Original Upload Date: September 27, 2016

Note: I have attempted to transcribe the entire video without correcting any material, so as with any ordinary speech, many grammatical errors should naturally exist within the transcript. Likewise, all punctuation, paragraph separation and time stamps are entirely editorial. My aim was fidelity to the source and I attempted to transcribe every word possible including repetitions, mispronunciations with the only omissions being obvious hesitation markers. I have attempted to transcribe Peterson’s slides as they appear without reconciling them and the transcript of what he says during the video. However I have indicated with quotation marks (“”) when he reasonably appears to be reading from his slides, even if the text differs but used single quotation marks (‘’) when he seems to be ventriloquizing the voice of others. I have reserved any critical or polemical responses to footnotes.

[Slide 0:00–1:53:

Professor against political correctness: Part I

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

University of Toronto]

Peterson: So I’ve been informed about a couple of things this week that have really been bothering me, and I thought that — I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I’ve been communicating with some of my friends and colleagues about it but….that wasn’t enough. So, I thought I’d try to write my thoughts down and then talk about them a little bit and see where I got with that. So. I’ve entitled this talk “Professor Against Political Correctness” and the reason for that is because it’s blunt and to the point.

Peterson: I’m very concerned about what’s happening in the Universities. It’s not so bad in Canada I — I’ve been fortunate — very fortunate at the University of Toronto — but there are continually things happening including in the administration here and in the broader political world that make me very nervous. I like to attribute that to the fact that I know something about the way that totalitarian and authoritarian political states develop and I can’t help but think that I’m seeing a fair bit of that right now. So — I guess I also wanted to do this because there’s a misapprehension that everyone in academia is politically correct and that’s — is true very frequently among social scientists, about 20 percent of whom identify themselves as Marxists,[1] which in my estimation, by the way, is no better than identifying as Nazis given the murderousness of the Marxist doctrine and the fact that we know how it’s turned out when implemented in multiple countries now.[2] But I’m not politically correct and…I want to talk to you today about why all this worries me.

[Slide 1:53–3:10:

Two events this week

→•Notification of Bill C-16

→•Ontario Human Rights Commission

→•University of Toronto HR Initiative[3]]

Peterson: So I got wind of two events this week. One actually dates from last May. There is a legislation passed or the first reading of legislation in the federal house at — in Canada about a Bill called C-16 which was an — is an attempt to alter the Canadian Bill of Human Rights.[4] It’s tangled up with another organization that operates at a provincial level in Canada, in Ontario — which is the province I reside in — called the Ontario Human Rights Commission.[5] And as far as I can tell, what happens at the Ontario Human Rights Commission is rapidly turned into policy in multiple provinces across Canada and perhaps increasingly at the federal level.[6] There’s a Liberal government in power — that’s the name of the political party in Ontario and now there’s a Liberal government federally and…there’s obviously a fair bit of cross influence, for better, for worse. Also this week I got wind of a University of Toronto Human Resources initiative that also upset me — I guess we could say — quite profoundly and so I thought I’d talk about all of those and try to see if I could make some sense out of them.

[Slide 3:10–4:06:

→•In Part I, I will speak about legislation

→•In Part II, I will speak about the University of Toronto’s attempts to transform its HR department into a politically correct institution

→•And my speculations about implications for the future

→•In Part III, I will speak about what can be done, on a personal level, about such things]

[The Slide is shown without narration]

[Slide 4:06–7:03:

I’ve had enough

→•The new laws scare me

→•The doctrines behind the new laws scare me.

→• The buy-in by organizational administrators scares me.

→•The people behind the doctrines scare me]

Peterson: So I’ve — I’m making this video because I don’t really know what else to do. I’ve talked to some colleagues and I’ve talked to some colleagues — as I — or some some…some people inside the University and outside the University that I know — and I — they’re upset and worried about this but unclear about what to do and all of this scares me, I guess and here’s why. I’m — the law — the changes to the law scare me because they — they put into the legal substructure of the culture certain assumptions about basic human nature that not only do I believe to be untrue, I think they’re also dangerous and ideologically motivated. I also don’t think that the reason for the legal changes is the stated reason. The laws scare me, the doctrines behind the laws scare me. And you know — when there’s — when there’s a law, there’s a body of thought that’s associated with it — a body of interpretations that are associated with it that flesh out the law because the law is a pretty bare thing and I’ve read — I wouldn’t say extensively because extensively is a lot — but I’ve read enough about the doctrines behind the law so that — that has also ma — also makes me very nervous.

Peterson: Increasingly I see that these more radical ideas that — the ideas that we’re going to discuss are bought in — people buy in at the administrative level in large organizations — Corporate, Governmental — it doesn’t matter — it — it — as long as the organization is large, there’s increasing administrative buy-in, and a lot of this seems to me to be driven by Human Resources Departments,[7] which I think are generally the most pathological elements of large organizations, and I say that because of — I’ve actually had fairly extensive experience dealing with human resources departments. I think HR training is very politically correct like many disciplines — we’ll talk about that later. The people behind the doctrines also scare me. I think that generally they’re a very bad combination of resentful, uninformed and…that’s good enough, resentful and uninformed, that’s good enough. I also think that their aims are destructive rather than constructive. They — they claim constructive aims — but of course everyone claims constructive aims — but the actions that I see undertaken seem to be…to be driven by resentment and…primarily by resentment and — and so I di — I doubt the validity of the claims. The claims are always for equality and diversity and…that kind of thing and those words are very easy to say but a lot harder to put into practice so I’m scared by the people behind the doctrines.

