that *really* have any skin in the game – unlike the people that are getting deported, that are stuck in a warzone, that are drowning in the sea.
You have a loser mentality.
Oh yeah? What if those babies grow up to become Osama Bin Laden? /sarcasm
brainwarp
So it would be a moral good if I start a club of people who hunt Incels? How about if we just take out JP because we perceive his words as threatening violence on behalf of loathesome incels?
This is actually pretty funny. It only takes one fanboi to prove the prediction. None of our resident trolls that first commented as JP fans (IIRC) seem to be defending the fool any longer, and it appears we have infected raaak with our horrible immoral way of noticing blatant sexism.
brainwarp, #284
The responsibility is on the responsible party (the misogynists, their parents and the community who helped them towards their misogyny, their friends who stay silent about their misogyny, etc). It can’t be made simpler than that.
brainwarp,
Those people need to have a game plan on how to deal with their own “fears”, you asshole. Why are you acting like those people are non-human objects with no sentience, will or responsibility.
Also, you have absolutely no game plan on how to “fix” these people yourselves. You’re such a typical example of the cowards who show up here to act as a shield for the worst in society while also attempting to distance yourselves from them.
brainwarp,
Another huge issue with your argument is that what if we start going out and attacking incels. Would it be our responsibility to stop attacking them or would you lecture incels to be nice to us and show us that they’re worthy of life? You’re talking nonsense.
I hadn’t yet heard that particular definition of woman @278 before, wow. So if we’re making stuff up, I’d like to say that “rq” now means “ultimate supreme being of the universe” and y’all owe me all your allegiance, worship and money. All of it. And then it will make sense when I destroy this pitiful little planet, because nobody is giving me the glory and praise I deserve! And “brainwarp” means “decades old soapscum”, and suddenly it is obvious why they’re so difficult to scrub away. Pass the bleach!
@Gilliel
As far as I’m aware, Roger Elliot didn’t identify as Incel, nor does identifying as an Incel imply that you support violence. However, if you’re the kind of Incel that is extremely vengeful, you may well approve of what Elliot did.
Even if he did identify as Incel, there isn’t really a contradiction here. You may believe in “Incel theory” and be vengeful and possibly violent (or not), just like you can believe in radical Islam and become a terrorist (or not).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying “Incelhood” is harmless, you just can’t really deal with the problem unless you understand what it is actually about.
You can learn more about Incels on their own forum:
incels.me
I wouldn’t presume that. The theory doesn’t say “you’re undatable”, it says “if a woman dates you, it’s only because she recognizes you as a sucker and she’s out to exploit you”. Incels often have been on dates or in relationships, where they feel they’ve been exploited. If you feel that you were exploited, you’ll blame the other side.
brainwarp thinks there’s never been any evidence presented that incels’ conceptions of relationships are wrong?
bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha
@Saad
Yes, you’re making it simple, too simple in fact. Sure, everyone’s responsible for dealing with their own prejudice. I’m not denying that. I’m denying that they *are going to do that* all by themselves, just because a bunch of progressives are having a fit on social media. To the contrary.
The whole social ostracization method that you have employed until now actually *is effective*, but only up to a point. At some point, people will prefer being a xenophobe over letting “the barbarians” in. Maybe they’re not going to be *public* xenophobes anymore, but they’re going to secretly be electing Donald Trump (and worse). Then, when people see that xenophobia has become politically acceptable, they’ll feel safe to go out in public again. Isn’t it crystal clear to you that this is *already happening* in the US and in many other countries?
They have one, it’s called “elect the candidate that promises me safety”. You’re probably not going to like that candidate. Again, if you just *want to lose*, so that you can keep playing the blame game instead, fine. You’re useless to your own cause.
I actually do have an idea on how to talk to xenophobes. First of all, acknowledge their fears as justified, so that they don’t shut down right away. Don’t tell them they’re idiots or horrible people. Address their fear. Give them a sense of control (“we can control the borders, we can have a process makes sure that no bad guys get in”), humanize the barbarians (“look, it’s just a family with children, looking for a better life”), provide them statistics on economics (“look, there’s a benefit!”) and crime (“there is a problem, but it’s not as bad as you think”). It’s not so much about facts, but giving the other side a feeling of understanding.
You know what makes this really difficult? A poisoned environment. Everything is “fake news”, every statistic is a lie, everybody on the left is an idiot, etc. It didn’t used to be that bad. Maybe it’s hopeless and this approach won’t work anymore, but your *your approach* doesn’t help either.
1. Peterson rejects the binary of God {exists/does not exist} to avoid answering a simple question, yet he goes to lengths to argue about ideas that are based on the premise of other binaries (men/women, monogamy/polyamory) without questioning them, and at times attacking the critics of those binaries. I guess in Peterson’s world, the validity of binaries depend on how much you like the question!
First of all, acknowledge their fears as justified
Back in the old days of new atheist movement, one big criticism of the new atheists was that although they might be right about religion, by proselytizing atheism they were going to disrupt the tender balance of the society. The simple folk supposedly had only religion as a moral compass. New atheists would have that compass broken, thus opening the gates of hell.
And I also naively thought the religious folk had a monopoly on hypocrisy.
So…
You don’t think Peterson is a good communicator. You don’t like Peterson’s ideas. You don’t like Peterson’s followers. You think that the incels for whom Peterson is speaking create a poisoned environment. You think this is all a backlash over social changes which include at least some changes which you support.
BUT since they’re upset at the social changes lefties support, and since you don’t want that change to go away, then either the lefties are to blame or maybe nothing will help and nobody’s to blame anymore and why not nihilism anyway.
SO the thing to do is support Peterson and yell at the lefties about how they’re the evil ones because they use the same rhetorical strategies that are used across the spectrum, which is more evil for the lefties because they’re not deluded homebodies plainly spouting falsehoods in addition to using common rhetorical strategies used across the political spectrum.
Seriously, you have your own special brand of logic on your world.
brainwarp
For somebody arguing as the authoritative voice on Incels here, you’re fucking unaware of the slogan of his fucking manifesto
Not only that, but the guy who murdered the people in Totonto especially referenced him.
Why would I identify as a member of such a group if I weren’t at least OK with that?
Non sequitur.
The contradiction is that Elliot Roger and others don’t actually think they’ve been dealt a bad hand by nature and are inferior, they think they are superior and the “Stacys” are just too stuck up to notice.
I’m fucking sick and tired of being asked to understand people who want to kill me.
Their own forum.
Because there#s only the one.
And no, I wouldn’t go there for the same reason i don’t have Stormfront open in my browser.
Yeah, all those crazy ex girlfriends. Is there the occasional guy who gets betrayed and has to deal with a truly vile woman? Yep. But because Incels “feel” they’ve been exploited doesn’t mean they were. It#s more like their idea that women are sex dispensers where you insert X tokens to get one fuck isn’t really accurate. So they did nice things for her not for being nice but for getting laid and when it didn’t happen they felt “betrayed”. Cry me a river.
Being told “No, I won’t date you.” does not constitute exploitation. Additionally, there is no such thing as the ‘other side’. Only sexist bigots and reality impaired manchildren think humans are divided into two teams labeled men and women, pitted against each other for domination. Blaming the entire woman identified part of humanity for their personal behavior of being a self-centered asshat is not solved by giving the asshat a cookie and a hug. None of their fears are justified, and they aren’t misguided children.
Ok, quick questionnaire there…
Let’s just say if you want to misunderstand him, he’ll make it very easy for you. Watch the Cathy Newman interview…
I don’t “like” a lot of ideas, that’s no reason not to listen to them. With JP, a lot of the controversial stuff is just him describing “how things are” (in his view), not “how things should be”. It’s common that people don’t make a distinction here.
I frankly don’t know any. You wrote a blog post where you show a gallery of Youtube snippets of JP. Those titles are pretty damning, they show that whoever posted them sees the exact same cartoon villain as you, except for them it’s the cartoon hero. You have a point there. The thing is, JP *isn’t* that cartoon figure and he doesn’t appear so to people outside of either fringe.
No, you’re conflating things here. The toxic environment has been here for a while. It’s an environment where people are so polarized, nothing from the other side gets through. It doesn’t matter what you say, if you’re on the wrong side, you’re an idiot and you’re wrong, period. If you happen to have a just different-sounding opinion, the people from your own side turn against you – that’s especially prominent on the “progressive left”. It then all comes down to whoever wins the majority.
You have to realize that “who is to blame” is irrelevant. If you want to change how *other people* act in the world, you have to convince *them* not *yourself*. This whole “blame game” doesn’t help you. People aren’t interested in hearing from you how deplorable they are. You have to convince them that what *you* are working towards is truly “the right thing” that will help *them* as well.
Right now, to the average person, it looks more like the most important thing on your agenda is “getting everyone fired that doesn’t start using 30+ new gender pronouns by next Tuesday”. That’s a comical exaggeration of course, but you should get my point.
Well yeah, why not? That’s not such a trivial question.
The thing to do is to just at least take Peterson seriously and not dismiss him as an alt-right clown. Forget about even thinking in terms of “good and evil”, that’s not helpful at all. As for your “rhetorical strategies”, they will just stop working in a fully polarized environment. There’s only so many times you can use the words “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobe” and still have an impact.
Most people try not to be sexist, racist, and homophobic. Claiming that correctly naming the bigots behavior is driving the bigots behavior is simply a circular excuse/ basic logic fail. Nobody wants them as allies because they themselves are the problem.
What is the point of having a nice chat with the human equivalent of cockroaches. Nobody needs to spend time kindly explaining how they are nasty vermin that ruin all they touch, and spread disease.
@brainwarp Holly freaking.. There is **endless** evidence, including the most recent study on immigrants and crime, which show that, oddly enough, when people that are not part of a culture “enter” that culture, and don’t fully understand their rights, their *reaction* to this is, “To avoid committing crimes, or things they think might be crimes, so as to avoid getting into trouble.” Even the assholes working for Trump answered this with, “But, they still commit some crimes, so at least we won’t have ‘those’ crimes any more!” Do you want us to sky write the evidence? Spray paint it on people’s lawns? Oooh, I know, we can commit terrorist acts and take over Fox News networks, country wide, and force them to tell the truth! I mean, just what the F sort of, “Show people what the truth really is, so they stop hating.”, do you expect from the people that haven’t bought into the hate? Because if you think there are not people out there already, doing everything they “legally” can to counter this crap, you are bloody clueless. And.. people like you are right there, whining about how, “The people doing it are too loud, don’t understand the problem, aren’t doing anything useful, or are attacking the wrong issues/people!” Congratulations, you made our list of the wrong issues and people to appose. You are probably near the bloody bottom, in the same sense that a cockroach is on the bottom of the list of things to worry about in a condemned building, but you are still part of the infestation of problems.
@Gillian
I still see no evidence of him claiming to be an Incel. As far as I know, he predates that entire “theory”. I may be wrong.
Why would you identify as a Muslim if you weren’t at least OK with beheading the unbelievers?
That’s just not true. Yes, Elliot Rodgers thought he was god’s gift to women. Incels, on the other hand, believe they have been dealt a bad hand for *partnerships*. They may well compensate by feeling superior in terms of intelligence, or physical strength, or whatever.
Knowledge is power, ignorance is bliss.
It’s probably the biggest forum they have (if you don’t count in shitposting on 4chan). The information I am giving you, I have from there. You got all your information from sensationalist media. Alternatively, please at least read this Quora entry:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Black-Pill
Sure, they’re probably delusional about being exploited. But delusions are real *to them*. You’re making it too easy for you again with the “sex dispenser” thing. For the sake of argument, prostitutes are “sex dispensers” and these people could have them, if that was what they wanted. The actual problem is, these people have swallowed “the black pill”.
@Tethys
Wow. That sounds like fucking Joseph Goebbels right there. In fact, I feel like Goebbels himself would’ve found that choice of words “too harsh” for publishing.
@Kagehi
First of all, why do you sound so angry? Believe it or not, I haven’t read “the latest study”, nor has practically any other person you might encounter outside of your bubble.
So let’s say you have that little piece of information that might help change a mind, *don’t start* by pointing out how ignorant I am for not already knowing. Assume I have spent the past week binge-watching “The Kardashians” and that all I remember is “Kardashian good, immigration bad”. Politely submit to me the fact that there exists some research which might help me in my decision-making process. Don’t expect me to change my mind on the spot, this almost never happens. Plant in my brain the impression of “that nice young smart-looking person with the new information”. That impression will do most of the work, “the latest study” will just do support.
On the other hand, if you want to make sure that the other side sees you as this rude fool that is foaming at the mouth over god-knows-what, you should act exactly the way you just did.
I agree that goebbels and incels and JP sound very similar. Fascists lurve them some dictating what others must do to appease their violent tendencies. Somehow it’s never enough and then it’s clearly all the victims fault and they keep getting shot for not appeasing the fascists correctly or sufficiently.
Yes. Yes it is.
There is a finite amount of time (and other resources) in my life. I don’t like any beers I’ve tasted except this one belgian beer I’ve had in France, but after tasting 20-30 beers and disliking most, I decided not to keep on trying beers in hopes that i’d run across another good one.
Sure, there’s likely other beers out there that I would have found by continuing to try beers, but when I’m ordering beers I’m not ordering red wines or exotic fruit juices or elderflower infused water, all of which I like far more often than I like beer.
So by ditching beer I lose out on possible good beers, but if I persisted in looking for those beers I would have missed out on **even more good stuff that I like**.
If Peterson expresses himself sloppily in formats less than an hour long and, by the time you finish that hour, you find you don’t disagree with *everything* he said, but you did disagree with a lot (and you couldn’t be sure without paying attention for the whole hour), why not bin his videos and watch someone that can communicate accurately whats going on in the first 5 minutes, determine whether you like or dislike most of their ideas, then move on until you find someone much more productive than Peterson?
Seriously, it wouldn’t be hard.
Now, there are times when I deliberately listen to people with whom I disagree. Disliking a person’s ideas does not automatically defeat any possible reason FOR listening to that person’s ideas. But it sure as hell constitutes one reason not to listen to those ideas.
But there are other reasons to treat him as a clown. As expert as he may be in psychology and maybe even anthropology, he knows shit about the law, and there I am clearly his academic superior (unless he also went to law school without telling anyone about it). He not only refused to listen to critics for far too long on his clearly wrong criticisms of Bill C-16 and supposed criminal penalties that do not exist, but when he later retracted those criticisms and refocussed his attention on the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal he got more law wrong there, as well. He also used non-legal descriptions of the function and effect of Ontario’s human rights law as if they were authoritative. They certainly should be more accurate in some respects than they currently are, IMO, but even Peterson knew that a website about the law is not the law.
Now here’s the thing: in BOTH cases, Peterson insisted he had done his homework thoroughly and thus we should listen to him.
There are two possibilities here: if had had done his homework thoroughly, he was lying about both the criminal provisions of C-16 and certain aspects of the OHRCommission, the OHRCode, and the OHRTribunal.
ALTERNATIVELY, he could have been lying about doing his homework thoroughly.
EITHER WAY, because he doesn’t clarify when he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about and both his facts and his conclusions should be tentatively accepted, pending review by actual experts in the field and when he does know what he’s talking about and we should accept that his facts are either true or deliberate lies and that his conclusions should be accepted as informed and influential …
…we are now in the position of being unable to trust what he says. If he was clear about when he was speculating and when he wasn’t, then he would still be much more useful. Instead he frequently insists that he is informed and his facts are true when he has his facts wrong, so whenever you listen to his words you never know what to trust or how much.
it absolutely makes him clownish that he asserts an authoritative knowledge of the facts when he has his facts wrong. It absolutely makes his words untrustworthy, because he was either lying about his level of knowledge or he was knowingly lying about the facts he got wrong. (Take your pick.)
Look, the Onion never has its facts right. But I find it worthy of reading several times a year. But I wouldn’t if I thought it was supposed to be true, then acted as if that knowledge were true and embarrassed myself. That I know it’s not factual makes its fiction readable.
While I have expertise in certain fields, I can’t be expert in everything. The fact that I can easily identify errors in fields where I have knowledge greater than Peterson means that if i were to want to accept his facts on something else, I’d have to go elsewhere to confirm those facts.
That being the case, why not just start elsewhere?
Peterson is my source only when I want to talk about what Peterson is saying. For anything else, there are more trustworthy sources out there.
@brainwarp No, the actual problem is that they invent stupid nonsense like the “black pill”, to excuse their problems, while often blaming the very people who are trying to fix them. These people, literally, think that the universe “owes” them something they are not getting, and its everyone elses fault for them not getting it. Even when it *is* arguably someone elses fault its never the fault of the people that taught them to be violent, privileged, assholes, which even most other men don’t much like, and women hate, nope – its all the people that don’t like them that is the problem. Its like watching a soldier slaughter enemies, while screaming, “They are the ones making me a berserk madman!”, when they wouldn’t even be fighting, except some asshole decided that he wanted their land, or resources, etc., and made up crap about how horrible those people where, and how much they deserved being defeated. After all, they “believe” their leaders, who taught them to hate the enemy so much as to commit atrocities, to “win”, but, the enemy, just won’t give up and stop fighting back, so.. this just proves how horrible they are, right?
Same stupid BS with these incels. They can’t functionally deal with rejection, because they have been told their whole lives that they are guaranteed something, and.. there is a whole bloody network of idiots like Peterson out there telling them, “Yep, you are completely right, and here is made up, bullshit, nonsense, with no actual scientific evidence to back it, which I pulled, more or less, out of my ass, which says so.”, and so their “failure” isn’t because they are incapable of comprehending what they are doing wrong, that they are doing it wrong, that relationships “do not work that way”, and that they are not owed anything. Nope, the “real” problem is that everyone else, who all seem to avoid these problems, are “out to get them”, and, “stacking the deck to keep them from getting what they deserve.”
There is no “black pill”. This is trading the choice between the blue pill – living in a nice delusion, the red pill, which, only in the context of the movie, leads to truth, or some third black pill, in which, having rejected both reality, and delusions, you choose your own personal nightmare hell, in which the whole world is out to get you. I.e., the, “You summon something from the bottle, make your wish, and whoops, it was a chaotic evil Efreeti, instead of a relatively benign Genie.”, who won’t just try to cheat you, but actively find ways to kill you with the wishes, option. And.. seems like all these people, eventually, either live out their desperate lives hating the world, for no reason, because its, “unfair, and everyone is cheating me!”, or, they die, and take innocent people with them, so.. guess rubbing Peterson’s lamp is working exactly as to be expected.
@Crip Dyke
You may well have a point with the bill C-16, I haven’t really followed that closely. In my estimation, it’s unclear what this law can and can’t do until somebody has been convicted under it. Lawyers don’t help here, if you have five lawyers you get six legal opinions, as the old saying goes. From what I understand, “getting fired for refusing to use novel pronouns” is definitely on the table, at least for public workers.
What I’m mostly interested in regarding Peterson is his lectures on Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and even some of his bible stuff. I’m not particularly interested in his treatment of post-structuralist philosophers, but I’m sure he’s being *just as fair* to them as you are to him, *wink wink*.
Does he always get all of his facts straight? Surely not, just the sheer volume of information in his lectures is bound to contain a bunch of errors. His thoughts are all over the place. I’m not going to crucify him over it. I don’t feel like he is “asserting authority”. Maybe that’s just his spotted grey beard influencing you subconsciously?
Another thing to note is that he definitely isn’t one of these “rationalist skeptics” types. At all. I therefore don’t expect him to live up to that standard. He won’t look good in a debate with them. He’ll lose out due to technical K.O. But he’ll deliver the odd punch that totally exposes his opponents weaknesses – and *that’s what’s interesting*. That’s where you can learn something.
No. I’m talking about unambiguous statements in his own videos like “I have researched this,” “I have thoroughly researched this,” and, I’m paraphrasing this one, but in a couple places he says “It is true that” or something to that effect …
… and all that in one video, the one where he takes back his claims that C-16 criminalizes pronoun use and makes job discrimination and other forms of discrimination a criminal offense under hate crimes laws, but then proceeds to say that although he was wrong there, his research confirms that the real problem is with the power of the Human Rights Tribunal to interpret anti-discrimination law (the provincial Human Rights Codes).
