Who is Jordan Peterson and what his pursuits? This damn needs answers as fast as possible. Thus, we are going to look into Jordan Peterson feminism and on gender roles as parts of his very important goals on intellectual grounds. But then, we will have first know who this enigma is, before we at least begin to dissect his holds about the feminist struggles.
Jordan Bernt Peterson is a Canadian psychologist, author, and media commentator. He began to receive widespread attention in the late 2010s for his views on cultural and political issues, often described as conservative. Peterson has described himself as a classic British liberal and a traditionalist.
Despite his appetite for self-promotion, Peterson claims to be a reluctant star. “In a sensible world, I would have got my 15 minutes of fame,” he told the Ottawa Citizen last year. “I feel like I’m surfing a giant wave … and it could come crashing down and wipe me out, or I could ride it and continue. All of those options are equally possible.”
Two years ago, he was a popular professor at the University of Toronto and a practicing clinical psychologist who offered self-improvement exercises on YouTube. He published his first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, in 1999 and appeared in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller David and Goliath, talking about the character traits of successful entrepreneurs. The tough-love, stern-dad strand of his work is represented in 12 Rules for Life, which fetes strength, discipline and honor.
His ballooning celebrity and wealth, however, began elsewhere, with a three-part YouTube series in September 2016 called Professor Against Political Correctness. Peterson was troubled by two developments: a federal amendment to add gender identity and expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act; and his university’s plans for mandatory anti-bias training. Starting from there, he railed against Marxism, human rights organizations, HR departments and “an underground apparatus of radical left political motivations” forcing gender-neutral pronouns on him.
This more verbose, distinctly Canadian version of Howard Beale’s “mad as hell” monologue in Network had an explosive effect. A few days later, a video of student protesters disrupting one of Peterson’s lectures enhanced his reputation as a doughty truth-teller. “I hit a hornets’ nest at the most propitious time,” he later reflected.
Jordan Peterson Feminism and on Gender Roles
Jordan Peterson has had controversial views on issues of feminism, political correctness, abortion, gender identity, etc. There is a kind of danger, however, in one crucial aspect which I’ll discuss more later: all his arguments and debates are presented in a manner which reflect his credibility as a researcher and academician.
He seems to use statistics, biology and social conditioning to justify existing power hierarchies in society – hierarchies that are inherently discriminatory, oppressive and misogynistic. To attempt to refute those in its entirety would certainly be a tough task – and many would accept these arguments as irrefutable simply because of the intellectuality they appear to carry.
Born and raised in Alberta, Peterson obtained bachelor’s degrees in political science and psychology from the University of Alberta and a PhD in clinical psychology from McGill University. His various lectures and conversations, propagated mainly through YouTube and podcasts, have gathered millions of views. However, his very strong feminist beliefs are what bring us here in the first place. So, let us take a very close look at Jordan Peterson feminism and on gender roles exclusively.
Crisis of Masculinity
Peterson has argued that there is an ongoing “crisis of masculinity” and “backlash against masculinity” in which the “masculine spirit is under assault”. He has argued that the Left characterizes the existing societal hierarchy as an “oppressive patriarchy” but “doesn’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.”
He has said men without partners are likely to become violent, and that male violence is reduced in societies in which monogamy is a social norm. He has attributed the rise of Donald Trump and far-right European politicians to what he says is a negative reaction to a push to “feminize” men, saying “If men are pushed too hard to feminize they will become more and more interested in harsh, fascist political ideology.”
Gender Pay Gap
In 2018, he attracted attention in the UK after a Channel 4 News interview with Cathy Newman on the gender pay gap, in which he disputed the idea that the pay gap is solely due to sexual discrimination. The video led to threats and harassment of Newman, and Peterson called for his supporters to be more civil.
Peterson believes that order is masculine and chaos is feminine, and that these qualities are inherent to human existence. To Peterson, culture is “symbolically, archetypally, mythically male,” while “chaos—the unknown—is symbolically associated with the feminine.”
Peterson has said that “gay kids are being convinced they’re transsexual. Well that’s not so good for gay people, is it?” and that “there’s certainly a lot of confused adolescents who could be enticed into narcissistic abnormality as a consequence of attention-seeking.”
Women as Major Doer of Evil
Bad things do happen to both the sexes. But it can’t be ignored that one sex is the majority ‘doer’ of those crimes against the other sex. His videos also reveal that he has a major contention with the ‘trope’ that everyone simply ‘accepts’ – that western civilization is a male dominated patriarchal structure. He terms this as a misreading of history.
Women have actually been left out of the process of historiography, or the recording of history for a very long time. They have definitely made history, but their oppression in part has been because they have been kept from the realization of their own history. People don’t just accept this trope, they experience it. Patriarchy isn’t a myth that has been created, it is a structure that affects real people – both men and women.
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Views on Gender Roles
Peterson “argues that his growing fame speaks to a deep seated hunger, more evident in young men than women, for meaning and direction,” that video games and online entertainment do not make a fulfilling life. Women and men of various circumstances can work together for gender equality, but not if they accept Peterson’s apparent belief in biological determinism. Humans are biological, and also social.
Young or old, of every gender, people need meaningful activity, and some of Peterson’s followers are engaged by the idea that masculinity is under attack, and they are needed to fight back.
