Jordan Peterson
Jordan Peterson is a highly experienced professor of psychology as well as being a clinical psychologist, having spent more than 20 years as a clinical and teaching psychologist. At the time of writing (5/2019) he is a lecturer at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Peterson specialises in Psychopharmacology, Abnormal Psychology, Neurology, Social Performance, Industrial and Organisational Psychology, as well as Religious Psychology and Creativity along with, more relevantly to his current work, the psychology of Ideology, Personality and Politics.
Peterson's work has been cited in academic papers more than 8,000 times and he has written or been co-author on more than a hundred academic papers and is highly regarded in his field.
Peterson came to prominence in the media over his supposed "refusal" to use gender neutral pronouns. This was something of an inaccurate description and reporting on his stance was particularly poorly covered in general. He did not in fact refuse to use gender neutral pronouns as was widely reported but instead was protesting the fact that with bill C-16, the Canadian government was in fact compelling speech.
This first came to the attention of the media after 27/9/2016 when Peterson released the first in a series of video lectures entitled "Professor against political correctness: Part I: Fear and the Law". In that lecture, he stated that he refused to use gender neutral pronouns on the grounds that his speech was being compelled by law, something that had never before been done in any western government, nor in the entire history of English Common Law and was furthermore something that he was vehemently opposed to. Bill C-16, which proposed to add "gender identity or expression" to the list of prohibited discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act, and to similarly expand the definitions of promoting genocide and publicly inciting hatred in the Criminal Code. Bill C-16 did subsequently pass and is now law in Canada, although Professor Peterson has not (yet) been prosecuted for his views but his objections have not gone unpunished. For example In April 2017, Peterson was denied a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant for the first time in his career, a development which he interpreted as retaliation for his statements regarding Bill C-16.
As of the date of writing, Peterson has published 2 books. The first, "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief " in 1999 and his latest book "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos" in 2018. On the back of "12 Rules for Life", he has conducted speaking tours of the US, UK, and Australia, as well as several other western nations, usually to sold out audiences.
Similarities and differences between men and women
In a 2009 interview with Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson took the opportunity to clarify his position on the vexed question ‘are the sexes different or the same,’ which he answers in favour of males and females being more alike than they are different:
“I am a psychometrician, that’s technically my job and we study measurement, and it’s a truism of psychomentrics that men and women are more the same than they are different. Y’now it’s funny because I’ve been sort of positioned as someone who is constantly on about the differences between men and women, but men and women are more the same than they are different, And what that means is the development of masculinity in women is perhaps not as important as the development of masculinity in men, but its damned important. It’s like a close second.” [1]
And from from an earlier interview with Joe Rogan:
Are men and women more similar or more different? Well it depends on how you define the terms.
They are more similar. Why? Well they’re the same species, so we could start with that. But the question is what are the differences and how do they manifest themselves and are those manifestations important?
Here’s an example, if you took a random woman out of the population and a random man, and you had to bet on who was more temperamentally aggressive, if you bet on the man you’d be right 60 percent of the time. But you’d be wrong 40 percent of the time and that’s not a walloping difference right 60 ~ 40. Its not like 90 ~ 10, so there’s a lot of overlap between men and women in terms of their levels of aggression. And you think well they’re more the same, yes.
So then let’s play a slightly different game: lets pick the 1 in 100 most aggressive persons from the general population; and they are all men, and that’s why all the people in prison are men. So even though on average most men and women, 90 – 95 percent of them [are similar], and often if the women are in prison its because they got tangled up with the really bad guy.
So one of the problems is that differences at the extreme are where the differences really start to manifest themselves. So you can have a small difference at the level of the average, but out at the extremes it starts to make a massive difference.[2]
Crying
An interview released October 9th on RexTV had a weeping Jordan Peterson. While not a big deal unto itself, many made it a big deal citing that a man crying is a sign of weakness. Most surprising is that this didn't come just from Feminists, but many of those that criticized Feminists.
It appears that while many are anti-Feminist, they still fall back on tired tropes that men can't cry. Many speculate that it is the stress of being in the limelight and the harassment he receives. The fact that a documentry about him was protested in various cities, and the hate he receives on Twitter. More than that was his depression to anti-depressents once learning that his wife had cancer and his coming out of rehab prior to the interview.
Even if all of that wasn't on his plate, it seems that so few are willing to give men any consideration or benefit of the doubt when it comes to showing emotions. We criticize Feminists for the slogan "I Drink Male Tears" or the criticism that men talking about their problems takes away from women. This however is worse because a male icon is showing emotions, something that everyone claims they want and yet so many take the chance to hit a man when he's down.