It’s unambiguously titled “I was wrong about bill c-16” or something like that. Listen to it and see how many times he actively, unambiguously asserts that he’s speaking authoritatively. This isn’t me responding to subtext. This is the fucking text.
Sure. We just need to be careful not to “box him in” by asking the questions he doesn’t like (such as : Does God exist?) And apparently he only likes to lecture about how women were bought and sold in the good old times and how that was such a good thing for civilization.
I’ll take Deepak Chopra seriously before Peterson!
brainwarp @#300:
FAKE NEWS!!!!1!!1
Meanwhile, the misunderstood, not-all-horrible people at that incels.me forum are celebrating the anniversary of Elliot Rodgers’ killing spree (worry not decent people, sources are through We Hunted the Mammoth, which has links to the forum that don’t give them clicks.)
brainwarp @305,
No doubt Peterson’s literary, philosophical and Biblical expertise is educating you to a similar degree as his legal and sociological expertise have done.
(I’ve no idea what he thinks he knows about Nietzsche, but I remember becoming aware of his contention that I am not really an atheist if I don’t go around murdering and whatnot, with reference to Dostoevsky)
A full generation of childlike adults have been feed too much PC BS by progressive fools in the education system.
Sorry guys a dolls, the real world was, and still is, the real world. You can spin all your gender, relativism, postmodern pseudo “studies” anyway you want. But gender differences are a reality.
Progressives may have been able to make waves. Tsunamis are not stopped by waves.
Peterson speaks reality to brainwashed fools.
Don’t let TrigglyPuff be your role model. You will be wasting your time.
Bob Smith, thank you for your contribution.
Fed.
Well, yes. Queergender, agender, transgender, cisgender… these are all things in the real world, too, whether one attempts to deny it or not. Turns out, gender being a cultural thing, it ain’t a simple binary, only difference is progressive people are not resisting reality when they acknowledge all those further gender differences and subtleties.
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient.
(And progressivism results in progress, whereas conservatism results in stasis — and regressivism (such as enforced monogamy) results in regress.
You meant that brainwashed fools listen to Peterson speak. Fixed it for you.
Um. Some people need role models, others don’t.
(Perhaps don’t let Pinworm be your role model)
If someone wants to talk about sex differences, rather than gender differences, I’m noticing a lot of rhetoric from Peterson, the Alt-right, MRAs, and such that seem to be premised on the idea that males are an inferior client sex that females have a moral duty to have pity sex with, otherwise the male’s hormones will assert their control over the mindless beasts and cause them to kill, and females are to blame because males obviously don’t have agency.
And I’m contributing to the problem because despite being male, I think I’m capable of rationally approaching relationships, per my Feminist indoctrination into the notion that my plumbing shouldn’t dictate who I am, what I do, or absolve me of responsibility for my actions.
brainwarp #297:
This is the weird thing – Peterson supporters hold up that interview as Cathy Newman repeatedly totally twisting what Peterson said. What I saw was Newman accurately and correctly summarising what Peterson said, which caused Peterson to go back and say ‘no, I actually meant [something else]’. At best, this simply confirms that Peterson is utterly and completely crap at communicating what he actually means. At worst, it is him repeatedly claiming misinterpretation when Newman pointed out problems with what he said, and did actually mean.
Well, given Peterson’s apparent problems with communication, maybe he should work on distinguishing between the two better.
Interesting that you should use this as your ‘comical exaggeration’, as it is very similar to a claim made by Peterson about Bill C-16 – he said he would be jailed for not using those pronouns (and, yes, he was being serious, not using it as a ‘comical exaggeration’). People who actually understood it basically called this complete and total bullshit. Even though he has very publicly refused to use any form of gender neutral pronoun at the university where he works, the grand total of his punishment for this has been…get ready, this may shock you at the extent of this…the Dean WRITING HIM A LETTER. I know, that really is a harsh punishment.
Zmidponk, re Bill C-16 — I noticed earlier that it’s been in effect for not quite a year, so far.
So far, the sky hasn’t fallen in, Peterson has not been arrested.
(Pesky facts)
@brainwarp:
Actually lawyers probably can help you, if with nothing more than learning that no one can be “convicted under” C-16. That’s a literal impossibility.
Now, it is true that advocating genocide against trans people is now more easily prosecutable under the hate speech law than it would have been before (sex was included, and previous SCC decisions had held that gender is protected as part of sex, but most courts had not actively considered whether that meant that trans* people constituted an “identifiable group” under CCC s318 para 4 (and thus s319 which references s318) was as yet up in the air. It’s likely that trans* people would have been found to be an “identifiable group”, but that wouldn’t necessarily have been the case in the short term. With the way Canadian case law was progressing, I think it was inevitable within the next 10 years or so (assuming that Canada even saw any prosecutions under s318 or s319 for behavior targeting trans persons, but at the first opportunity after that otherwise), but C-16 almost certainly speeded the process along by making gender identity and expression explicit bases for indentifying a group.
Basically, it saved the time and money of a few appeals, but since this law is very, very rarely invoked, it probably had essentially 0 effect on who is ultimately convicted under it. And in any case, you wouldn’t have been convicted of breaching C-16. You would have been convicted of breaching s318 or s319 in a post-C-16 environment where C-16 slightly altered the wording and possibly (but not necessarily) meaning of certain paragraphs of those two criminal statutes.
Also, you can’t be “convicted” of discrimination. You can be found liable for damages, but that’s a civil action with a civil remedy and “convictions” are for criminal law only.
So, yeah. There’s no such thing as being “convicted” of job discrimination.
So I guess you can still use people like me to help you out a bit – you’re not so up to speed that you can even understand the sources of disagreement of the 5 lawyers if you don’t even know what a conviction is.
But, on the other hand, you can certainly consider yourself as informed on this issue as any lawyer can possibly make you. What goes on in your head doesn’t need to be connected to reality if you don’t want it to be.
The most telling part is that C-16 just changed national law to be in line with regional law.
Ontario – where Peterson works – had already included transgender people as part of its civil-rights code in 2012.
The fact that no such horrific free speech breakdowns has happened in like six years kinda shows how bullshit his claims are.
Little bit of elaboration on my comment @312:
100% of the man-hating rhetoric I encounter comes from anti-feminists. The major difference between the cartoonish man-hater feminist I only encounter in, well, cartoons, is that anti-feminists get away with saying men are obligated to be pigs and are praised for “saying it like it is” while I’m condemned for “pretending” to be civilized.
Meanwhile, all the real world feminists I encounter pretty consistently believe being a sexist pig is a choice, not intrinsic to the male condition.
End result: Anti-feminist rhetoric amounts to spinning that it’s a good and natural thing all men are pigs, while feminists get harassed for sending the message that I, a man, am a human being and treat me as such.
Sort of. The Canadian Criminal Code is national only: the provinces and territories don’t have their own criminal codes the way states in the US have their own criminal statutes. There was no equivalent provincial law to parallel in the case of the CCC. That part is unique to the federal (national) government.
[Kermit voice] How typical of agents of the black, feminine dragon of chaos to misrepresent my ideas as being fundamentally informed by misogyny and racism. Postmodern critical analysis is one of the most dire threats to western culture, which I will demonstrate by criticizing Frozen and revealing it to be symbolic propaganda against the fictional archetypes that define humanity manipulated by societal forces working en masse to inform culture and every day life.
@318
As far as I can tell, Ontario does have a human rights code that, as of 2012, includes transgender people as a protected group, so I’m not sure how that jives with what you’re saying.
Like, especially given that the same website explicitly describes the Ontario Human Rights Code as being “a provincial law that gives everybody equal rights and opportunities without discrimination in areas such as jobs, housing and services”.
The ontario HRC does not create a criminal offense of advocating genocide nor of “public incitement of hatred” nor of “willful promotion of hatred”.
The bill C-16, when it became law, did more than one thing. The aspects of it that related to discrimination paralleled the Human Rights Code.
The aspects of it that modified the Canadian Criminal Code were amending laws that have no parallel at the provincial level because the provinces do not have a criminal code as understood in the US. The provinces cannot create offenses with a maximum punishment of more than 2 years – that power is exclusively federal.
You don’t understand what I’m saying because you think that everything C-16 did was amend federal human rights laws, but it ALSO amended criminal statutes.
I’m struggling, because I don’t know how to put it more plainly. I said already in my comment #318:
That doesn’t mean that there’s no HRC to parallel in the other aspects of C-16.
Do you have a specific question, or just general confusion? I don’t know what else to say.
Oh, okay, I see the misunderstanding here.
I wasn’t being literal that the literal only thing C-16 did was amend rights laws. I was just trying to get across that aspects of it that Peterson considers disagreeable were already the law of the land for like half a decade before his public temper-tantrums started.
Got it.
John Morales #311
There is not enough HTML to highlight this.
Below is an account I happened to receive today. Maybe thirdmill would like to assure us once again about the wisdom of parents forcing their daughters to marry men they have not chosen, and that the concept of consent does not exist in Sudan, where these events occurred? You can sign a petition against Noura’s imminent hanging here.
@Crip Dyke
I can’t find the footage you describe under that title.
You’re making a big deal out of me getting the wording not quite right. Yes, you don’t get convicted “under Bill C-16”, you get convicted for “hate speech” under the amended Criminal Code. *Separate from that*, you can get sanctioned (non-criminal) under the amended HRA.
You or any other defender of such laws may claim the threshold for “hate speech” is really high, but I can’t take that at face value. Just the other day, the guy with his “Nazi Pug” got sentenced for “hate speech”. Admittedly, that was a different (but related) jurisdiction. If you support that, we won’t get on the same page, on principle.
As for the “HRA” part, you don’t deny that refusing to use novel pronouns could get a public worker fired (that’s a lot of workers!) and/or fined (the refusal to pay those can get them jailed). That can reasonably referred to as “compelled speech”, which I’m just gonna call “problematic”. I’m not losing my sleep over it though.
Nothing you said strongly contradicts anything I’ve personally heard from Peterson. He got the details wrong, I got he details wrong, but I’m not convinced he or I got *potential* outcomes wrong. Did he make a bigger fuss about it than what was warranted? From his perspective, probably not. From your perspective, well, obviously.
@Zmidpoke
Yes! Isn’t that fascinating? Two different people, observing the same footage, coming to entirely different conclusions. That’s what makes communication really difficult. We all have a warped perception of reality.
Bob Smith@310.
Shame on you! It really isn’t quite honest to pose as a Peterson supporter and then post obviously fuckwitted and semi-literate crap like that!
Some of us (you very clearly among them) much more warped than others.
KG
Well, it only stands to reason that if Peterson can’t make himself understood in less than an hour, his supporters need at least that much and more – you can’t blame Bob Smith for trying to be concise, when obviously the biological predisposition here is to be verbosely diarrhetic. I mean, look at brainwarp. I think their comments together constitute way too many hours of spoken words, and they’re still not getting their point across. Be more understanding, they’re not good communicators.
Employers can fire you for not treating clients with respect! What a shocker!
Whining about facing consequences for refusing to show people the level of baseline respect regarding their gender that you demand and expect from them regarding your gender has to be the most snowflakey thing I’ve ever heard. I hope these people do get fired and/or face legal penalties for doing so.
Oh, I take him seriously as a vile reactionary cult-leader, just not as any kind of intellectual or thinker. And of course your interlocutors “thinking in terms of good and evil” is not helpful at all, if your intention is to defend evil.
*guffaw*
Peterson’s idiotic contention that real atheists would go around murdering people has already been noted by John Morales@309. But who other than an idiot could take Peterson’s “ideas” seriously, knowing that he believes an ancient Chinese illustration of two snakelike things twined round each other is a representation of DNA? He states this belief, and assures the audience he really does believe it, shorty after the 5 minute mark on the video at the link. Come on, brainwarp, that’s von Daniken or Ken Ham levels of stupid. I commented on this already @265, but was not explicit about exactly how Peterson demonstrated his stupidity, and you may not have followed the link. Do so now, then tell us to take this arsehole seriously as a thinker. Or pretend you haven’t seen this comment, or that Peterson is again being “misinterpreted”, and confirm that you are simply dishonest.
lol – “This event relating to an entirely different law in an entirely different country totally proves my point!”
Nope. I didn’t deny that because my focus was on Peterson’s unreasonable certainty. I’ll have to look up what the video was where he retracts certain things about his criminal law claims to refocus on the OHRT. If I have time reasonably soon, I’ll give that a go.
As for compelled speech and firing, well, yes. Any employee can be compelled to speak at any time as part of their jobs. When you work as a server at a restaurant, you’re compelled to offer the specials.
You’re also compelled to speak nicely to the patrons so that they will feel a desire to come back. If you’re a professor, the students are your customers, and your university – public or private – could legally force you to use pronouns you didn’t want to use long before this bill was passed.
When you are an employee, your employer (public or private) can compel speech from you. Peterson also is compelled to keep his speech reasonably related to the topics he teaches and the necessary business of the course (when assignments are due, etc. isn’t “the topic of the course” but it’s a necessary part of the course). If he strays too far, for too long, and too often, he can be fired merely for not speaking to the topics he was hired to speak on.
Compelled speech for a professor is literally all speech that’s part of your teaching job. (Meetings away from students and with other faculty, administrators or staff, I suppose, constitute times and places in which your speech probably wouldn’t be compelled. In most of those contexts you could probably stay silent if you wanted.) You’re hired to talk to people about a subject where you have knowledge. And every single bit of that is constrained, sometimes loosely, sometimes tightly, but you’re absolutely compelled to talk about the topics of your courses. Maybe you like talking about those things so it doesn’t feel a burden most of the time, but yeah: you’re compelled.
So while you think of that, think of this: could a trans employer who pays your wage fire you for not using respectful, self-identified pronouns for the employer? If the answer is yes, then you already had the same risk to your job, the potential consequences merely protected fewer people in the past than today.
Now remember that the HRC was merely amended to include trans* folks (by inclusion of the phrase “gender identity and expression”). It didn’t change the nature of what constituted discrimination or harassment.
If in the mind of some professor A “real men” play football, present themselves as rugged, and are always heterosexual, and that professor decided to use the pronoun “she” to refer to a student who is a cis* man (a man who is neither transsexual nor transgender nor intersex) and frequently refers to that student as a “woman” in the hope of shaming the student into “manning up”, this could easily have constituted discrimination and/or harassment (assuming it went on long enough and certain other criteria about e.g. impact were met).
If misgendering can constitute discrimination against trans* folks, it can also constitute discrimination against cis* folks. But until C-16 the reverse was not true: it was possible that misusing pronouns to shame a cis* person or otherwise harass that cis* person might be behavior that was perfectly legal in relation to trans* folks.
Now most people don’t think of it that way because the cases of cis* men being harassed for their gender variations seem trivially rare, but the law about the nature of discrimination and harassment hasn’t changed, only who is covered.
Further, misuse of pronouns per se isn’t barred: anyone can make a mistake and this does not constitute discrimination or harassment. Harassment is a thing. It’s intentional. It’s severe and/or multi-episodic. It has identifiable and significant impacts on the victim. If you want to know what constitutes gender-based harassment, you don’t have to wait for cases involving trans folks to be handed down. Read cases involving women, read cases involving queer men where the court previously didn’t do a great job distinguishing harassment based on sexual orientation from harassment based on certain gay men’s other deviations from gender norms. The behaviors documented as discriminatory towards others will provide a clear sense of the behaviors that will be found to be discriminatory towards trans* people.
So C-16, having done nothing to change the definition of harassment, could not possibly have created a new category of behaviors that constitute discrimination or harassment.
What it did do was cover people that weren’t previously covered and who many people think deserve scorn and discrimination. People are worried not because the fundamental behaviors outlawed are now different, but because they used to get away with behaviors towards trans people that would be illegal when targeted at non-trans people.
Yes, that threatens more people with legal jeopardy.
No, I’m not worried about that result. If it was fair in law to ban discrimination and harassment of this sort against cis* folks, then it is fair in law to ban discrimination and harassment of this sort against trans* folks.
To sum up: compelled speech has always been part of both wage work and salary work. Compelled speech is nothing new, and employers compel speech all the time to sell their products, encourage customers to feel good about their experiences, and to limit liability of various kinds. If you don’t want to be compelled to speak someone else’s message ever, then you can’t ever take wage work or a salaried job. Now employers will be at the same risk of civil actions from trans* folks as they were from white folks or muslims or cis* women for their memberships in those categories. If you’re fine with employers being at legal risk from actions potentially brought by those other folks if discrimination occurs against them, then you object to employers being at equal risk of legal action from trans folks not out of respect for a legal principle, but purely because you think trans* folks should be second class citizens… OR you believe that trans* folks equal protection is unremarkable since the legal principle is the same.
…OR, I suppose, you could be stupid enough to not understand that the legal risk is the same and run your uninformed mouth off without ever bothering to study what the law does and does not do, in which case it’s possible you might object to trans* inclusion because you erroneously think that trans* people are somehow protected differently.
I only made a big deal out of that because you said you have nothing left to learn from lawyers, that you had learned enough that it was all just differing opinions for you at this point. But you clearly have a lot to learn from lawyers because if you don’t know what the legal language means, you can’t begin to understand the different opinions, much less understand how far apart or close they might be. You have a LOT to learn from lawyers, I should think, since until today you couldn’t even correctly articulate what a conviction is and when that language applies. I’d be very, very surprised if that didn’t constitute the tip of a very large iceberg of legal ignorance.
Please don’t oversell your knowledge in specialized areas. Have some self-awareness about where you’re expert, where you’re knowledgeable, and where you’re neither. You trash your credibility when you assert you’ve got nothing to learn from lawyers when in the same paragraph you can’t get the most basic legal terminology correct.
THAT was my point.
Pfffft.
In what the fuck sense is the United Kingdom a “related jurisdiction”? We have a completely different constitutional structure in Canada. We don’t have (hard) parliamentary sovereignty in Canada (though we do pay it lip service, which can confuse matters for those uncertain about the distinctions between parliamentary priority under constitutional supremacy and hard parliamentary supremacy). Canada is a “related jurisdiction” to the UK in exactly the same sense that South Africa, India, Pakistan, the United States, and Belize are “related jurisdictions”.
Further, the statute in question has no direct parallel in Canada and the case law on CCC §318 and 319 makes clear that the Supreme Court of Canada will not tolerate a similar ban on personal expression. The CCC requires direct advocacy of genocide, a direct threat to breach of the peace (the context indicating that certain speech is inciting assaults that may occur at any moment or some similar direct connection between specific speech and specific breaches of the peace, e.g. “Go get those white guys over there”), or willful incitement of hatred, which means that you have to actively want other people to hate the members of an identifiable group.
The Nazi Pug case doesn’t show evidence of direct advocacy of genocide, doesn’t show evidence of a direct threat to breach the peace, and the fact that the jerk who trained the dog did it to piss off his girlfriend rather than convince others to hate members of an identifiable group (such as jews) makes it impossible to prosecute him under the last category.
To be sure, there are other methods of regulating expression, even providing criminal penalties. Conspiracy statutes provide criminal penalties for mere communication in the US, Canada, and probably every other jurisdiction in the world. The whole point of conspiracy statutes is to criminalize communication so that if
1. one person asks 15 others, “Should we kill Crip Dyke?” and
2. the 15 others answer, “Sure,” and then
3. the first person says to a 17th person standing by the door, “Okay, go tell Frankie”
4. after which the 18th person, Frankie, is told by the door guard, “Go kill Crip Dyke”,
5. then when Frankie actually kills Crip Dyke
6. all 18 people can be prosecuted, even the 15 who did nothing more than say, “Sure”.
So the people who think that communication can’t be criminalized in the United States are grossly uninformed, but the people who think that the UK Communications Act bears any resemblance to the law on individual expression in Canada are just as ridiculously uninformed.
The UK’s limited protection of free expression is at the heart of its well-earned reputation as the premier destination in the english-speaking world for libel tourism. It’s absolutely famous around the world’s various legal communities for its shit protections of free expression. Any similarity to Canada’s legal regime governing individual expression is purely fucking imaginary.
And if you can’t take “at face value” the fact that Canada has entirely different laws than the UK because, and I know this might come as a shock, Canada and the UK are actually separate countries, then I suggest you get a new face.
Then, when you’re interested in the state of Canadian law, don’t go looking at UK statutory cases to determine the limits of Canadian constitution protections on expression. I simply cannot express strongly enough how stupid it is that you won’t “take at face value” information from knowledgeable sources that the SCC interprets Part 1 of the Canada Constitution Act, 1982 to highly protect individual expression from criminal prosecution but you do “take at face value” the wild idea that the Nazi Pug case has anything meaningful to say about the boundaries of the Canadian Criminal Code’s authority over expression.
@Dunc, 334:
so THAT’S how you say what I said in less than 10,000 words. huh.
The guy, not the dog (you may have missed this subtle point), was saying “gas the Jews”, on the video. If that’s not hate speech, what the fuck is? Oh, you’ll whine, he was only saying it as a joke. That’s one – very naive – way of looking at it – and indeed, I’ll bet a lot of Nazis found it hysterically funny. The more realistic possibility is that he was looking for a way to advocate genocide consequence-free; he didn’t have to use that phrase to train the dog.
@KG, #337:
…and it still doesn’t come close to a criminal offense in Canada. That was a separate fucking country.
The whole nazi pug guy thing always reminded me of that spongebob meme.
“Advocating gassing the jews constitutes hate speech, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And the law of the land criminalizes that kind of hate speech, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Therefore, Nazi Pug Guy violated the law of the land and deserves his fine.”
“Not everyone you disagree with is a nazi!”
Oh christ, if we get into the whole Nazi Pug thing we’ll be here all week… Any chance we could just agree that it’s completely irrelevant and leave it at that?
Crip Dyke@338,
Yes, I got that. Both you and Dunc, in your different ways, made it clear. But I don’t like this case being used as one which “obviously” should not have been brought.
Oh, I think brainwarp has already made it clear that in defending his hero (many of whose ideas he doesn’t agree with, and who can’t express himself clearly in less than an hour, but who really should at least be taken seriously, and is beyond good and evil, and whatever-the-fuck-next), he’s prepared to go on repeating his bullshit apologias indefinitely.
@KG, #341:
Fair enough. I frankly don’t know much about the facts of the case, so it’s not obvious to me it should not have been brought. I also haven’t made a judgement it should have been brought, though, so I hadn’t said that.
But I have zero reason to think your position is unreasonable.
@Dunc:
I suppose I can.
I wanted to make the point that brainwarp is just plain stupid what with brainwarp’s bringing up Nazi Pug as evidence of that, but I’ve done that. Though if brainwarp insists on misrepresenting the case as relevant to Canadian law, I’ll probably keep correcting that erroneous assertion.
I’m out of my anti-SIWOTI drugs for the rest of the month, but I’ll try to resist. Really I will.
KG, @ #341: Well, I can see an argument for bringing the case, but I think it went the wrong way and hope it gets overturned on appeal.
Damn! See what I mean about being here all week? Oh well, it’ll probably be more interesting that dealing with brainfart there…
Peterson was originally making out that even inadvertantly referring to someone by the wrong gender on a single occasion could get your ass immediately slapped in jail. It was only when multiple knowlegeable people publicly stated that this was totally and completely incorrect did he grudgingly admit he was wrong – whilst still trying to say his basic point was still correct. The reality is that only repeated, deliberate misgendering could be taken as evidence of a campaign of harassment, and, even then, it would probably require additional evidence before there was enough to actually secure a conviction. The punishment for this conviction amounts to a fine and/or mandatory training, and you only risk jail if you point-blank refuse to abide by the decision of the court. In that situation, you’ve basically gone out of your way to try to make yourself a martyr.
If people’s differing ‘warped perceptions of reality’ causes the kind of wild differences that explain Peterson’s problems with communicating, then communication is not just difficult – it’s downright impossible. I could be typing this, but you could be perceiving that I have written ‘I am a goldfish’ a few dozen times, simply because your ‘warped perception of reality’ is so different to mine.
@Crip Dyke
That’s why I’m not losing sleep over it. I don’t see it as exceptional and I’m sure the people who designed the law had the best intentions. There’s a distinction to be made here though, public institutions aren’t some private company, a public worker isn’t necessarily just another employee. Using these novel pronouns goes against JP’s conscience, because >>insert cultural marxist conspiracy here<<. It's like being forced to use the term "Ministry of Truth" for an entity that's doing nothing but spreading lies and propaganda.
That’s another can of worms, but this idea that universities, especially public ones, see students as *customers* is ruining higher education. If students are just customers, there’s an incentive to serve them the most useless education that sounds the best on paper, at the highest price. There’s a strong incentive not to grade them too harshly, or fail them, lest they drop out. Eventually, a degree in anything will prove nothing more than that you were dumb enough to pay (or even get indebted) for taking part in a little role playing game that taught you exactly what you wanted to hear.
I don’t think a lot of people have a problem with using the correct pronoun when it’s about “she/he”. The scenario that is more likely is that some person transitions to a “xir” or “zyr” and then complains to HR, trying to get the people fired that don’t accept using these newly invented pronouns.
Now, you may say “that’s their right to be referred to by XYZ”, but you better believe that there is very little public support for an unbounded set of new gender pronouns. By pre-emptively requiring these words to be used *by law*, as opposed to letting them catch on naturally, you’re burning up a lot of public goodwill.
The other thing to consider with these discrimination laws is that they add yet another layer of liability to employers. If an HR person (that isn’t already indoctrinated into your worldview) gets an application where some novel pronoun is featured prominently, they’ll mentally put that application in the “probably going to cause trouble” bin. You may say “but that’s illegal discrimination!”, but you better believe that HR practically never gets more than one applicant that is “equally qualified”. They can freely decide what “better qualified” means.
Laws can’t *prevent* discrimination. So you may have the odd trans person winning some discrimination suit, but at the cost of all other trans people having more trouble finding employment at all. I’m not saying one is necessarily better than the other, but you gotta pick your poison here.
I didn’t say that at all. I said lawyers don’t help you here. Lawyers don’t decide on legal matters – courts do. Until a court has decided, it’s up in the air. *You* can get a lawyer telling you that JPs fears are unfounded, but *JP* got a lawyer that told him they are *not unfounded*. So, which one are you supposed to believe? Lawyers aren’t so unlikely to tell you *what you want to hear*, as long as they’re not being grossly negligent.
“Advocacy of genocide” is not the only thing you can be convicted under, in the Criminal Code.
It was just an example. Let’s look at the law:
Wilful promotion of hatred
(2) Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty of
(a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or
(b) an offence punishable on summary conviction
Under the defences listed thereafter, “satire” notably doesn’t show up. An argument can be made that the “Nazi Pug scenario” falls under that law, especially if you don’t admit the “it was a joke” defense.
@KG
In context, he used those words as a trigger for the dog to give the Nazi salute. That situation is so absurd, you’ll have to admit it’s *at least* a joke. The fact that this is so outrageously offensive is what makes it funny in the first place. You may say, but “it’s *not just* a joke!”, implying that he is serious about gassing the jews. Nobody seems to have found the smoking gun here so far, therefore “in dubio pro reo”.
On the other hand, if your hate speech law also disallows “grossly offensive jokes” and “satire” that involve, let’s say, the ingredients of “hate speech”, then anybody who satirizes Nazism becomes legally liable. It is really hard to make fun of Nazis without letting your Nazi characters do Nazi things.
The Nazi pug guy didn’t get convicted for actually calling to “gas the jews” (advocating genocide), but for the “gross offensive” caused by *the joke*.
@KG
I’d liken it more to “Rupert Sheldrake” levels of… “reasoning”. You could make an argument that the double helix structure is a fundamental shape implanted into the human subconscious – after all, the DNA double-helix famously appeared to his discoverer during a trip on LSD.
Like I said, he’s not one of these “rationalist skeptic” types, but that’s what I find so boring about many “rationalist skeptics”: Anybody who ever makes some sort of irrational or semi-mystical claim immediately becomes an idiot unworthy of further consideration.
@347
That is apocryphal. There is no good historical evidence to suggest Crick was using LSD when he developed the helix model.
I’m sorry that you find truthful descriptions of cranks to be boring?
@brainwarp:
YES YOU STUPID FUCK.
That’s why in the exact section you quoted, I list THREE different ways in which a person’s expression can be criminalized under current Canadian law. Allow me to quote myself, numbering added:
I’ve done nothing but add numbering and bolding. It’s insulting that you think you’re telling me something novel when you say:
I already told YOU that advocacy of genocide is not the only provision of the CCC under which someone’s speech can be criminalized.
I even mentioned that beyond this, someone’s speech can also be criminalized under broad conspiracy provisions.
To make it even more clear, imagine 10 people get together to decide what they want to do about the new trans* neighbor that moved in, and one person, says nothing about whether they want that person killed, but pipes up every time someone uses “he” OR “she” to describe the neighbor with a single word, “it”. Then imagine that the others agree that the neighbor must be killed and one person volunteers to pay cash for a hitter and another volunteers to contact the hitter.
When the neighbor is killed, the person who only ever said the wrong pronoun can be criminally prosecuted for murder.
YIKES! What is the world coming to when just saying a pronoun can make you criminally culpable of murder?
That’s the world you live in, you stupid fuck. And it doesn’t have anything to do with CCC §318 and 319.
NO YOU FUCKING IDIOT IT CAN’T.
“Willful” and “willfully” have specific meanings in law. Earlier you didn’t fucking know what “conviction” meant, now you are flying your ignorance flag around “willful”. This is what I mean when I say that you’re too ignorant to talk about these things accurately and why I brought it up earlier. You probably comment on other sites, and you’re probably spreading stupidity there, too. Bringing this up was not merely an effort to get you to stop spouting bullshit here, where I can correct it, but in the vain hope that you might learn that your knowledge has serious limits and that you’ve show zero evidence that there’s a single aspect of the law on which you can speak knowledgeably and that you might then decide to voluntarily limit the misinformation you spread on sites other than this one.
YOU NEED TO SHUT UP ABOUT THE LAW IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN PREVENTING THE WORSENING OF GENERAL PROBLEMS WITH MISUNDERSTANDING CRIMINAL LAW’S AUTHORITY TO CRIMINALIZE EXPRESSION.
You act like you’re interested in your readers gaining information about the law, but you’re actually contributing misinformation, which is worse than saying nothing.
When are you going to catch on to the fact that I know vastly more Canadian law than you? Just because you say something doesn’t make it true.
And let’s be clear: the problem isn’t merely that you’re overconfident or that you’re incompetent. It’s that you are too fucking arrogant to acknowledge the limits of your competence. It is, frankly, very similar to the behavior that makes Peterson so untrustworthy on important topics.
There are ZERO competent lawyers who will tell you that teaching your dog to mimic the Nazi salute when you say certain inflammatory code phrases, even if you record it and put it on the net, is prosecutable under a willfulness statute when the purpose of the act was to piss off your girlfriend.
Under a willfulness statute, the purpose of your communication matters. Saying, “Seig Heil. Let’s kill the Jews” is perfectly fine if you’re doing some street theater inspired by Arthur Miller. Saying the same thing at a meeting of Nazis trying to decide what to do about the 3 jews who moved in next door and where the rest of the meeting members plot their deaths won’t get you prosecuted under the willfulness section because § 319’s promotion provision specifies that the communication be “other than in private conversation” and for damn sure if you’re conspiring to kill your neighbor you’re going to do it privately.
Earnestly passing out leaflets and pamphlets describing me and my fellow jews as subhuman still wouldn’t get you prosecuted under this section if you’re redistributing leaflets that you found piled up next to the free newspapers and you’re telling people, “Look at what someone in this neighborhood is printing up!” Even if you don’t explain that you’re outraged, even if you’re terrible at communicating your point, if you’re doing it to educate people that this kind of hate exists in their community, you can pass out exactly the same flyers that were previously at the center of convictions under this statute and never be prosecuted under it.
I also took specific courses on the interpretation of both the Canadian constitution and its laws. I know the modern principle backward and forward. I know where it’s coded into law at the federal level and in BC. I know quite a bit about how certain aspects of the fundamental principles of legal interpretation (not “the modern principle”, the fundamental principles) dictate certain structures within statutes and the ordering of the form of the statute.
You are so far out of your league you can’t buy a beer in this stadium. So if you want to insist everyone see how ignorant you are, by all means continue.
But if I were you, to save myself the embarrassment and because it’s the right thing to do, I’d explicitly state something like,
It wouldn’t make you less of an asshat trying to lecture on the ambiguities of the law to a woman who got there literally years before you, but it would at least limit the damage both to passive readers who might become more ignorant just by reading you as well as to whatever limited reputation you have left in this corner of the internet.
But Crip, I’m sure I can find some Swedish legal precedents that will really show you the flaws in your interpretation.
@125 Susan Montgomery
While prostitution carries it’s own share of ethical dilemmas, it wouldn’t solve the problem. I think that would only create new sources of resentment for these types to chew on.
You are probably correct but the very existence of prostitutes shows that incels cannot possibly be involuntarily celebate, as they claim, as the could voluntarily choose make use of their services.
The question is why don’t they? Too skinflint maybe?
@brainwarp:
Such bullshit.
“I love you” is an irrational claim.
So it, “God exists and his representative on earth is the Pope.”
And yet, rational, skeptical people happily listen to Ken Miller despite the fact that he’s a devout Catholic believer in a god who, it is claimed, loves him.
Rational, skeptical people are pretty likely to think his Catholicism is both unevidenced and wrong, but that doesn’t stop them from taking Miller seriously as a thinker or a scientist because we have the capacity to reject some of his ideas while taking seriously or even accepting other ideas. If, however, he started spouting off about a topic that’s not in his wheelhouse, and if experts in that new area told us that he was full of shit, then he’d lose credibility on that topic. If he insisted that he was right after being corrected and if he said those things after insisting that he’d researched them, then he’d lose credibility more generally.
We would accept exactly the same number of his ideas as before, but we’d be much less to trust the words coming out of his mouth and much more likely to go other places for information, since there’s no point in starting with a source you know has a history of being violently wrong about the subject you’re investigating and there’s some, but not much more, point in starting with a source that probably has a history of being right about a topic but leads off with exactly the types of confidence-statements used when spouting off in areas where being violently wrong was the norm. There’s even less reason to start with that source if there are other sources that also have expertise on that area but who haven’t tarnished their own reputations with statements of confidence in assertions that turned out later to be very, very wrong.
I take people seriously by default. i do not take seriously ideas that have been proven wrong in the past just because someone brings them up anew. If you do that enough times, and if you don’t show any awareness of when you’re speaking truth and when you’re spouting bullshit, then I simply don’t trust you any more, for good reason. It’s not that everything you say is false. It’s that nothing you say can be accepted on your word alone, and if I’m going to have to verify everything you say anyway, why listen to you? I’ll just ignore you and go to reliable sources. If you then continue to pop up insisting (after being proved wrong) that you’re really, actually right and all the experts are wrong, then I’ll mock you and rhetorically tar and feather you so that bystanders have the advantage of knowing that your word is untrustworthy.
Hopefully they don’t make the mistake of assuming everything such a hypothetical person says is false, but when a person has been proved unreliable, there is no worse effect on the general public than if they assumed that everything the unreliable source said was true. Also, it has the positive effect that for the vast majority of people who assume neither 100% truth nor 100% falsity, identifying the source as unreliable is actually both true and useful, creating positive effects.
So tell me again how we dismiss Ken Miller out of hand because he believes in at least some unsupported, almost-certainly-false bullshit?
@Porivil Sorrens, #350:
Oh FSM: I literally laughed out loud and then cried a couple of tears reading this.
Stone me, you really are even more of a dolt than I thought possible! Sheldrake is as much of a pseudo-scientific flim-flamming flake as von Daniken – he has completely failed, overt several decades, to provide any convincing evidence for his airy speculations; all he does is whine about how real scientists won’t take him seriously. And there is, in fact, no good evidence Crick discovered the double helix while on LSD. But even if he had, that would not, of course, be evidence that “the double helix structure is a fundamental shape implanted into the human subconscious”; it would be (suggestive) evidence that LSD can in some circumstances aid creative problem-solving, if one already has a profound knowledge of the domain of interest and has spent a lot of time thinking about the problem concerned.
Thanks for confirming that you are indeed an idiot unworthy of further consideration, like your hero.
Jesus wept, you are (giving you the benefit of the doubt) such a fucking idiot. Here’s an account of what the judge in the case said:
So contrary to your claim, it was precisely because the “joke” was racist and antisemitic that Meechan was convicted, and the judge specifically singled out the fact that:
Now of course no comedian genuinely intending to satirise Nazism has been or is ever likely to be convicted under this law, because it’s not fucking difficult to tell the difference between anti-Nazi satire and repeating “gas the Jews” over and over again. Meechan’s protestations of innocent intent are also called seriously into question by his acceptance of support from the known racist “Tommy Robinson” (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) – who has a well-documented past in overtly neo-Nazi groups.
@Crip Dyke
You know what, you’re right. I didn’t read your text with enough attention and my mind just assumed you were still going on about the rather unrelated “genocide” provision, like you were earlier. Sorry about that.
I do know what conviction means, I just didn’t get the wording quite right there. Yes, Bill C-16 isn’t the Criminal Code, it *amends* the Criminal Code. So you get convicted under the *Criminal Code*, not Bill C-16. Frankly, I don’t see how that detail changes anything important, but feel free to triumph over me having made this mistake.
Now as for “willful”, you’re right, I don’t know what it means. You seem to think you know what it means. In the end, the court gets to decide what it means, on a per-case basis. Not me, not you.
I don’t remember making any strong claims. I’m saying things like “an argument could be made” and “I’m unconvinced of… (whatever you are saying)”. I didn’t say I know better. But, take a step back here, from my perspective there is *no way* for *you* to make an unbiased statement on these laws. You just have to accept that caveat. I wouldn’t expect you to trust my judgment here either, even if I pulled out a law degree (which I’m going to assume neither of us possesses).
Let me just say that my feeling of embarrassment is quite limited, when I’m being embarrassed by the “legal expert” that starts their sentences with: “NO, YOU FUCKING IDIOT”
You’re not talking to “me” right now. You’re talking to “that asshole that thinks they know everything about Canadian law” that only exists in your head.
@KG
I don’t think Sheldrake is any good at flim-flamming.
Oh, what a bummer. It does make for a fun story though.
Of course not. It’s just an idea, you can’t be all scientific about it, that’ll ruin all the fun.
Thanks for confirming that you are indeed a really boring person.
I don’t see the contradiction. I did write that he got convicted because of “the joke”. You say he got convicted because “the joke”. The judge said he got convicted because of (the qualities of) *the joke*.
He got convicted *because of the joke*.
He *didn’t* get convicted for actually “advocating genocide” (that is, *literally gassing the jews*), which presumably would’ve gotten him a much harsher sentence. Nowhere do I see any proof that he was sincerely promoting the idea of gassing any jews whatsoever. That’s a much higher threshold.
Would I deny that the joke was tasteless/offensive/outrageous/racist/anti-semitic and potentially hurtful? Absolutely not. But it still was a joke.
Bad assumption. Wanna try again? Where the fuck do you think I studied Canadian statutory interpretation, the Modern Principle, the Quasi-Constitutional Status principle, the Constitution Act of 1982 and other legal things I specifically mentioned studying?
It wasn’t only that mistake – that mistake doesn’t even show an ignorance of what conviction means. it shows you misunderstood the function of bill C-16 (though your understanding is better now).
You used “conviction” to describe being found to have violated Human Rights Code provisions, which are civil, non-criminal provisions. Being found to have violated them is not a “conviction” as you said earlier.
And, as I said, i brought it up in the vain hope that you might realize that other people know a fuck of a lot more than you on this topic and that you’re getting so many basics wrong along the way you ought to stop and think that maybe the conclusions you reach at the end of the trip aren’t worth anyone’s time and might just be misleading.
The law is made up of details. If you don’t see how specific details change things, then you should realize that you’re completely incompetent to perform any legal analysis or statutory interpretation whatsoever.
Yes, I do know what it means. And no, they don’t decide on a per case basis.
Also, “willful” has no special or distinct meaning in § 318 or 319, so they don’t even decide on a per section basis. It has the same meaning throughout the Canadian Criminal Code wherever it appears, and it has been well litigated so its meaning is at this point highly stable.
And I’m telling you that’s flat out wrong. No argument could be made (at least in a Canadian court) that the behavior in the Nazi Pug case violates either CCC § 318 or 319. To the extent that “an argument could be made”, that’s only true if you mean “Could an ignorant putz assert that the behavior at issue in the Nazi Pug case violates the CCC even though it plainly does not?” Well, sure, the answer to that is yes. People can assert the moon is made of cheese. But no one can construct an actual, reasonable argument that the moon is made of cheese. Likewise no one can construct an actual, even semi-reasonable argument that the Nazi Pug facts amount to a violation of § 319. Your imagination is not what I would call an argument.
You might think that was a tentative and reasonable assertion, but you’re fucking wrong. You simply are so far beyond your knowledge that this statement that seems reasonable to you would be found laughably erroneous in a court of law and would earn you a failing grade – or close to it, depending on what other analysis you might add – in your basic 1st-year Crim class.
You are so arrogantly ignorant that even when you think you’re being careful and qualified in your statements, you’re not even close to correct.
No. I’m talking to “that asshole that thinks they know anything at all about the limits of the Canadian government’s ability to criminalize expression” that exists right here in this thread. I’m not objecting to you thinking you know everything. I’m objecting to you thinking that when you’re corrected you can go right on asserting that you still have a good basis for your beliefs because you must know at least some significant amount about this area of law.
What ever you do know, it certainly doesn’t add up to anything of significance. If there’s even one word in a section of the criminal code that you don’t understand, you can’t actually make an argument about whether some facts meet the definition of that crime until you actually resolve your ignorance. But there you are, acting as if it’s reasonable to state, “an argument could be made”.
So you don’t care about the facts that prove you’re completely ignorant about subjects where you profess knowledge. You care that when someone proved you hilariously, incompetently wrong they also happened to call you an idiot.
Good to know.
Who gives a fuck about whether I feel some form of bias or another? The law says things. Some possible interpretive issues have not yet been resolved. Many, many have. Where issues have been resolved, objective statements about the law can be made and they are objectively either right or wrong. I haven’t even begun to get into unresolved interpretive issues of provincial Human Rights Codes. My spouse actually made a career out of negotiating resolutions to Human Rights Codes cases specifically for universities, their faculty, their students, and their staff. She’s more knowledgeable than all but a handful of people anywhere in Canada and is on par with the second-tier of most knowledgeable people in Canada on how Human Rights Codes apply in the environment of post-secondary education. If I can’t provide a good answer on an unresolved question of interpretation, she could.
But you’re so fucking ignorant you don’t even know which questions of interpretation have been resolved and which haven’t, or even where to turn first to find out if such a question has been previously resolved. You don’t have the first clue how accommodation for family status is treated differently from accommodation for disability under the Human Rights Codes. You don’t know whether or how provisions apply differently when a faculty member is tenured versus adjunct. You don’t know whether those questions are related or how. You don’t know which recent case or cases, if any, bear on these questions. And, again, you wouldn’t begin to know where to look to answer those questions. Hell, you probably aren’t aware of a single way in which the case law on disability or family status sets precedents at least arguably applicable to cases involving allegedly discriminatory or harassing behavior targeting trans* persons. I’m sure as hell confident that you aren’t aware why some academic experts (like my spouse) and lawyers believe that cases involving trans* persons are likely to present facts in the near future that help the courts address the disparity in accommodation case law between family status cases and disability cases.
YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT. AND IT SHOULD BE EMBARRASSING TO YOU THAT YOU THINK THAT YOU HAVE ANYTHING USEFUL AT ALL TO SAY ABOUT CANADIAN CRIMINAL CODES OR HUMAN RIGHTS CODES.
Stop explaining how your opinion and mine are equally informed and equally valid and start listening to the actual information being presented you thick-headed twit.
And in the UK, given the presence of certain other facts, it is the gross offensiveness that gives rise to the conviction, not whether or not the gross offense arose in the context of a joke. Whether the context was joking or not was, in the court’s decision, not relevant. There were specific elements of the crime and neither “being a joke” nor “not being a joke” appeared in any of those elements.
It’s also still stupid that you think a UK law has any bearing on the extent of the legitimate authority of Canadian federal and provincial bodies to criminalize expression.
That’s a point you haven’t conceded yet, but should.
For all I know, you could’ve taken the “courses” that you mentioned at clown school. I have no idea about your background, it’s not like you have your CV on your profile. I get it now though, your blog is called “pervert justice” because you have a law degree. I assumed wrong.
Look, right from the beginning I said things like “I didn’t follow this” and “that’s not why I’m interested in JP” regarding all this Bill C-16 stuff. I don’t even care that much about it, I’m not a constituent, so it doesn’t bother me that I got this-and-that wrong. I’ve never claimed being anything other than “the layman”, and you’re just *bombarding* me with walls of text regarding my legal incompetence.
Here’s the thing: *Everyone who gets to vote* is a layman that isn’t going to get all the facts straight. If you get into full-on nerd rage over some misinformed opinion on the internet, you’re not going sound very convincing. The easy thing for me would be to assume you’re just angry because I have a point and that you can’t be trusted on this because you’re queer as fuck.
What I’m *actually* going to do is give you the benefit of the doubt and accept what you said as “correct” and whatever JP said about Bill C-16 as a misrepresentation, but only for the following reasons:
1. Going into this, I already had a feeling that JP didn’t get Bill C-16 right
2. Assuming that law is your profession, you have a vested interest in getting this right
3. I like that you’re queer as fuck
I’m not gonna go out and consult an attorney on whether some thing I post in a comment thread would constitute “a reasonable argument to be made in a court of law”. I’m typing out “a concern” that I have, uninformed as it may be. No shame on my part here, whatsoever.
Believe me, people *do* get concerned when they think they need to start using 30+ new gender pronouns because “the leftist government” made it law. Reasonable or not, if you want to convince people, you need to show you’re a decent person doing the right thing, not that you’re some condescending intellectual elitist, who considers anybody not already on your side “deplorable”. Otherwise, public opinion is just going to turn on you. Yes, even in Canada.
Just adding a note about JPs possible ignorance of the outcome of his proposals.
He is a clinical psychologist.
If he doesn’t know the research and the outcomes of his proposal then he is an incompetant and unprofessional one.
I’m incredibly sympathetic to people who approach me or write on the internet, “I’m concerned that” or “I’m afraid that”, and if there’s an easy answer, I’ll happily and helpfully provide it.
I’m sympathetic when people make an obvious error or several in their first post on a topic.
I’m incredibly unsympathetic when people make obvious errors or misleading statements (including when some statement embeds misleading premises) and refuses to stop producing more errors/misstatements even after being corrected.
As for public opinion, I don’t do that work here on Pharyngula. To the extent that Pharyngula is famous for anything it’s famous for caring far more about getting things right than about being polite. Perhaps you missed it, but I noticed (and was affected by) the post PZ put up just before this one about mealy-mouthed science reporting and scientists refusing to simply say something is wrong out of epistemic humility. PZ gave an example of this actually hindering the education of the public.
There’s absolutely a place for other tactics, but this is the internet. There is room for any number of tactics. Here we ferociously call out error and do it all the more ferociously when it appears someone is unwilling to acknowledge error. When I participate in community legal education (homeless populations or protestors learning about their rights to housing or during encounters with police, that sort of thing) I’m very patient, non-condescending, and generous with my time.
Different contexts call for different tactics.
But to bring this back around, when you’re willing to say,
Absolutely not. If you’re typing out your concern in a way that others won’t mistake for actual information (“I’m worried that…”, not “This bill threatens x” which might not be true even when someone *feels* threatened), I have no problem with that.
Even now, if you have concerns, you’re welcome to bring them up to me and if they have an easy answer I’ll provide it. If it’s only likely to be true, I’ll tell you that and give you at least one other possibility so you understand what the possible tradeoffs and likely outcomes are.
Ask around. I can be super patient with this. But to me, the wording matters. I don’t let anything that is written in a format that can misinform to stand unchallenged – not in this little corner of the internet anyway.
Well kick ass, then. I like that you like that – and whatever your freak is, I hope you get it on consensually and often. Whether that’s playing scrabble wearing bunny slippers or whether it’s wild monkey sex: you go.
Ooops, I truncated your quote before:
Which was needed to make my reply “absolutely not” make sense. You shouldn’t feel any shame for stating a concern.
Why is brainwarp?
I feel like there’s going to be a quiz on all this at some point. I’m taking notes.
Actually, rq, it’s your turn to prepare the quiz.
Didn’t you get the memo?
brainwarp
Damn, I fucked up the borkquote.
Dammit, chigau, it was probably my turn to send out the memo, too.
@Crip Dyke
The internet is “the public” and in this thread, I’m the only person you could possibly convince of anything, everyone else already agrees with you. Anyone with a different opinion is likely to identify with *me*. I don’t see the point of your tactic of derision, it’s just not effective here. Sure you may “look cool” in front of your friends, but you win no turf whatsoever. It’s a losing tactic.
Let me make this clear, I’m capable of ignoring your attacks and misrepresentations because I know your brain has this strong urge to re-frame me in the most idiotic and arrogant way possible. I understand that you’re not literally attacking *me*, but a character that your brain has created based on text written by a faceless stranger. However, most people are not going to make that distinction.
You mentioned something along the lines of “you probably do this all over the internet”. Well, no I don’t, I have never had such an “extended conversation” ever, but let’s imagine I was “that guy”. If I left with the impression that you’re some asshole that’s trying to con me, *as my brain insists on after all these insults*, then I would have no problem misrepresenting you, or Bill C-16 (or really your entire cause) in front of practically everyone. It wouldn’t even appear like misrepresentation to me. And so “the virus” spreads…
I also said right from the beginning that I’m *not surprised* about your treatment of Peterson, because it’s the exact same mental process. I still have a vague hope that self-described “rationalists” will be able to transcend that, but I don’t expect it from participants in this thread.
I came into this thread because from my perspective, the letter quoted in this post gets practically nothing right. Almost every single sentence in the opening paragraph is either a total distortion, or flat out untrue.
The more vengeful of the Incels approve of *what he has done*, but that doesn’t mean he shared their worldview or was in any way responsible for the underlying “theory”.
If you believe that women are biologically pre-disposed to ignore you, why would you at the same time believe to be “entitled” to their attention? That’s different from ER, who may well have felt “entitled” because of his looks and his sports car. I’m sure Incels have a “good” theory on why ER was rejected, probably something to do with chin angles and eye shape. I haven’t looked into it.
From what I see you write, you’re just naively wrong about “Incelhood”. You’re going to be part of the force that further alienates and otherizes these people, but that process makes them all the more threatening. There’s still a difference between the Incel who is depressed about not having a partner and the Incel that hates the world to the point where he wants to destroy it.
First of all, I wouldn’t just assume you’re in the “targeted group”. The target group isn’t “women”, it is (pardon the “jargon”) the “Chads” and “Stacys” and the “normies”. That is, it’s the well-adapted, good-looking, socially and sexually successful people who they are envious of. That’s why some Incels have an unhealthy obsession with “acid attacks”, they prefer that people “suffer rejection like them” rather than leaving them dead.
So, not only can men be targeted as well, women can identify as Incels too:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/30/women-can-be-incels-too
Again, it’s important to see that not all Incels are so far off the deep end that they desire murder and mayhem. But they’re edging closer every day they maintain those beliefs.
You need to stop thinking in terms of “justification”. That’s the wrong way to look at it. If I told you “too much sugar causes diabetes”, you wouldn’t go out arguing “that’s not a justification for the health issues caused by diabetes!”.
It’s the best analogy I could come with, but of course it failed. You left off that “radical” there. Let’s remove faith altogether, let’s just talk about radicals. There are people with radicals beliefs, a subset of those people may accept violence as means to an end, some are so radicalized that they just want to *destroy the world*. The best hope you have here is to change some of those beliefs, especially when they haven’t arrived at the “violence is acceptable” stage yet. If you settle for just proclaiming how terrible these people are, you satisfy your urge for “justice”, but you have no hope of preventing anything. You’re only helping to drive these people into a dark unobserved corner, and when they emerge from it, they will strike you unprepared.
The other alternative of course is to just lock up anybody *suspected* of holding these radical beliefs. That has been advocated for Islamists, Leftists, Fascists, you name it. That’s the “police state” solution, and it’s not ineffective. It has a lot of other tradeoffs though.
No of course not, there’s no such thing a socially enforced standard *without tradeoffs*. That’s why JP correctly describes *any form* of social order as tyrannical. You put out one fire, another fire emerges in an unforeseen place.
*guffaw* I vote this sentence as the most asinine claim yet made by brainwarp. So the only acceptable, non-tyrannical social order according to JP is complete anarchy? Wait, that would be leftist, and clearly JP thinks leftists are terrible people who insist on social justice and civil rights.
I am still waiting for that super scary list of 30+ pronouns that he is now being forced to use to be produced. Tyranny!!!
So we are now at the stage where we can conclude JP advocates for tyranny. And this comes not from one of his detractors, but from one of his defenders. I think this thread is done.
Wait: I believe that JP is arguing for the legitimization of rape, for a society that gives cover to rapists of various types in various ways. I believe this because of two decades of professional experience doing, among other things, original research, direct work with survivors of sexual trauma, policy consulting, and political advocacy that have given me a deep appreciation for how social justifications for sexual violence function.
…but my belief that he is arguing for the legitimization of rape is an unhelpful caricature. It’s hyperbolic and therefore counterproductive.
Whereas the reasonable brainwarp believes that JP is arguing for literal tyranny? Well. Glad to see you eschew rhetoric in favor of unemotional, rational, non-inflammatory, neutral descriptions of facts.
Well, at least now we have a more accurate picture of what Peterson is saying:
It’s more like a choice between “order and tyranny” and “no tyranny, but disorder”. You can dial between the two, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Peterson challenges you to *recognize that tradeoff*. It would be pretty naive to think that people who “insist on social justice and civil rights” are actually getting what they insist on, merely by insisting on it. While the social democrats and communists of Weimar were arguing over which particular social utopia to insist on, the Nazis just took over and had them all “neutralized”.
Now what I see happening is that progressives are insisting on “novel gender pronouns” and “white privilege” just a bit too much for their own good, while completely ignoring or minimizing a lot of other public concerns. That’s exactly how you *lose* elections.
I need far more coffee before I can even begin to untangle the snarl of twisted reasoning and circular logic that leads from JP to letting the nazis neutralize us.
@Crip Dyke
He’s not *arguing for it*, he is *using that word*. That’s why I’m using it! See, if Peterson is using the word “tyranny” in a descriptive fashion, in your mind, he must be arguing for it – and the worst kind of it! But that’s just you making it really easy for yourself again.
You also have this penchant of taking words too literally, leaving no room for metaphor. That’ll be a problem when trying to understand what Peterson is getting at.
You’re being silly again.
A couple things then.
First, why are you commenting here? You realize there’s a link to the original posting of that quote, right? It’s from Wonkette, which actually gets far more comments and commenters than Pharyngula. Literally every single day they get one article or another with more than 1k comments – just on that day. Pharyngula almost never gets 1k comments on a single article in a single day, even if it has on a few occasions gotten several thousand comments on a post eventually.
Second, if that’s your problem, let’s pick apart the opening paragraph, which (according to you) is the source of the misinformation:
Distortion or flat out false? You do realize that someone can be “telling young men the story they want to hear” without telling literally every single young man that story, right? If spend my day handing out nickels to young men in Toronto and only end up giving away 1000 nickels, I still spent my day “handing out nickels to young men” even if lots of young men never got a nickel.
So what’s your problem with this sentence?
His ideology is clearly individualistic. He clearly states that hierarchies are natural and that they therefore cannot be inherently bad.
Please note that saying “hierarchy is not bad” is not the same as saying, “this particular hierarchy is not bad”. We all know he thinks Stalin & Mao were both leaders of hierarchies and evil. Presumably he thinks those particular hierarchies were evil. That doesn’t mean that he thinks hierarchy itself is evil. He clearly does not.
As for the bit about meritocracy, I haven’t read or listened to enough Peterson to have an opinion on whether that is right or wrong, but perhaps you can enlighten us.
He has claimed openly and more than once that leftists and feminists are attempting to recreate the tyrannies of Stalin & Mao. Perhaps if you got deep in the weeds of his rhetoric there’s a way to portray him as calling feminists Stalinists and Maoists who desire a tyranny similar to that of Stalin or Mao, but without asserting that feminists actually want any features of Stalin’s or Mao’s regimes in the new feminist Stalinist/Maoist tyranny.
Me personally, I don’t understand how feminists can be arguing for a tyranny similar to Stalin or Mao but having no characteristics of the regimes of Stalin or Mao. But again, perhaps for those deeply familiar with his work there’s a perfect passage in there to explain this oddness.
Certainly the part where Wonkette says that Peterson is portraying feminists, leftists and others arguing for social change as “want[ing] to manipulate” young men is inarguable.
The part about gulags? I don’t know if that’s accurately describing a Peterson metaphor, accurately describing Peterson’s non-metaphorical assertions, or using a new metaphor that extends Peterson’s obsession with comparison to Stalin & Mao. My first interpretation of this was that Wonkette was using gulags as a metaphor to describe the removal of (many of) young men’s rights. Certainly he does say that feminists and leftists generally are trying to strip away important rights, and he does say that feminists and leftists are disproportionately targeting young men’s freedoms. Rather than a distortion, I think this is a particularly apt extension of Peterson’s metaphor, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if Peterson has himself used the word “gulag” in his writings or lectures.
Are all metaphors inherently wrong?
Is there some other problem in this sentence that makes it flat out false?
Has he not said that women secretly appreciate traditional gender hierarchies? What was the point of the lobster comparison except to say (erroneously) that humans have an evolved need for males to fight it out for females, and thus letting human males compete amongst themselves for the best females is both important and something that females with their own evolved needs will appreciate?
That’s not the same as saying exactly what wonkette said, but Peterson is speaking in metaphor here. He doesn’t literally mean that humans need to genetically engineer exoskeletal claws for underwater combat. He’s also clearly not saying that men need to do their best to appeal to women and let women make their own choices about whom they marry or fuck. That’s not how lobsters work. Male lobsters don’t show off in their battles then walk around the reef asking individual lobsters if they’re attracted to him. The whole point of the lobster metaphor is that the competition among male lobsters determines the allocation of female lobsters, not the informed and empowered choices of female lobsters.
Feminists believe that men should be informed and empowered. That they should be allowed and encouraged to ask for positive attention when and where they desire to ask for it. They believe that men should be allowed and encouraged to say both yes and no (and “maybe later”), in whatever circumstances their own informed, educated minds think best.
Feminists further believe that women should be informed and empowered. That they should be allowed and encouraged to ask for positive attention when and where they desire to ask for it. They believe that men should be allowed and encouraged to say both yes and no (and “maybe later”) to these requests, in whatever circumstances their own informed, educated minds think best.
This is the world against which Peterson is arguing. He’s arguing that things about women’s lives should be determined by competition among men. That is tyranny. No matter how you slice it, if the course of one competent adult’s life is determined by others without input from that one adult, you’ve got some form of tyranny. In this particular case where he’s arguing that competition among men should determine the fate of women, he’s arguing for patriarchy.
Anyway, that’s how I see this sentence. If there’s a way that its a distortion or flat out false I’m not aware of it. Perhaps you can educate me, though, if it exists.
Yeah, I think this is covered above. He’s asserting that women will be fine with men determining their fates through competition between men, because evolution (among other things). I know he’s said quite a lot in his 12 whatevers book about what kinds of traits other people like and appreciate. Maybe there’s more direct support in there for what Wonkette said: if any of those traits could be correctly described as misogynous, then this sentence is neither a distortion nor false. It is simply true in that case. If any of those traits could be arguably described as misogynous, then this sentence is neither a distortion nor false. It is simply a matter of opinion in that case.
He certainly argues that this should be the case. I don’t really know at all if he argues that society will be transformed in this way “soon” or not.
At worst, Wonkette is lying about Peterson’s confidence that his philosophy will win people over and do so within a short time frame. At its worst, this isn’t lying about Peterson’s philosophy itself. Wonkette could be honestly mistaken about the time frame optimism as well, or Wonkette could even have gotten this entire sentence correct.
But what I’m saying here is that since you couldn’t possibly argue that Peterson isn’t advocating for a world in which there are no social consequences for misgendering certain people, even if you could find a distortion or falsehood here, it would be peripheral and have no effect on how I think of Peterson.
He does argue that hierarchies are natural, and says that this can be true even in the business and social worlds. There’s certainly some truth in here, but I’m not familiar enough with what Peterson says to know for sure that he’s said this.
So what in this last part is distortion or false?
I have to admit, I’m quite looking forward to gaining accurate information about what Peterson says. I certainly haven’t deeply investigated his writings, so I bet there are other gems in here that will continue to enhance Peterson’s reputation as a reasonable person with important ideas like, “all social orders are tyrannies”.
It’s probably not the Nazis that are going to “literally neutralize” you, it’s the reactionary conservative resurgence that is currently building up that’s going to politically neutralize you (and a lot of what you have worked towards).
You must be under the impression that you’re on a straight trajectory towards “justice and liberation”, but just look at countries like Russia or Turkey, where slow but steady progress towards social liberalism has been undone in a very short time span, by primitive populism. Look at the trends in Europe. That’s *a failure of the left*! But instead of recognizing that failure and adapting their strategies, the left is still busy with name-calling and allocating blame, as if that made any difference.
What?
Tethys said:
The Nazi part just identified which snarl.
Stating that, “I can’t follow the twisted reasoning of brainwarp” is not the same as asserting,
Tethys says that your reasoning is opaque, not that there’s no such thing as a backlash.
For someone who chides others on creating caricatures, you really don’t seem to care much about portraying others accurately. You’re jumping to massive, unwarranted conclusions all the time in this thread. Your reasoning is far from careful. No reasonable reading of Tethys justifies what you’re asserting here so … wtF?
No. My FSM you really, really are stupid.
I get that he’s using that word. He’s using that word for any social order at all.
THEREFORE, if he ever argues for any social order at all, he – by his own description, using his own language – is arguing for tyranny.
I don’t need to or want to imagine that he’s arguing for the worst kind of tyranny. It’s tyranny if it’s social order at all. (BTW: it’s such a good thing that Peterson doesn’t engage in inflammatory caricatures.)
So let’s see: does Peterson ever argue for social order?
Yep! He argues that society must manage the violence of men through socially enforced monogamy. That one ought to be familiar to you.
So let’s puzzle this one through:
1. Socially enforced monogamy is a form of social order
2. Peterson declares all social orders to be tyrannies
3. Socrates is mortal.3. Socially enforced monogamy is tyranny (at least to Peterson).
With me so far? Okay then:
4. Peterson argues for socially enforced monogamy
5. THEREFORE, Peterson argues for tyranny
I understand the distinction between describing a thing and arguing for a thing. What you don’t understand is that Peterson actually argues for social orders, including but not limited to libertarianesque governments and socially enforced monogamy.
So when you say,
You’re not only wrong, you’re wrong because you have made an assumption about my brain process.
Stop thinking about what I’m thinking – which you can’t know – and start thinking about what I’m writing.
In that proof above, we already knew that Peterson argued for social orders. We already knew that Peterson “advocates”. What we didn’t know was that all social orders are tyrannies. I focussed on the new piece of information, but I didn’t build off unsupported assumptions that happen to make my argument easier. I built off the already obvious and established facts that have been previously established as part of this conversation.
Remembering what has been said before isn’t lazy, and it isn’t some solipsistic attempt to make things easier for myself. Forgetting what has been previously said is lazy and, should one be inclined toward solipsism, has the power to ease one’s way there.
Jesus fucking toast, how do you manage to spell when you can’t remember that Peterson has actually advocated things that constitute “social order”?
I post here because I remember PZ from way back (and not in a negative fashion) and I’m frankly disappointed he’s just reposting that stuff which should appear as obvious strawmanning to someone like him. I don’t know about the level of discourse on “Wonkette”, but I probably don’t prefer it to what’s going on here.
Okay, let’s pick them apart:
That’s pretty subjective and hard to substantiate. I certainly can’t say I heard what I *wanted to* hear. I’ll let this one slide.
First of all, I wish I could give you “video citations” on what I’m about to say, but that’s just well beyond my time budget. So for the sake for argument, please accept my account.
Peterson is very clear that social inequality is a huge problem. At the same time, he maintains that *not all* hierarchies are about “power and oppression” and that not all such hierarchies are bad. For example, a hierarchy of competence: It is not “bad” that the judgment of an expert is held in higher regard than that of the layman. Would you rather be treated by a doctor in medicine, or a witch doctor? Just earlier, I submitted to your higher position in the competence hierarchy of “law”, instead of demanding that you treat my opinion as that of an equal.
He also points out that hierarchies emerge naturally in all sorts of living beings. That’s just to dispel the idea that hierarchies are just social constructions that can be done away with. Hierarchies are necessary for organization, as soon as one hierarchy is destroyed, it inevitably gets replaced with another one, which isn’t necessarily better for everyone. For example, the communists in Russia did get most people to be “economically equal”, but they were *all poor*. Of course there was also a power hierarchy there that wasn’t about money, but about political influence. Peterson believes that this is what leftist ideology leads to, a failed utopia turned into a totalitarian regime.
The idea that Peterson claims we have “always lived in a meritocracy” is just pure fabrication as far as I can tell.
Yeah, that’s just silly. I mean, do you believe the red revolutionaries in Russia were advertising gulags and mass starvation while clamoring for public support? Do you believe that’s what they were *fighting for*? Of course not. They went into it with the promise of an utopia, where everybody was equal. They surely had the best intentions, but that’s just not how it turned out, because as soon as they got the power, the most power-hungry psychopaths hiding among them took over. It’s really easy to purge out all the naive idealists at that point.
Now what makes you believe that *can’t happen* again? It may look farcical from your vantage point, but a lot of the leftists I have observed not only promote “social justice”, they want to abolish democracy (“those stupid masses!”) and favor a system where some political elite decides what’s best. The first thing that happens in such a scenario is that the economy crashes (because the “political elite” turns out incompetent and/or corrupt) and after that it’s “each one for themselves” yet again.
Never made that claim, as far as I can tell. That’s not to say that he may have defended the “traditional arrangement” of male worker, female caretaker, but that’s not the same thing.
A lot of women *are* fine with that arrangement, it makes it obviously less burdensome for them to raise children – at the cost of their independence, of course. That arrangement just doesn’t work out so well when men get to just *leave* the woman along with the children. That’s why we have child support, but that doesn’t help you if you married a deadbeat. If anything, Peterson is asking men to shoulder responsibility here, to *not run away*.
Never made that claim and I don’t even understand how one would arrive there, unless maybe we’re literally talking about lobsters or other crustaceans, who presumably aren’t put off by lobster misogyny.
If anything, the opposite is true. He’s talking about a future where, unless you use words like “xir” and “hyr” at anyone’s request, you’ll be branded a terrible person and possible fired as a result. Now whether that scenario is likely or desirable is up for debate, but you better believe that there’s little public support for it, at this point in time. We’ll have to wait and see what happens when there’s a measurable amount of people demanding novel pronouns, out in the workplace.
That’s a gross oversimplification, he’ll never say that as an absolute. There are all sorts of hierarchies favoring all sorts of attributes, not just one hierarchy. As you admit, there’s “some truth to that” – and why wouldn’t there be?
Peterson would take the example of the hierarchy within a large company, where in the majority of cases a man would be at the top. Peterson would then claim that arriving at that top is highly correlated with working 60+ hours a week, being very competitive and being disagreeable. Then he would point out that females, *on average, not as individuals*, will not work extreme hours, will be cooperative rather than competitive, and will be more agreeable.
It would then be a mistake to look at an unequal distribution of male to female CEOs and attribute that inequality entirely to sexism. Note that he *doesn’t* say sexism plays no role whatsoever, but that even if we got rid of all the sexism, the distribution still wouldn’t be 50:50 – which leaves open the question of what a “fair” distribution could look like.
Peterson would put more weight on the “biological” than the “social” aspect regarding the distribution of traits in females, but that’s because he (unlikely myself) is heavily biased against social constructivism.
So you (as a social constructivist) may say that since “society” makes women more cooperative and agreeable, and that since that’s what’s holding them back, we need to train them to be fighters from an early age. Which sounds fine to me! But that’s working at an entirely different level than, for example, shaming companies for their uneven male to female distributions, or instating quotas by law.
First, I absolutely accept you as more expert on Peterson than I am, and I absolutely accept what you say he said as being a more informed and more-likely-to-be-accurate account. I’d never head the thing about all social orders are tyrannies, for instance.
“always” does seem a fabrication, unless one assumes that that we’re talking only about or to living people. I’ll happily grant that “always” can reasonably be interpreted as “throughout history”, but in the context of “we have always …” another reasonable interpretation is that, far from claiming that one is part of a group of immortals dating back to the beginning of time, one is simply claiming that the people “we” have never done anything other than X. “We have always loved cookies” is not an assertion that Oreos were created during the universal inflation. It is a statement that in the english language can be easily understood and judged true or not true.
So Peterson’s “hierarchy of competence” is clearly a version of meritocracy. Are you asserting that Peterson is asserting this came into being sometime after the oldest among his audience were born? Are you asserting that Peterson is asserting that the hierarchy of competence no longer exists?
I’ll take your word for the answers to those questions once supplied, but it seems you’re missing something here if you want to claim that this is distorted and/or purely false, as you have claimed every sentence in the paragraph to be.
That also relates to the last sentence:
So does he or does he not believe that there is a “hierarchy of competence”? Am I missing something because of my casual knowledge of Peterson’s writing? Is the “hierarchy of competence” something that never existed but that Peterson wants to bring into existence?
But you’re not here grappling at all with what Wonkette said. Wonkette never said that this is absolute either or asserted that Peterson believes that sexism has never existed on earth. Wonkette is saying that Peterson believes those at the top of the hierarchy (CEOs can be example/metaphor here) deserve it, that they became CEOs through a hierarchy of competence. Does he believe that or not?
Because rather than looking like a distortion or a falsehood, this again looks like a case where you are taking Wonkette to extremes, then claiming that extreme Wonkette is either a distortion or flatly false. But it really seems like you’re doing the distortion.
I don’t need citations, and if you tell me that Peterson’s hierarchy of competence is something that he doesn’t believe exists, just something that should exist, I’ll accept that unless/until new and contrary info comes to light.
But if Peterson does believe that a hierarchy of competence exists, how is saying that he believes that people become ceos through good/hard work a distortion of any kind? Isn’t that what all the crap about cleaning your room is about? You take care of one thing that you can take care of, and if you do that enough, you take care of a lot of things and presto! you’re at the top of the heap. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
As far as I can tell,
is a barely paraphrased version of Wonkette that appears to be exactly what Peterson is saying. I think that the paraphrase is more clearly accurate, but that Wonkette is understood by its readership to be saying the same thing and that you are misreading Wonkette rather than finding an error.
To that end, I could conceded that Wonkette might have written more clearly so as to exclude interpretations that are, in fact, wrong (in the sense that those misinterpretations would imagine Wonkette saying that Peterson believes oppressions have never existed). I do not concede that what Wonkette was actually saying was inaccurate, and I also don’t think that the vast majority of readers of Wonkette would have interpreted the article to be saying what you seem to think they’re saying.
If you’re unfamiliar with Wonkette, they recently described themselves this way:
If Wonkette had ever caught Peterson literally claiming that no oppressions had ever existed or even that there is 0% effect of any oppression on any person in society today (which is the imaginary Wonkette claim that you seem to be attempting to refute), there is no fucking way that the wording of their commentary would have been anywhere near as mild and kind as
Everyone in their regular readership knows it. And their writing is therefore clear to their readers. Personally, I think their writing is clear anyway: they’re talking about causes: “did so because”. They’re comparing two options:
and
One can easily have unearned privileges and advantages yet have those privileges and advantages help you in things other than your quest to become CEO and not help you in your quest to become CEO. You can also have UP&A that help you a little bit in your quest to become a CEO, but your hard work or good work was more than enough to make you a CEO anyway, and the UP&A without your hard work or good would would have been not nearly enough to make you a CEO.
There is nothing in this statement or comparison that is inherently absolutist.
So in order to prove this flatly false, you would have to have to show (quite ironically) that Peterson doesn’t think that CEOs became CEOs primarily because of their hard work and good work. I mean, if that’s not what Peterson believes, okay.
In order to prove it a distortion, I guess you’d have to show something that approaches that sufficiently. Maybe you could show that Peterson believes that UP&A is a highly significant factor that makes the difference in at least a measurable percentage of CEOs efforts to become CEOs, despite believing that the majority of CEOs become CEOs solely or primarily through hard/good work?
I’m not sure, you’re the Peterson expert. I can say that you haven’t proved this anything lie a distortion or falsehood yet because you’ve fundamentally mischaracterized what Wonkette was saying into something like, “Peterson believes that no one is affected in any way by oppression’s current or legacy effects.” That simply doesn’t resemble Wonkette’s claim.
Okay, you want to play a semantic game? Fine.
Your claim:
My counter:
You then go on to prove that statement “wrong”, because since JP argued for “social order” and since he defines “social order” as “tyranny”, he is “arguing for tyranny”.
There’s a problem here: In your original claim, you talk about “literal tyranny”. If “literal tyranny” were something rather benign, then why would it *not* be “reasonable” of me to believe that JP is arguing for it? Why even put that into question? So when I say he is *not arguing for it*, I *must* be talking about some nondescript horrible *literal* tyranny, not just “any social order”. Everything else doesn’t make sense.
You cut off the entire part where I’m talking about metaphor and why not to take things too literally, then you run off making this logical deduction, taking every word literally.
So your conclusion…
…isn’t even technically wrong. It’s just entirely besides the point. It doesn’t contradict what I *must have meant*. It’s semantic nit-picking. You can go on playing this semantic game: “Social Order” and “Tyranny” become synonymous, so the more concise version of that statement would be: “Jordan Peterson argues for social order”. Now, what’s wrong with that? How are you gonna use *that* against him? You’re not going to, you’re going to say “Jordan Peterson argues for tyranny!”, because then the reader’s imagination can fill in the blanks with whatever terrible thing that springs to their mind. And you wouldn’t even technically be lying!
That of course presumes Jordan ever made such a statement, but to be honest that could just *me* representing him due to poor memory. He probably said something along the lines of “there’s a tyrannical element to any social order”. But let’s not get “nuance” in the way of logic and polemics!
In short: you’re not showing Wonkette to be distorting or flatly false.
You’re showing Wonkette to be imprecise, but trusting their audience to understand that the obviously false interpretation of their words is not the correct interpretation of their words.
I find this to be highly ironic considering you yourself find Peterson himself to be highly imprecise and prone to saying things that, absent a one-hour long context and explanation, appear to be flatly false in too many cases and flatly offensive or oppressive in too many more. Yet rather than Peterson actually having said something distorted or false and thus in need of critique or condemnation, you advocate that we simply understand Peterson better because what he’s really saying is really true.
Why Peterson deserves that credit but that neither Wonkette nor your fellow commenters deserve that credit is beyond me.
You were supposed to demonstrate it’s false that Peterson made claims represented by that statement from Wonkette.
Now, you’re trying to argue that Peterson might have been correct when he made such claims. Instead of arguing for it, you ask us why we believe it’s impossible for Peterson’s assessment of the situation to be accurate. But we may not believe this “can’t happen,” so you are actually the one misrepresenting us. In any case, you are conceding the point here.
In what way did he defend it? If he believes women will be fine with this thing he defended, then we are back where we started.
If he believes they won’t be fine with it, and that this shouldn’t matter to him, considering how great his mystery arguments are, then he’s just being a different type of misogynist shithead.
But even without reading a word of anything he’s said, it’s more charitable to assume he’s not explicitly and deliberately aiming for something he knows most women won’t like. The first interpretation, that he believes they will come to like it somehow, is giving him more of the benefit of doubt (more than he deserves, I’d say).
But you’re telling us not to be too hasty … maybe he’s much worse than we thought or were willing to put into words. We shouldn’t have given him that much credit. He’s not merely a paternalistic asshole, who thinks he knows women better than they know themselves. He just doesn’t care what women do or don’t like, since he’s so consumed by his mystical visions showing him how great the “traditional arrangement” supposedly is.
*facepalm*
I accept you as the better authority of Peterson’s statement than I. I had no reason to believe you weren’t representing him accurately. Now that you’re saying you weren’t necessarily representing him accurately, I won’t worry about it as much.
The point is that if Peterson actually believes that tyranny and social order are synonymous, then he’s a dingbat. There is no way to argue against tyranny if tyranny and social order are good. The problem is illustrated sufficiently to some by pointing out that Peterson argues against tyranny (Stalinism & Maoism are favorite bugaboos in the Peterson rhetorical universe) while arguing for tyranny of his own.
But to you it isn’t sufficiently illustrated, so I have to use that statement against him (and you) like this:
If the mildest form of social order is tyranny, then we cannot condemn tyranny for being tyranny. We cannot argue against tyranny, because it might really be a good and mile social order. Rather than aiding our analysis, statements like, “We cannot allow Trump to brand media as enemies of the state for its criticism of the executive, because that leads to tyranny.”
The concluding clause has become a truism under Peterson’s new definitions: everything that isn’t complete, utter anarchy leads to (and indeed is!) tyranny. We cannot then oppose Trump’s actions because they lead to tyranny, because arguing for the opposite of Trump’s position also leads to tyranny. But moreover, we can’t even desire to oppose tyranny. Tyranny, using that definition, is at least sometimes a good thing.
So if Peterson actually said this or anything strongly resembling it, he would be reducing quite a lot of interesting and sometimes even important and thoughtful political commentary to meaninglessness. Rather than aiding a search for meaning, he impedes it.
A great example of how this would impede the search for meaning is how it would impede understanding of Peterson himself, and that is why I used Peterson as an example. I trusted you to understand that when I followed Peterson’s logic into meaninglessness, that wasn’t my problem, that was a problem with Peterson’s logic.
But as usual, you focussed on the person and not the logic. It’s not me that’s faulty here. It’s the logic.
Now maybe it was only you and not Peterson that made the statement, but the statement is stupid. It is pure idiocy whether it came from mistaken memories or accurate ones, and it deserved to be called out derisively. Whether Peterson comes off looking the worse for it is really just down to how accurate you were, because I haven’t distorted the impact of the statement as made in the least.
okay, I’m off line for a bit.
I’m asserting that the statement, as written, is false. He never made that claim, as far as I can tell. I don’t think he would make the claim that we live in “a meritocracy” right now, or at any point in the past.
Can you connect this false statement to something he said by jumping through various hoops? Yes, but you can connect *anything* that way.
There isn’t any one such a hierarchy and I sincerely doubt that he would describe the current governing structures as “a hierarchy of competence”.
Does he believe that there is *such a thing* as “hierarchies of competence”? Well, yes. Can that be used against him? Don’t you believe that as well, seeing that you don’t accept my remarks on law as “equally competent” to yours?
I don’t think he would use “competence” to describe this hierarchy, seeing that even incompetent people can rise to the top and sink companies. Rather, he associates certain traits (long hours, competitiveness, disagreeableness) with rising through that hierarchy – traits which females statistically don’t happen to express as often.
Like I said, the statement, *as written*, is an absolute and a gross oversimplification. It rules out the possibility that somebody got to the top by cheating, that *some* hierarchies are really all about corruption, that success can be “undeserved”, etc.
Peterson doesn’t rule any of these things out, in fact he does often qualify what he is saying with such exceptions.
No, that’s rather unrelated. He’ll make the claim that having a clean room will have subconscious benefits in everyday life. Then he’ll point to the amusing fact that some of “these 20-year-old college kids” can’t keep their room tidy, but at the same time they believe they know how to reorder the entire economic system to be more fair. [kermit voice] Clean up your room, *then* we can talk about the economy!
“Then he’ll point to the amusing fact that some of “these 20-year-old college kids” can’t keep their room tidy, but at the same time they believe they know how to reorder the entire economic system to be more fair.”
Why is this amusing, or relevant? Are those two things related in any way?
@Crip Dyke
See, that’s why these semantic games don’t help. You settle for some meaning of the word tyranny that makes your opponents point illogical, then “you win”.
… but your prize is *nothing*! You missed the point. There isn’t any one meaning of “tyranny”, there’s many “tyrannies” which may be more or less terrible. Let’s take *our social order*: You are *forced to work*, or else you suffer all kinds of sanctions. That’s *a form of tyranny*. Now you run back to your semantic game and say “but that’s not *real* tyranny!”, but then you would be missing the point again. We use the word “tyranny” for all kinds of things that are not “literally a form of government with a despot at the top”:
We have the “Tyranny of the Majority”…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
… turned into the “Tyranny of the Minority”…
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/opinion/trump-electoral-college-minority.html
… we even have a “Tyranny of the Subjective”! Wow!
http://quillette.com/2018/03/19/the-tyranny-of-the-subjective/
So when you say things like…
… it just proves that you can’t deal with language that isn’t purely literal. You can’t deal with metaphor, at all. Instead of declaring people using metaphor to be idiots, I’d recommend that you recognize that as a weakness of yours. Consider the possibility that what your opponent is saying makes sense in some way that is still opaque to you.
brainwarp:
No, that was a direct response to your question based on your claim that ““Social Order” and “Tyranny” become synonymous, so the more concise version of that statement would be: “Jordan Peterson argues for social order”. Now, what’s wrong with that? How are you gonna use *that* against him? ”
And you entirely missed the point, that if those terms are synonymous that Peterson both advocates for and advocates against tyranny (enforced monogamy and what he vaguely calls cultural Marxism).
Also, claiming the two terms to be synonymous is a semantic claim (one which happens to be wrong). It’s you precisely doing what you decry: making the concept of tyranny be synonymous with social order to try to save the claim.
(It doesn’t work)
<snicker>
You most conspicuously evaded the significance of the stupidity of the statement by trying to say it’s made in supposedly metaphorical language and thus it cannot be analysed as what it plainly states. Yet it remains stupid.
Sure. When he advocates for enforced monogamy, that’s about strengthening the social order. When he fulminates against cultural Marxism, that’s about preventing tyranny.
@John
I played along with the semantic game, and for the sake of the game that’s being played, those terms have become synonymous – that point isn’t even contested by Crip Dyke in her follow-up. Why would I try to *save* that claim, when it’s the foundation of my opponents “reductio ad absurdum”? I’m really only pointing out how entirely unconvincing that whole chain of reasoning is, even when I acknowledge it as *formally valid*.
What statement are you even talking about? We don’t have a statement of JP to work with, we have this following account (posted by me), in which the word “tyrannical” is used in an obviously metaphorical fashion:
“(…), there’s no such thing a socially enforced standard *without tradeoffs*. That’s why JP correctly describes *any form* of social order as tyrannical. You put out one fire, another fire emerges in an unforeseen place.”
That promptly got turned into “Jordan Peterson thinks social order is tyranny, but he advocates for social order, so he advocates for tyranny!” – which isn’t *formally* untrue. It’s just completely devoid of the underlying meaning and intent – which I don’t think is stupid or illogical at all.
If you play a semantic game that does nothing more than rearrange your opponents words so that they appear like an idiot, you’ve “won” a debate against an idiot. Congratulations! Why would you debate an idiot in the first place, though? Why don’t you try an imbecile, and who knows, maybe someday you’ll win an argument against a jackass!
brainwarp, the claim to which I referred is this:
—
So, I just Googled
peterson tyrannybefore posting.Heh.
I’m scarcely an expert (though, alas, all too quickly and involuntarily becoming one*) but it’s hilarious how “Petersonian” this statement sounds, even if it’s not actually Peterson.
And it fits the formula perfectly:
Start with a deliberately provocative deepity (“all colors are really just black”), in a context in which the everyday, albeit provocative, interpretation is clearly implied (A discussion of a child’s kindergarten fingerpainting).
Then, if someone questions, rather than praises, this ludicrous statement, erase the context (“well, of course I wasn’t talking about mere fingerpaint, but instead the whole archetype of color…”) and walk it back further and further as necessary (“And I meant ‘blackness’ in the sense of an obscure technical term which I can’t be bothered to specify when I’m doing interviews. I’m a psychologist, dammit [pounds fists on table], I know what I’m talking about. I’ve looked into this deeply.”)
Ultimately end with a fully hedged banality probably no one will really object to, but which might be kind of stupid sounding and also isn’t in any way interesting or meaningful (“Well, of course what I meant was that no color reflects light perfectly, so of course they can all be said to have some darkness within them after a fashion. It’s absurd that so many people mischaracterize my statements and try to put the worst possible interpretation on them all the time!”).
Meanwhile, the fanboys are still on the first version, which they think is absolutely deep and brilliant, and they just knew all colors were black all along, it make so much sense. It’s genius.
—–
* Google’s decided I’m “interested” in Peterson and keeps popping this crap up on my phone. I really can’t stop laughing. I know he’s serious as cancer about it all, and kind of a cancer himself, or at least a carcinogen, so maybe I shouldn’t, but he’s just such a transparent clown.
For FSM’s sake. I think that’s even worse then what’s been popping up on my phone. Now I’ll probably get more of it. Thanks a lot.
Sorry, jack. Kudos for checking for yourself, but.
…but that’s not what happened here. The context here was erased by the “questioner”, deliberately, so as to make the claim sound ludicrous. The context is important, it must not be erased.
So, to adapt your kindergarten colors example to what was said:
“There must be some black in every color, otherwise it’s invisible”
…which of course isn’t technically true, but it works as a metaphor well enough for our purposes.
Now the “questioner” then goes on to claim:
“Joe Idiot says all colors are black! Utter nonsense!”
And indeed it sounds like utter nonsense. The original meaning is lost, but whose fault is that? The context was erased by the “questioner”, they misrepresented the claim by hiding the original meaning and intent.
What I have seen multiple times in this thread is people rejecting the responsibility for misrepresenting a claim, saying it’s Peterson’s fault for being a “bad communicator”, complaining about “obtuse wording”, etc. Those to me are just signs of being an immature debater, who can’t avoid strawmanning their opponent, even unintentionally.
Brainwarp:
Me:
Brainwarp:
Me:
Brainwarp:
Me:
Brainwarp:
Me:
Brainwarp:
Me:
Brainwarp:
Me:
*That’s* actually a non-sequitur. It’s perfectly valid to advocate for a “lesser of two (or three) evils”. Two forms of tyranny may well be not equally terrible and the *abscence of social order* may be worse than either of the tyrannies. That’s why the whole statement *isn’t stupid*.
And again, the word *is* being used in a metaphorical fashion, just like the term “Tyranny of the Majority” can be applied even in context of, say, Canadian democracy (which by any literal interpretation of the word is certainly *not* a tyranny).
I’m not saying you (or any of your statements) are stupid. I’m saying you’re trying to make me *sound stupid* by playing a semantic game. Which isn’t necessarily a stupid thing to do either, seeing that misrepresentations can be very effective when nobody checks, which is the common case. It’s rather a matter of intellectual standards. I’ll gladly admit that JP doesn’t live up to these standards either, seeing how he represented Bill C-16 (and various other things). Don’t *you* want to do better than JP though?
No such effort is necessary.
Shall I go on?
You have repeatedly stated that some aspect or another of my argument is stupid, often without comment on whether or not you agree with the conclusion. AND THAT’S OKAY. Because it’s possible to have a stupid argument for a good conclusion.
I’ve said before, and I’ll say again:
1. God told me 2 = 3
2. God told me 4 = 6
3. 3 + 3 = 6
4. therefore 2 + 2 = 3 + 3 (premise 1)
5. Therefore 2 + 2 = 6 (premises 1 & 3)
6. Therefore 2 + 2 = 4 (premise 2 + line 5)
is a stupid fucking argument. Those first two premises are not suddenly “smart” because in context we’re saying 2 + 2 = 4 and everybody knows that’s good math!
“Peterson correctly describes as social order as tyrannical” is a stupid fucking statement even when it occurs in the middle of an argument that has some value. The context provided by the statement “2 + 2 = 4” does not make the premise “2 = 3” suddenly valuable or smart. Rather, the context of “2 = 3” makes “2 + 2 = 4” worth less. We realize we could have just counted on our fingers rather than creating some structured proof, so why are we listening to this idiot anyway when they’re spouting bullshit right next to their true facts? What if next time the true statement isn’t as simple as “2 + 2 = 4”? Would we be able to recognize it as true? Would we reflexively distrust it because this moron thought 2 = 3? Geez, the source of this proof isn’t helping themselves at all with this 2 + 2 = 3 shit.
The smart statement doesn’t save the stupid statement. Yes, it occurs in a context right next to some smart statement or statements, but it’s petulant and missing the point to scream, “Hey, it can’t be stupid, because it was part of a proof that 2 + 2 = 4 and we all agree that there’s some truefax there, right? Why are you removing the context from the stupid statement to make it sound stupid? Doesn’t it sound so much smarter next to the smart statement?”
No. It doesn’t. If you really want to construct a good argument, slipping in stupid statements and then screaming that the context makes them smart doesn’t help you at all. It’s a stupid statement. I don’t have to argue that all the statements next to it were stupid to argue that that one statement was stupid.
But hey, if it helps, let’s not remove it from its context, and you can see my full thinking:
(numbering added by me, of course)
Statement 1 is either metaphorical (in which case I’m not sure what it would mean) or it has a straightforward meaning. If it has a straightforward meaning, it is trivially true. It’s no great insight. This is 2 + 2 level stuff.
Statement 2 is either metaphorical (but this time we can actually make good guesses about metaphorical meanings) or it has a straightforward meaning.
If we give statement 2 its straightforward meaning, it’s stupid and counterproductive. It even makes Peterson’s arguments incoherent because he rants about stopping tyranny, but according to this statement in its straightforward meaning he is advocating that we replace tyranny with tyranny to save us from tyranny.
Okay, that’s stupid. So what might be the metaphorical meaning? Where’s the metaphor, and what concept (tenor) does the metaphor (vehicle) replace?
Hmm. No metaphor there.
referencing the context, there’s not an obvious way that this is metaphorical. Thinking more carefully, it still doesn’t seem metaphorical except that
clearly parallels
So maybe despite wording these two are supposed to be exactly equal. The second is merely a metaphor for the first and there’s no difference in meaning for the two phrases. That might be true, but then we simply arrive at any socially enforced standard being tyranny, and we have the same problems as the non-metaphorical statement. So, okay, there may or may not be a metaphor here. “Social order” may mean “a system of social order made up of numerous individual socially enforced standards” or a social order could simply mean one particular socially enforced standard, giving the two equivalent meaning. Hard to tell. Neither way resolves the problem with giving straightforward meaning to the phrase “any form of social order”.
Of course, it could be a metaphor without a referent (meaning the “tenor” of the metaphor is expected to be understood by common knowledge, not by previous inclusion in the same text). It’s important to note that “order” is often imagined to be in opposition to “freedom” and/or “chaos”. But slipping in “the antonym of freedom” doesn’t make the phrase more meaningful:
I mean, it makes sense now. 2 + 2 = 4. But it becomes completely banal, completely meaningless. Because we all know that 2 + 2 = 4 and we all know that tyranny is anti-freedom.
So this metaphor leaves us with an author that writes sentences that contain no more meaning than what a particularly bright 5 year old could create. “anti-freedom = tyranny”. Okay. Yay. I’m supposed to applaud your brilliance?
But moreover, that metaphor can’t really be what was intended, can it? Because context, remember? It’s not just that 2 + 2 = 4. There’s supposed to be a very particular reason that 2 + 2 = 4. What was the formulation again?
Statement 1 is trivially true, but statement 2 seems false here. You don’t describe anti-freedom as tyranny because god told you to. Anti-freedom is tyranny because of the fundamental definitions of freedom and tyranny. So the first two words of the statement “That’s why …” are now rendered false. That’s not why anti-freedom = tyranny. Anti-freedom = tyranny by definition, so your the claim of causation (which is integral to Statement 2) turns out to render Statement 2 wrong, false and stupid.
Okay then, let’s not use that metaphor, since we’re looking for something that renders this statement something other than wrong, false, and stupid.
We only have a tiny bit left in which to find our metaphor:
And here we have much more metaphorical potential. It could be a metaphor with an antecedent. “Tyrannical” could here mean simply “possessing tradeoffs” by reference to the previous statement.
But then we have
Okay, now the second part of Statement 2 is not wrong, but it’s utterly, ridiculously vapid. And it requires tyranny to equal “tradeoffs”. If I give you $50,000 for an awesome electric car, I get the car but lose $50k. That’s a tradeoff. So in this formulation, it’s tyranny.
Great. So if tyranny = tradeoffs, all economic activity = tyranny. So it doesn’t mean that, right? What if its an imperfect metaphor? Then we would simply have either “tyranny is characterized by its tendency to include tradeoffs, though not all tyranny includes tradeoffs” which is wrong and stupid, OR we have “tradeoffs can be fairly characterized as tyranny, even though not all tradeoffs are tyranny”.
But can tradeoffs be fairly characterized as tyranny? No. Not really. Every single decision ever is a trade-off. The whole point of calling it a decision is that depending on your choice the outcomes differ. You must effectively choose between getting a degree from Stanford and getting a degree from Harvard. You can choose again later, transferring from one school to the other or getting a degree one place then deciding you want a second degree somewhere else, but when you get an offer from admission from Stanford and one from Harvard you can choose either or neither, but no matter what you choose, you’re trading off something else.
Recognizing this, we have to ask, “Is the very act of making a decision fairly characterized as tyranny?” The answer is obviously no. Decision making is not the same as tyranny and not even fairly described as such. Statement 2 is perhaps even more idiotic using this metaphor than when given its straightforward meaning.
What about in the context of social order? If you play a longer game, consider that in context a socially enforced standard = tradeoffs, therefore “tyranny” could be a metaphor for “a socially enforced standard”. But if those two are made equivalent, then you again have “tyranny = tradeoffs” because of Statement 1. Instead of focusing on that stupidity, however, we recognize that “a socially enforced standard = tradeoffs = tyranny,” and thus we can use “a socially enforced standard = tyranny” as the metaphor.
But that’s not really a metaphor is it? That’s just giving Statement 2 it’s straightforward, non-metaphorical meaning. Of course, statement 2 uses “describes as” rather than “is”, so again, there’s the possibility of an imperfect metaphor.
We have to try to resolve the metaphor by taking this statement literally with the tenor in the place of the vehicle, but the imperfect metaphor does not require that the replacement of the vehicle with its tenor work in every case, it must merely be a fair enough replacement such that reading the statement now makes reasonable sense.
Can socially enforced standards be fairly described as tyranny? Well, no. Tyranny means something. It’s totalitarian. Socially enforced standards are rarely totalitarian: if society feels that strongly about something, it usually enacts laws, and even most laws are not fairly described as tyranny. Now some individuals in society will take the same standard more or less seriously, and you can certainly encounter totalitarian asshats who will enforce “No wearing white after labor day” with all the furor of a Fuhrer. That doesn’t make the standard totalitarian or tyrannical. It makes the person totalitarian or tyrannical.
The other possibility is that if the two are equivalent we just drop “a socially enforced standard” from Statement 1 into Statement 2 as a replacement for “tyrannical”.
Now we get:
But then we again have
So using the metaphor that way results in a statement that’s completely stupid as well. True, sure, but utterly, vapidly stupid.
So what is this “tyranny” thing supposed to be, if not tyranny?
Well, we know from previous investigations that tyranny = anti-freedom in a broad, sometimes imperfect sense. This isn’t literal, but neither is it truly metaphor. At that level we’re talking mythopoesis. But we’re more than willing to accept imperfect metaphors and what the hell, we’ll at least consider the mythopoetics of order, freedom and tyranny as possible sources of unreferenced tenors.
So remember when we considered
but dismissed it because
What if we had it backward? What if it was supposed to be this:
Is this fair? It’s certainly “fair” when removed from its immediate context and placed into the mythopoetic context where order and freedom are antonyms. But in that case, you have:
and again, that statement seems reasonable, but you’ve got a causation assertion here. In full, the original now reads:
But that wouldn’t be why JP would correctly describe order that way. The reason to describe order as anti-“anti-order” is by fucking definition.
Once again, you have
The first has nothing to do with the second. There is no causal relationship, and the relationship you’re trying to assert is true because of Statement 1 is actually true regardless of the truth or falsity or wisdom or vapidity of Statement 1.
But it gets even worse. If we go back to
we recognize yet another layer of fuck-up in all this that comes directly from considering mythopoetics as potential sources for our metaphor’s tenor: mythopoetics aren’t reality. They’re described as myth on purpose. When we try to apply mythopoetic categories to real life, they fail.
Consider that highway systems are set up so that cars are legally allowed to only face and move in one direction in a given lane. This is a social order; there’s no natural law that requires people to drive on the left or on the right. It also certainly requires tradeoffs. If your standard is driving on the right, you’re no longer free to drive on the left. Yet here’s the thing: it seems like a lack of freedom, but if you don’t have some standard everybody ends up crashing, the streets are full of immobile wrecks and you can’t get anywhere. It seems at first blush as if your freedom to travel is impeded by a social order that prevents you from traveling in a particular direction on a particular street or in a particular lane. But in fact your freedom of movement is vastly increased.
While there’s myth-making potential in the order/freedom oppositional dichotomy, and while that oppositional dichotomy can be a fertile field for the creative growth of entertaining stories, even stories that contain valuable insights into real life, applying the oppositional dichotomy directly to real life is a stupid, abysmal failure. It doesn’t work in real life, which is why it’s “mythopoetic” and not “true”.
Shall we see that in action? Given that driving on the right is one example of a social order, now we have a specific to test the general rule advocated:
Or, if you prefer:
Whoops! It totally fails!
Thus there is not a single metaphor we’ve considered – and we’ve considered all the obvious metaphors – that works in either perfect or imperfect form. They either falsify the causation statement, result in a triviality so banal as to render an argument more stupid by their inclusion, or have even worse effects. We’ve also considered straightforward meanings, absolute and imperfect. They run into problems equally severe.
We haven’t considered that rather than using recognized mythopoetics as a source of metaphor, the statement that “we have a specific reason to consider all social orders = tyranny” might itself by a myth. But to be a myth rather than merely mythopoetic, it would have to have a story. What’s the storyline? Oh, there isn’t one? Bzzzt. Fail.
So, mindwarp: you’d like people to believe that i didn’t consider all that before stating that Statement 2 was a stupid statement. You go so far as to tell others (and myself) what was going on in my brain at the time.
But in fact, I’ve considered the metaphors. I’ve considered myth. The statement doesn’t work. And rather than writing this dissertation first, I thought that maybe I could just call out your stupid fucking argument as a stupid fucking argument and move on.
But no, you rail about how in context your stupid fucking argument is pure genius because nuance.
But it’s not. Statement 1 is fine, but there’s nothing at all in Statement 1 that saves Statement 2. A false or stupid statement next to a true statement does not suddenly become true because context. You can criticize an abolitionist argument against slavery that includes “God commands us to free slaves” as being less true and therefore less worthy for the inclusion of that statement while still agreeing that slaves should be freed. Recommending that someone remove that statement doesn’t make one a pedant and it doesn’t make one pro-slavery and it doesn’t make one a lazy thinker because one couldn’t possibly be thinking about the anti-slavery message and the utility or truth of one phrase in an argument at the same time.
Your statement is stupid. None of the obvious or even mostly-obvious metaphors work. In fact, several of the metaphors actually bring us back around to the literal meaning where order = tyranny because order and freedom are opposites. It’s a bad statement and deserves retraction.
And even if you can construct a metaphor where tyranny = merry-go-rounds that somehow works to say something both true and non-obvious, there is nothing in the context to point to merry-go-rounds as the tenor of the metaphor. In that case your true and non-obvious statement is still stupid because you don’t know how to construct a metaphor.
Why can’t you just admit that
1. the statement is stupid
and
2. even when conclusions are correct, it’s good to eliminate stupid statements from one’s argument
and thus
3. it’s a good thing to call out statements as stupid as
?
To me, all this still smacks of the arrogant ignorance that makes you think that speculating on the thought processes of others is valid, that causes you to defend errors that are pointed out as errors because you’re so damned certain that no one is any more informed than yourself.
You’re not defending this statement because it’s a smart statement (though you might be doing so because you *think* it’s a smart statement).
It’s a dumb statement any way you slice it. Concede the statement is dumb and move on to some argument where you have a hope of convincing anyone else of, well, anything.
Or just shut up. That’s always an option.
Sort of. It depends on what you mean by this. If you mean I shouldn’t ever play semantic games, then no. Of course not. The law is nitpicky as fuck. When lawyers represent clients in court, playing semantic games is vital.
You wouldn’t believe how often someone says some seemingly-reasonable thing X which is broad enough to encompass Y, but which a lawyer honestly believes, not having considered Y, leads directly to Z.
Stating “X also leads to Y, so you can’t use X as written to make the argument that the outcome must be Z” is absolutely a semantic argument of the type you’re describing. It’s also very much what a lawyer should do to help that client.
What this does is force the opposing lawyer to revise statement X. If that lawyer can’t redraft X into a new A such that A leads directly to Z, then the opposing lawyer can’t win outcome Z.
Thus rather than providing some independent argument that α => β, you put the burden back on the opposing lawyer who thought X proved Z was required, but hadn’t actually done that.
In fact, the strategy of putting forth your own α => β leaves X => Z unaddressed, allowing a judge or trier of fact no guidance at all. It’s mere whim at that point whether the decision maker starts with α or starts with X.
The opposing lawyer might have really meant something like, X usually leads to Z, but pointing out that “if X then Z” is false isn’t misrepresenting the argument of the opposing lawyer. It’s stating a fucking fact. X really doesn’t automatically mean Z.
A court of law is different than being interviewed on television or testifying before parliament, but all those things are also different from comments on a blog. If the distinction between acting as a lawyer required to advocate for a client makes different tactics both reasonable and intellectually honest than the tactics that would be considered reasonable and intellectually honest in a television interview, then there’s also a relevant distinction between those things and commenting on a blog.
When I do public education work or consulting, I walk people through reasoning patiently, no swear words, no calling anyone an idiot or even saying their statements are dumb. This is a different forum. I act according to the expectations of this forum and according to my whim. I’m not writing a peer reviewed science article here, so if I call out an evolutionary psychologist for making an unwarranted assumption and then, later in the same thread, I make an unwarranted assumption, I’m making a parallel error, but it’s not the same error and it certainly doesn’t have the same consequences.
Though I try to state, when my knowledge is fuzzy, that I’m not certain of the facts of what I’m about to say, I certainly will go ahead (with that caveat in place) and make a comment without doing research to confirm. If I were asked to go on TV and speak to an issue, I would absolutely do research before I went on TV to comment, even of the things I thought I knew for sure, just to do as much as reasonably possible to prevent accidentally misinforming such a broad audience in a format where psychological research has shown that an audience will grant additional, unwarranted or disproportionate trust to the content.
I’m the same person online and on TV (though I’ve only ever been on local TV), but the standards to which I hold myself change.
If you’re asking me if I hold myself to better standards here in this blog comment than Peterson holds for himself when appearing on national Canadian TV or in front of Parliament, very possibly not. But if you’re asking me if I would hold myself to a higher standard while testifying before Parliament than that to which Peterson held himself while testifying before Parliament, I’d say absolutely.
That concern, of course, stems directly from scumbags like Peterson telling that lie.
Actually, the main strategy of what passed for the left in Europe has been, for decades, to adopt the policies and much of the rhetoric of the neoliberal right. That is why they were unable to exploit the financial crash of 2007-8, which was caused precisely by those policies – and why, in various ways in different countries, a new and more radical left has gained support – although not as quickly as the far (nationalist-populist through to outright fascist) right, which has the short-term advantage of being willing to lie without restraint, and to scapegoat minorities. Your prescription appears to be that the left should now appease this far right by pretending (as you do yourself) that it has intellectual depth and ethically acceptable concerns. Yet from Trump to Farage to Spencer to Orban to Peterson, its claims are lies, its “arguments” incoherent and puerile, its motivation resentful privilege and hate. You have tried above to use the example of the Communists and Social Democrats in Weimar Germany to support your case. Yet it was precisely their failure to oppose the Nazis unitedly and without reservation, together with the kind of appeasement that you advocate, that allowed Hitler to seize power.
Those are false memories of yours. Do a text search on this thread for the word “stupid”. When that word shows up in something I wrote, it’s generally me pointing out that *one shouldn’t assume* that the other side is saying something stupid. I try to live by that, I haven’t called anybody or anything that was said “stupid” or “idiotic”.
Many statements can be made to sound stupid (or worse) when they’re reproduced out of context. I’ve written hundreds of sentences in this thread, I don’t think this particular sentence is stupid, and I didn’t expect (nor ask for) it to be picked apart in dozens of follow-up post. You think it’s stupid, I don’t think it’s stupid. That’s what we’ve arrived at. I don’t think that helped *either of us* .
Ok, we suppose a “mythopoetical realm”, where “freedom” and “order” are antonyms.
In that realm, the proposition is equivalent to:
…which reduces to…
…which is a tautology and therefore the tradeoff vanishes and we get a “non-sequitur”.
Which is fine, we can make those suppositions and draw conclusions that are valid… in that “mythopoetical realm” you just created, specifically for that argument.
That’s not the realm I made the argument in however. The tradeoffs *don’t* vanish when there is more than one order, more than one kind of tyranny, etc. There isn’t a choice between one “order” and one “chaos”, there are endless tradeoffs to make. You’re giving this example of driving on one side of the road, but that’s not a good example for a tradeoff, it’s just too easy.
Let’s talk about a tradeoff that’s a little closer to our “problem domain”: Let’s say there is a child that turns out, at a young age, to be transgender. If that child doesn’t get hormone therapy early enough, their body will begin to express features of the wrong gender, causing them further problems later in life. At this point, these problem are preventable, but the parents are against the medical intervention, convinced that it’s “just a phase”. Who decides? If the child gets to decide, the parents are removed their parenthood rights – which is tyrannical. If the parents get to decide, the child will be forced to grow into a body it doesn’t want – which is tyrannical.
Now I believe that the word “tyrannical” only appropriately underlines the gravity of the situation. It’s not a tradeoff to take lightly, it’s a serious dilemma. Yet, it’s a metaphor. If you say you have a problem with the usage of that word for one reason or another, I totally understand that. But to just say “that’s stupid” and to go through great lengths of “proving it stupid” is just entirely besides the point.
Your thought processes aren’t that different from mine or anybody else’s, you’re making the same mistakes as anybody else. You seem to hold the belief that I called you “stupid”, even though that is factually, verifiably, false. I’m sure you have a false memory of it though, that’s a very common cognitive error. I make it all the time, even in this thread.
You just made another such error, asserting that I’m certain that “nobody is any more informed than myself” – which would be an absurd belief to hold. Just earlier in this thread, I accepted that you know “Canadian Law” far better than myself, so you have already witnessed clear evidence that I don’t hold this belief.
There’s also a difference between my statement being “in error” or it “being stupid”. If you think it’s stupid, that’s just a value judgement I can disagree with. If you think it’s “in error”, you have to point out the error. I don’t think you actually succeeded in that, outside of that “mythopoetic realm”, where you scored a “non-sequitur”. You can keep that one, I’m fine with that.
Pointing all that out is pretty arrogant though, I’ll give you that.
I can see why JP hates post-modern deconstructivism. Using it to analyze statements like ” all social-order is tyranny” reveals that JP can’t logic his way out of a paper bag, mostly because he relies of his self-taught, imaginary humanities to justify his white male entitlement.
Humans are a social species. Nobody exists outside the context of their society. It sounds more like JP is complaining that the fact that social rules exist, and that he personally has to follow rules he doesn’t like, is an unbearable horror. I can see his appeal to social maladroits, who wish to blame “society” and in particular the women who want nothing to do with them for all their maladroit acting out via murder and violence.
After Tammy had a prophetic dream JP became a true believer in his own dogma. (and the lucrative results of duping the angry rubes) “You can have my right to publically and repeatedly shit on women and minorities and blame the victims when you pry it from my cold, dead, hands!” screamed the banal, abusive manchild, as he brandished the dread list of 30+ pronouns. After anointing himself with warpaint markings appropriated from indigenous American people, he made another youtube video screaming at length about how his viewpoints were being silenced by post-modern, subterranean, Marxist, waffle iron, feminists.
That’s a dimension I didn’t consider, and to answer that question: No, in that case you should use all the weapons at your disposal, even if there’s an element of dishonesty to them. That’s your job, your opponent is going to do the same.
In our case, we can afford (and strive towards) the “luxury” of reason and respectful dialogue, where everyone’s argument is represented in its strongest form possible. That’s the only way to build strong philosophical foundations. Now, do I myself believe I live up to that standard all the time? Of course not! It’s an ideal.
I found your semantic games regarding that one statement of mine unconvincing in every case. Of course, I’m psychologically biased towards that. Unfortunately, we don’t have an unbiased audience to make a call here, but that’s what it would take to make me admit otherwise, at this point.
As I already admitted, misrepresentations can be effective, but they’re a double-edged sword. Instead of misrepresenting Peterson (“fighting with the same weapons”), pointing out his own misrepresentations in a respectful manner could be much more effective on the people that *count* (that is, the people you can actually *hope to convince*). Otherwise, the discourse devolves into a shouting match where everything is “fake news” and no side can be trusted on anything. In that situation, fear tends to win out – which wouldn’t be in your favor.
Further to #411, we saw just today that “the trends in Europe” are not all in one direction, in favour of reactionary conservatism or worse. The people of Ireland voted by an unexpectedly large majority – almost exactly 2:1 – to repeal Amendment 8 to the Irish constitution, which lay behind the highly restrictive law on abortion – which effectively deprives women of bodily autonomy once pregnant. The amendment was passed in 1983 by almost exactly the same majority. This is a stunning victory for social liberalism – and it has been the left that campaigned for this over decades, although support for it spread in recent years into the conventionally right-wing parties that continue to dominate Irish politics.
Dishonestly pretending that Peterson’s incoherent, obfuscatory and mendacious hogwash deserves respect, as you do constantly, would not be treating those addressed respectfully, but with contempt.
No. It’s a paraphrase. Or, if you like, it’s a metaphor.
You use different words than stupid to say what I would say when I call something stupid. If you’re trying to make an argument, and a statement is counterproductive to your argument, then it subverts the purpose of including it in the argument and thus making that statement in that context is “stupid” to me, “counterproductive” to you.
Same difference.
So, the phrase clearly didn’t end up communicating whatever the fuck you intended to communicate. So instead of insisting “it’s metaphorical!” why don’t you rewrite the statement to remove the metaphor and say what you actually mean to say?
Then we can find out if it’s true. My analysis may be beside the point, but that’s because you weren’t willing to accept that my opinion that the statement is stupid is a perfectly valid opinion.
Worse, you went on to tell me that I was *only* interpreting the phrase as stupid because it was intellectually easier for me somehow: you can’t possibly read my thoughts. However, if you were able to do so, you would be intentionally lying, because that wasn’t my thought process or my motivation. So instead, we arrive at the notion that you really believe you can adduce my process and/or motivations from my output. But it doesn’t work like that. You’ve been wrong every time you made a statement about how my process worked and/or what motivated me.
So I went on to show my thought process because you made a statement about my thought process and I went about proving that your assumption about my process was wrong, that, indeed, people can go through a rigorous process and still conclude ‘That’s why JP says order = tyranny’ is a stupid statement.
But you’re absolutely correct that the proof isn’t helping either communicate or debate the original point you were trying to make when you said ‘that’s why JP says order = tyranny’. That wasn’t the point of my proof at all. It was refuting your assumptions about my thinking.
But I’m happy to speak about the original statement. Since I clearly don’t know what the fuck your metaphor is, and so long as it remains a metaphor (especially but not only an unspecified metaphor) it cannot be judged true or not-true in any meaningful sense, why not do the work of any human being who is advocating an idea: write out your idea in a clear way that can be considered, discussed, debated, and ultimately demonstrated to be true (at least according to the available evidence) or not true (according to same)?
I strongly suspect you won’t try to reframe that statement, that you won’t ever attempt to narrow the statement down to the point where it could be demonstrated to be consistent with evidence and likely true or inconsistent with evidence and almost certainly false.
Maybe you’ll say you don’t care about the statement enough to make an effort to communicate it clearly. maybe you’ll insist the conversation has moved on too far, but in the end, I strongly suspect you don’t actually want to defend any of Peterson’s actual work.
I’ve gone back through and what you actually do is attack critics of Peterson. You don’t actually defend any of his statements as true or any of his ideas as good.
But here’s the thing: it’s possible for every one of Peterson’s critics to be wrong in some significant way and also for Peterson to be wrong in one or more significant ways. The critics can be wrong AND STILL Peterson’s work can be useless or even harmful.
Instead of criticizing the critics wording or saying a paraphrase isn’t a fair representation of Peterson, how about you provide a fair representation of something Peterson actually did say, and then defend it as true, significant, and original to Peterson? Without Peterson making true, significant, and original contributions, then either Peterson is lying/mistaken, insignificant, and/or unnecessary, and we can drop him in a dumpster without important conversations losing anything at all.
Can you do that? Whether or not Peterson’s critics have said any false things, has Peterson said any true things?
What, precisely, is Peterson’s value and from where does it come? I honestly don’t think you’re prepared to make a statement on that, but I’d be quite happy to be proven wrong.
Facts are true. They can be checked, and replicated. Bangin on that anything you disagree with is simply fake news? Maybe you should learn to use this thing called the internet to fact-check and learn stuff all by yourself. Claiming that we have any responsibility to educate willfull idiots is deeply ingrained male entitlement.
That you are afraid of things that aren’t happening because you insist on being brainwashed by an erudite horror of a human being is not actually our problem dude. Life is not a game of sportsball, there aren’t two teams locked in a struggle to the death. The patriarchal society is dying because it’s killing the world, and your fear of the necessary change is not our problem to solve. Evolve or die bro. I’m personally far too busy setting the phallic pillars of society on fire to wait around for ya’ll to progress from some mythic, idealized 50’s view of gender roles.
Oh, ok. So you get to claim that I called you “stupid”, even when that literally didn’t happen and when I explicitly say I don’t think you’re stupid, or that anything you said was stupid. I just made you *feel* being called “stupid”.
You know what: I’ll accept that and I apologize. Moving on…
I have been made fully aware of that a while now. I guess that just happens sometimes.
Yeah, maybe you’re right.
I’m indeed not too worried about that.
I disagree with that.
That’s true. I’m defending them against strawmanning.
That’s indeed a distinct possibility.
I did do that part.
If something is significant enough for you to strawman, then I’d say it’s significant. Whether something is “original” is entirely irrelevant as far as I’m concerned. “The truth” is out of scope, just for practical reasons. We’ll have to make do with presumptions of truth (and falsehood).
I think that’s obviously not true. It’s possible that every single of his statements is an insignificant unoriginal falsehood, yet there he is *all over the media* with hundreds of thousands of fans and hundreds of thousands of foes, filling the comment sections. There are hundreds of articles and blog posts written against him (including here on FTB). If there’s anything you *can’t* do, it’s to just “drop him in a dumpster”.
Not only am I unprepared, I refuse to answer such a question outright. What’s your value and where does it come from?
brainwarp quoting me at #384
Firstly, why are you putting quotation marks around something I clearly didn’t say? (there wasn’t enough coffee to make me want to bother coming back and actually deconstructing the Weimar republic analogy)
Secondly you’ve no idea what I personally am working towards.
Thirdly, your Weimar statement literally acknowledged that the reactionary conservatives, and Jordan Peterson et al., are playing the role of the Nazi’s.
“Primitive”? Just yesterday Ireland joined the modern age in restoring womens rights to full autonomy over their reproductive rights. Is this the primitive populism to which you refer?
Right wing neo-liberals are a failure of the left? Up id down? Water is dry? What color is the sky in your world?
The left cannot possibly be held responsible for the neoliberal policies instituted by the “reactionary conservative resurgence” right. That is not how cause and effect work, but it is a prime example of the victim blamer mentality.
You mean how the incels gave themselves nicknames and blame their penchant for casual violence, and misogyny on women not fucking them? The left has been busy using the tyrannical policy of social democracy to get non-assholes elected to office. Fear us!!1!
@Tethys
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerFantasy
I’m so terribly sorry you did not enjoy my little story. Your personal opinion as written in tvtropes (such depth of thought!) about an unrelated subject which you cannot possibly know about (my personal motivation) does not score any rhetorical points. wah-wah-wahhhhhh (sad trumpet sound)
@Kethys
No, of course not. When I’m talking about “primitive populism in Russia and Turkey”, I’m not talking about the referendum in Ireland. I don’t even understand your point. If you see that as a sign of “progress” that’s not very strong, considering that this decision was *way overdue* for a western country. On the other hand, voices for stricter abortion laws are certainly getting louder in parts of Europe.
The *success* of reactionary populist parties (which aren’t necessarily “neoliberal”) is a failure of the European Left to adequately deal with the problems and concerns in the voting population. Democracy is a zero sum game and the European Left is currently edging in a losing streak.
I’m not talking about “blame”, I’m talking about “failure”. You can fail without being to blame, but you’ll still lose. The left is obsessed with assigning guilt and blame to various parties, but it doesn’t change the outcome. That’s a *loser mentality*. You’re not going to “shame” the right wingers into giving up their votes by presenting yourself as the victim.
Yes, Incels have internalized the “loser mentality” completely. What’s your point? Do you want pity like an Incel?
[kermit voice] Go clean up your room!
I thought I was clear about the “stupid” bit:
I didn’t want you to apologize. i don’t think that criticizing someone’s ideas is something you have to apologize for. I think it’s incredibly icky that you think criticism deserves apology.
From the original statement where I asserted you’d called statements stupid (without using quotes around the word, which we (I think) now agree is just a difference in word choice describing the same essential underlying features of some statements):
We have to be able to call out statements as bad or wrong or stupid or counterproductive or “a bit of an underwhelming support for your thesis, old boy” or whatever is the polite/desirable version of a particular criticism in a particular context.
If we live in a world where calling “2 + 2 = 7” wrong or stupid or counterproductively undermining the foundations of practical applications of mathematics necessary to prevent bridge collapse or whatever must be accompanied by apology, then we live in a bad, bad world. And I don’t apologize for saying so.
I don’t spend my time wanting you to treat my words nicely, though that’s no bad thing if it happens. I want your engagement with this thread to make me and the other people reading you smarter, more educated, better at critical thinking. Failing that, you could just drop a sarcastic or witty comment and thus provide some comic relief or entertainment. But definitely don’t apologize for criticism that you’re still convinced is correct.
I’m no expert in European politics, but isn’t it entirely possible that the success of reactionary populist parties is a failure of the political system as a whole to adequately deal with the corrupting tendencies of informal plutocracy?
Even if you see politics as a zero-sum game (and I don’t), wouldn’t you have to account for the fact that political parties aren’t the only players? I mean, if you think that corporations aren’t political you’re missing a huge part of the picture here.
You claimed that all the (unspecified) gains made by “the left” were being swept away by primitive populism across Europe. (thus an example of the current leftist policy in Ireland) I asked what primitive has to do with it, specifically as is pertains to Turkey and Russia since those are the countries chosen by the brainwarp as examples of primitive populism.
Given that the rise of the right happens on a platform of “anti-immigration”, the “refugee crisis” and (to a lesser degree) “anti-gender-madness”, I would say that those are exactly the issues that made them successful.
The actual democratic election is (by definition) a zero-sum game.
I’m not sure what kind of political influence you are attributing here.
Corporations (at least in Europe) generally don’t favor the far right, they favor the party that promises them best environment for their business. They generally benefit (and are in favor of) immigration. That makes them supporters of conservative and “economic liberal” parties.
The far right in Europe aren’t necessarily economically liberal, they’re much more likely to be nationalist/protectionist and opposed to the influence of international corporations. So you could make the argument that the “perceived influence of international corporations” causes voters to vote far-right, but then again it could also make them vote far-left.
And now, a bit more of Peterson’s wisdom:
His mind is well and truly moored, I reckon, and his actual Nietzsche expertise on display.
—
Also, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrowingTheBeard
But the left in Europe isn’t likely to be economically liberal. They’re likely to be economically left-wing, which isn’t the same. Liberalism is a thing.
For the corporations, dividing those who oppose corporate interests into opposing factions, (at least) one focussed on nationalism and (at least) one focussed on democratic socialism makes unified parliamentary opposition less likely.
Also:
This is only true one representative at a time, and decidedly obscures the truth of the matter in all those nations where proportional representation through national plebiscite determines all or some of the legislative seats.
Even one representative at a time and even in the United States, Canada, the UK and other places where smaller ridings/districts are decided by local vote independently of the national vote, it still obscures the reality of politics. If the Democrats decided to challenge Dana Rohrabacher for his Orange County seat in the House of Reps, the amount of money they’d need to spend to be competitive would exceed the amount of money needed to win two or three other seats where no incumbent is running and the R/D split is still tilted R, but less strongly.
Resource management across ridings/districts, then, is a confound to the idea of “zero-sum” politics that operates at the riding/district level.
And, of course, once you start talking about anything other than an individual seat decided by local vote (which you have to do to understand the effects of resource management), then you’re talking about the outcome of entire legislative bodies, which is decidedly NOT zero-sum.
When the republicans have a 75/25 majority in the senate, is that the same as having a 49/49 split with 2 independents that caucus with the Rs, or one independent and the VP voting with the Rs? Of course not. You don’t just win the vote to control the majority and thus pick the Committee chairs: you have to govern. Whether or not the Dems can effectively filibuster is a concern. It’s also a concern if you’re relying on Independents at all – they might decide to flip allegiance and thus control of the senate and all the committee chairmanships in the middle of a term. If a single independent has that much power, the Rs are going to have to negotiate with that independent or the Dems or both to get legislation through. Bills aren’t just pass/fail. The content is negotiable and amendable.
In short, while you can simplistically claim with perfect accuracy that individual ridings/districts decided by local votes are zero-sum games, not all European countries play by those rules and even where ridings/districts exist and are decided by local vote, the meaning of winning one riding is changed by the determinations made in all the other ridings. If i win a seat in Parliament as the only member of my party, what did I “win”? Did I get the same amount of power as I would if I were the center-most leaning member of my party in a bare-majority parliament?
Of course not.
Who wins might be a zero-sum game in certain electoral contexts/contests. What you “win” in that single riding is determined by dozens or hundreds of other elections. “Zero-sum game” simply doesn’t describe the reality of national representative democracy.
Claiming that politics is a zero sum game is particularly irrational, especially considering the last several comments about the left losing it’s gains due to primitive populism. (still waiting for a definition of primitive vs regular populism) ) One might even get the impression that brainwarp has no clue about the particulars of nihilism, Marxism, or any social justice initiative that has ever existed.
@Crip Dyke
Yeah you got a point there, but at the end of the day, every vote in an election towards one thing is lost to something else. In every opinion poll, people have to make a decision for and against something. These are zero-sum games, even if all votes aren’t equal, and they make the difference on whether you have Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse in the White House.
@Tethys
[kermit voice] Have you cleaned your room yet?
I’m becoming increasing certain that brainwarp doesn’t understand what zero-sum means. Primitive populism? Why is populism primitive, or is it just primitive in Russia and Turkey? How exactly is it sweeping Europe?
I’m thinking that brainwarp *is* Jordan Peterson.
chigau, at least it’s less sad than to think brainwarp wishes to be Jordan Peterson.
Brainwarp, 412
No, requiring parents to act in the best interests of the child and to provide them with appropriate medical treatment is not “tyrannical” – it is a perfectly reasonable limit on parental freedom. Defining tyranny as “any limit at all on freedoms” is stupid, and deprives it of any useful meaning.
@Tethys, the Impatient
In this context, it means that to the extent that one party gains “votes” (or seats, etc), the other parties lose “votes”. Maybe you have a formal objection to describing that as “a zero sum game”, but that would be missing the point, so you need not belabor it.
I would add the adjective “primitive” to describe the kind of populism that works mostly on people’s fear, or on nationalism. Such parties have made strong gains in Europe lately, whereas the politics under Putin and Erdogan have had significant impact on women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, etc.
@chigau
What gave it away? Was it the Kermit voice?
@jefrir
You only arrive at that interpretation because of your simplistic worldview, where the assessment of the parents is wrong, null and void. From the perspective of the parents in this scenario, this intervention is a grave mistake, they feel they know their child good enough to know it’s “just a phase” (which *is* at least a possibility). From their perspective, having this decision taken away from them *is* tyrannical. This isn’t a hypothetical example, it’s an example of a real dilemma in medical ethics and you’re not treating it with the appropriate seriousness.
Putting a child on puberty blockers for a few years would not harm them at all and allow both parents and child to confirm that what the child feels about themselves is a lasting state. All that does is delay onset of development of secondary sex characteristics and causes no harm.
The main objection parents actually have against this… is actually against their child being trans. Because trans people are still extremely vilified and seen as wrong, abnormal, and evil. So in this case, their choice is actually bigotry. When you consider that acceptance significantly lowers the suicide and depression rate amongst LGBT+ individuals, the parents are decidedly and consciously acting against the best interest of their child because they don’t want their kid to be an individual that is different from the child they imagined.
And while sometimes you must act against the wishes of a child (see: the extremely sad case of the 6 year old boy who died from rabies because he cried about getting shots after being ‘scratched’ by a bat and thus his parents didn’t make him get those shots), the case should be a very clear cut one. Not “it’s a phase”… because no parent exists inside their child’s head. It might be a phase… but it also might not. And the risks associated with it being not a phase are much graver than if it is. And in this case, preventing harm to a child is much more important.
OK. ok, I’ve taken the weekend off (It was nice. Gardening, barbecue, basket weaving), so I know I#m late, but I still want to comeback to this:
My claim is that Peterson wants to force women into marriages.
Brainwarp says “no, look like to other societies that socially enforce monogamy and this exchange happens:
So, brainwarp, how does that NOT mean forcing women into marriages.
Please note that way up I said the following:
Dear Gilliel,
as the end of this week draws close, I have not the energy left for another semantic dispute. Let those words have all meanings and ourselves be at peace.
Dear Rowan,
I shall trust your assessment on puberty blockers causing no harm, for the time being. Please imagine a different ethical dilemma instead.
Farewell for now
Wow, what a douchebag. Let us all imagine a world where entitled shitlords do not spend their time defending other entitled shitlords and then claim that the people who would be injured by the shitlords ideas are merely having semantic arguments or imagining the comments made by said shitlord.
@Tethys
[Kermit voice] Clean up your room already!
Who’s Gilliel?
Shouldn’t that be a Pepe voice? Any particular reason for repeatedly making stupid demands? You’re failing mightily at the attempt to be amusing by mimicking my sad trombone sound. Sadly, I’m sure brainwave does not see the qualitative difference between mocking sound effects, and attempting to imply I am a child to their parent, and/or Ms Piggy.
Nah, I arrive at that interpretation because I actually know something about transition and trans people.
You have repeatedly made transphobic comments in this thread; please, go educate yourself, and stop trying to use us for your rhetorical bullshit.
@jefrir
What? I challenge you to quote me on that, with full context and an explanation for your reasoning. As far as I’m concerned you’re either delusional, or exceptionally dishonest, counting on the fact that nobody will read a thread of 400+ posts.
@jefrir
Wouldn’t it be utterly absurd to think that I would’ve gotten away with repeated transphobic comments in a comment thread *on this website* until *you* accuse me of it, after over 400+ posts?
If the OP contains several paragraphs about “a great summary of his bogus transgender pronoun complaint, but the conclusion is excellent.”, and you make this comment
you lose any right to complain that Jefrir finds you transphobic. Supporting and defending transphobes at tedious and muddled length absolutely qualifies, even if one has not made specifically transphobic comments.
He didn’t say he “finds me transphobic”, he said I made “several transphobic comments”, which is outright slander.
I have made no such comments and I refuse the characterization of anything I have said as transphobic.
@Tethys, brainwarp:
Tethys said:
I agree with the conclusion, but i’d frame the argument differently. I would state that aiding cissexists in escaping accountability for their cissexism is itself cissexist, and the language one uses in this effort to shield someone from accountability is therefore cissexist language.
brainwarp said:
That’s not how it works. When Trump visits the golf course and complains about whatever-the-fuck for six hours, the fact that some people critical of him tried valiantly to get him to see his stupidity on one issue doesn’t mean he can’t possibly be guilty of stupidity on another issue. If Trump goes into a physical rehab center and screams about the jews stealing money from the government’s health insurance programs by keeping worthless people alive and that anyone who can’t walk should just be put to death, it’s entirely possible that the people who happen to be there would choose to focus on the ableism. That doesn’t mean that the anti-semitic comment magically loses its anti-semitism.
The same shit happens all the time with racist, sexist fucks online. We Hunted The Mammoth spends a huge amount of time covering the sexist dipshittery of MRAs, PUAs, incels, and others. Most articles that cover this crowd are only about the sexism, because the point of the blog at its creation was covering sexism and cute cats. But hang out on the site long enough and you’ll see other articles drop that prove that there’s a deep connection between sexism and racism in these communities. As one example, the sense of ownership of and/or entitlement to women’s bodies frequently manifests in white MRAs/ PUAs/ incels as anger that people of color get to fuck their women. This is a terribly racist concept. And it’s inherently racist as well. There’s no possible way you can frame the our/their distinction these men are making without racism.
Those fora aren’t going 4 weeks without saying anything racist just because We Hunted The Mammoth only critiques their racism once every few weeks. That just isn’t how things work. If a tree falls in the forest and no one chooses to arrest the lumberjack, she’s still a tree-killer.
I’ll leave it to jefrir to decide if its worth it to go back and document the evidence jefrir considered when making that statement, but I do think it’s important to recognize that the argument you’re putting forth in your defense, brainwave, is a dead argument.
…also, to prevent misunderstandings, you might consider that there’s a difference between oppression and prejudice. It’s possible to participate in a system that oppresses a group of people without subjectively hating (or fearing) that group. I don’t know if that’s significant to jefrir’s contention, but it might be, and so you should probably be prepared to make that distinction as necessary.
Huh. I would think that the former would be worse than the latter. I can make transphobic comments accidentally. The comments can be determined to be transphobic or not as a separate question from whether or not you hold malice in your heart toward anyone. Malice in the heart doesn’t make “I have to go to the bathroom” and no malice in the heart doesn’t make a racist joke non-racist. Maybe someone tells the joke because they really want a job and they know the person responsible for the hiring likes racist jokes. Maybe they have never been informed that “gypped” as a synonym for “cheated” is derived from a racist stereotype of gypsies as thieves. Doesn’t matter. The joke is still a racist joke.
Don’t you believe that this is true? Don’t you believe that a statement can be racist without a speaker having a racist motive? If so, why not believe that a statement can be transphobic without the speaker being transphobic?
Oh? He didn’t? How exactly did you conclude that jefrir is a he?
@Crip Dyke
I have a lot of trouble believing that I can just separate this accusation of having made “transphobic comments” from an underlying accusation of *being transphobic*. I reject both. You should know very well how this word is commonly used for “character assassination”, in sentences like “XYZ has a history of transphobic comments”.
Having thought about it, I guess I don’t actually care. I was originally pleasantly surprised not to be called a racist/sexist/*-phobe, but that judgement must’ve been there all along, it just didn’t even need to be spelled out. After all, when push comes to shove, those words are all that you have left. Just quote the entire thread in my indictment, I plead guilty to all counts.
@Tethys
Add in one count of assuming gender.
Goodbye
Oops, my last comment was quoting brainwarp. As an addendum to BW’s claim that nothing they’ve said could be characterized as transphobic, it then begs the question. Do you find JP and his fight against C-16 transphobic, or is there some other reason for defending JP in comment #6?
CD
I confess that I find the word cissexist to be clunky and difficult to pronouce. I do see how it does more to convey a semantic nuance of specifically targeted oppression. It appears brainwave has flounced, rather than be subject to more of our heinous slander.
brainwarp #452
yeah, right
I know that it is used that way. I also know that if having ever acted out racism was enough to kill my character, it would have been dead 30 years ago. Or, well, more.
When someone thinks enough of me to actually tell me that something I said carries racism, I’m disappointed in myself, sure. Maybe I feel apologetic towards people I may have hurt. But primarily it’s an opportunity to become better.
If no one critiques the racism of people who don’t want to be racist, we never end racism. Same for other oppressions. Fucking up is part of being human.
But if you really think that character assassination is at stake when someone is called out on oppression, that helps explain some of your behavior in this thread.
To call someone sexist, including Jordan Peterson is not the same as calling someone evil, much less irredeemably evil. If you think it is, then of course you think that calling Peterson’s statements sexist is a straw man and a caricature.
To us in this community, calling Peterson’s statements sexist means saying that the words he says further sexism. We may also straw man him in some cases. We may also call him an idiot. Some of us may also call him irredeemably evil. But we don’t get that from the mere fact that he’s said 1 sexist thing or a thousand sexist things. I’m sure I’ve said more than a thousand racist things in my life. I’m not irredeemably evil or even just plain old evil. I’ve said fucked up shit. I try to get better. That’s the struggle.
@Tethys:
yeah, me too, actually. But I resist talking about “phobias”*1 and have done for a long time. Cissexist is the only available option.
================================
*1: Way back in the way back I made this decision in relation to homophobia and cissexism by explaining that i don’t really care that Pat Robertson feels a sweaty panic when seeing me kiss my lovers. That’s his problem. I do care that he tries to get people to pass laws against queers and fire us, etc. Hatred may have fear at its source, but if we achieve a society without prejudicial group hatreds, the fact that some folks still feel irrational fear of others will be an issue between them and their therapists. For me, removing oppression from our laws and our societal norms is enough of a task.
Anyway, that’s why I choose “cissexism” over “trans*phobia”.
CD
Ah, I see what you mean. Thank you for taking the time to clarify that so precisely. I wasn’t even registering all the baggage that comes along with “phobia”, merely repeating the quoted term without thinking.
I still don’t like cis as the opposite of trans. In my brain, ciss is what paint does when you attempt to put it on silicon. I don’t have any problem using it, but I hope a better word emerges. Parsum-sexual would be a lot easier to pronounce without hissing.
CD @408
Daaaaaaamn!
*applauds*
Okay, brainwarp, I bring you documentation.
By the way, my pronouns are she or they. If you don’t know someone’s pronouns, “they” is generally safest, unless you can ask.
So, to the transphobic shit, having combed through the massive amount of bullshit you’ve posted in this thread.
#88
#351
Treating trans people’s pronouns as an optional thing, subject to the whim of the public, is transphobic. Making jokes about being referred to as “His Glorious Highness” is transphobic (and also ignorant – that’s a title, not a pronoun). Equating using the correct pronouns to “being forced to use the term “Ministry of Truth” for an entity that’s doing nothing but spreading lies and propaganda” is transphobic. Declaring it tyranny that parents don’t get to withhold medical treatment from their trans children is transphobic, and also suggests that you know fuck-all about dysphoria treatment in children.
Also, please note that you’ve been saying this while also saying we should be nice to the incels and the zenophobes, and treat their fears as real – but trans people should just put up with whatever bullshit people want to pull.
And yes, there’s been plenty of sexism in your comments, but a lot of that has already been pulled out by others.
Blame the Romans.
Wow, aren’t you people getting tired of debunking the umpteenth variation of “I am not transphobic because I do not see anything transphobic in myself”?
brainwarp You have to learn that people, you included, have blind spots where others can see clearly. If a trans person tells you you’re being transphobic, then you may assume with great certainty that indeed you are. They know better than you do. After all, they are living with transphobia virtually every day of their lives, where for you it is just a theoretic matter.
Dunc@461,
Yeah, I always think of Cisalpine vs. Transalpine Gaul. Although the Romans pronounced it /kis/ (probably with some palatalization, which resulted in the various fricatives/affricates in modern Romance languages) (not sure of the exact pronunciation of the vowel).
My list had about half a dozen more comment numbers than Jefrir’s list above, though I suppose some would be repetitious (kind of the point).
If I knew anyone IRL who was always going on about “ZOMG, people won’t stand for being forced to use 30+ new gender pronouns” as much as Brainfart does, I’d tell them to cut that shit out tout suite, because it definitely sounds creepy and hateful as fuck.
Oh – and not to forget that #351 is also where BW implied that it would be perfectly rational for hiring managers to discriminate against job applicants who specified a pronoun preference. Because obviously anyone who would do that is just some crazy litigious troublemaker, rather than simply a person helpfully letting a prospective employer know how to refer to them. Everyone knows that…
But brainwarp’s just so concerned about us, honest. He doesn’t want anything bad to happen, and that’s why we need to shush about our rights and be nice to the Nazis. /s
I, for one, am still waiting to see this alleged list of “30+ new pronouns” people keep banging on about.
467: WMDKitty
I think a couple of us have asked to see the list now, but it’s guarded more closely than Joseph McCarthy’s list of ### reds in the State Department, and for probably much the same reason.
Kip T.W. @468
You mean nonexistent?
If there happen to be 30+ genders, and we choose to use different pronouns for every one of them, then yeah, we need 30+ pronouns. That is how reality works.
WMDKitty @469
I was thinking ‘so far removed from the claimed number as to be downright homeopathic.’
rietpluim@470
We should want to mirror reality. I think, though, that nobody has proposed “30+” new pronouns “overnight.” It’s BS that the anti-PC movement grinds out to keep its base scared and confused.
Yeah, the 30+ list is pretty clearly an invention. Or, rather, maybe it has some tenuous base in reality in the form of some random list an earnestly well-meaning student union someplace drafted up, but is now being inflated out of all proportion into some kind of sinister, universal SJW-wide manifesto, no doubt to JP’s and the likes considerable political and financial benefit.
It’s stupid because, aside from the bigotry, it doesn’t even make sense as being particularly intellectually burdensome. No matter how many dozens of genders and pronouns there are out there.
The fact is, plenty of people don’t actually even know 30 people well enough to need to use pronouns on a regular basis, let alone 30 people who each request a novel pronoun. The reality is that however numerous, the vast majority of people you know probably still use the boring ones, so the number of acquaintances or co-workers you actually need to remember a novel one for is going to be finite and manageable.
And even if it wasn’t: so what. There are a hell of a lot more than 30+ names, but people are expected to learn those of each other if they interact regularly. It’s just common courtesy.
This list from tumblr has 29 nonbinary pronouns: http://askanonbinary.tumblr.com/post/74544202338/list-of-pronouns
Of those, two are not new (they and it), and there’s a certain amount of crossover. Eg. variations on zie/ze/xie are relatively common, but spelling and exact conjugation varies. I have personally come across people using maybe five of these, among a population that includes a largely young, queer friendship group, and a set of people I’ve chosen to follow on Twitter that are partly selected to include plenty of trans people.
In general, I’d suggest familiarising yourself with one of the zie options, as being seemingly the most common, plus any that people you know happen to be using and they’re likely well aware that these are uncommon, and will be happy to point you to conjugations and accept good-faith errors.
But that requires you to listen, rather than talk. It requires you to respect others, rather than demanding they respect you. It requires you to accommodate them, rather than the other way around. Some people dislike that so much, they’d rather behave like assholes.