[Slide 7:03–11:43:

• The response of my colleagues scares me:

→•The things that I’m seeing at work will have to be discussed in a phone conversation. It’s hard for me personally to explain it in email. I’m not certain this is the career path I’m interested in anymore. I actually find myself censoring things that I’d normally say to students and I’m not sure how to stop that self-censorship. The censorship leads to me not truly educating them in a manner that will let me feel like I’ve had a job well done. It’s not as much from the administration (yet) as it is from the students.

→•The personal consequences of objecting are huge. The effect of my objection on society is miniscule. The risk isn’t worth it. We should have acted ten years ago.]

Peterson: I’m scared by the response of my colleagues at the University. A number of them are unnerved by the continual move towards political correctness and I’m gonna tell you a couple of responses that I’ve got recently from people that I think are quite brave by the way — but worried about making a statement, putting their careers on their line, worried about being tortured to death by people online, worried about administrative over-response or even administrative response, worried — well here’s why. “The things that I’m seeing at work will have to be discussed in a phone conversation” — this is a professor, an American professor at — I asked how this person was feeling about…the position that they held at the University. The person said “the thing that I’m seeing at work will have to be discussed in a phone conversation. It’s hard for me personally to explain it in email. I’m not certain this is the career path I’m interested in anymore. I actually find myself sensory things — censoring things that I’d normally say to students and I’m not sure how to stop that self-censorship. The censorship leads to me not truly educating them in a manner that will m — let me feel like I’ve done my job well. It’s not as much from the administration yet as it is from the students.” See I don’t see that so much at the University of Toronto. The students here are so terrified of the job market and — and generally speaking so diligent, conscientious that they are not particularly sidetracked by political correctness. So, but that’s obviously not my colleague’s experience in the US, this is in California.

[8:41]

Peterson: Another colleague — this is more local — said something I thought was very intelligent and I — I think that’s why this sort of thing is so difficult to stand up to. “The personal consequences of objecting are huge” and this person is referring to the possibility of adverse job effects I guess, effects on employment. And you’d think tenure would protect people against that and I suppose it probably does but it’s — that doesn’t mean that people are necessarily willing to put it to the test. And they’re worried about being pilloried online by social justice warriors and — and — and — and so on and having their reputation savaged and — and demolished so… You know, and — and that — that’s a good — that’s a good — that’s a reasonable fear especially given the next part which is “the effect of my objection on society will be minuscule” so there’s this combination, that’s the idea anyways. The personal consequences of jep — of objecting are potentially huge and the — the social effects are minuscule. There’ll be no positive effect and so the — the — the thinking goes, why put yourself and potentially your family and your financial stability and all of that at risk by speaking out when the consequences will be — will be minimal?

[9:56]

Peterson: And, you know, I’ve talked to other people outside of acadiemia — academia. Writers for example, who’ve had friends who’ve made a comment online, you know, which they thought was rather innocuous that’s quoted over and over again and some — sometimes in major newspapers as, you know, emblematic of their particular stance and that shows them in a very harsh light. So. Anyways this particular colleague concluded by saying “we should have acted ten years ago.” Well, you know, I feel for both of these colleagues. I — I think they’re both excellent educators, by the way, and they’re also — I would say — classically liberal people, you know. They’re not — they’re not — you — you wouldn’t call them conservatives. You certainly wouldn’t call them right-wingers. They’re people…their concerns aren’t driven by their political ideologies, it’s as simple as that.[8] Their concerns are driven by their — by their…continual observations increasingly — continual observations…that things are not going in the proper direction in universities and that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for professors and — and — and students for that matter — at least of — of a particular kind of political orientation to even have the opportunity to say what they think. So okay.

[11:20]

Peterson: So that scares me. It scares me when I see — [we] — decent people, and I think people who are more courageous than average, frightened into submission and considering altering their career paths because they don’t feel that they can say what they think anymore and — and they’re afraid of the direction that the universities are going. So yeah that’s scary. So.

[Slide 11:43–16:28:

• The response of my clients scares me

→• Three clients in the last two years whose problems were caused or exacerbated greatly by PC-related work activity

→→• Flip Charts (bank)

→→• HR Department (educational institution)

→→•Social worker]

Peterson: Then I’m — I’m a clinical psychologist. This is starting to affect my clients, I’ve had three clients in the last two years who have been and — and — who have been driven near the point of insanity by politically correct occurrences at work. One of them was a bank employee. What — what finally did her in, fundamentally, was — she sent me a very long email chain referring to a — a ser — a series of discussions that happened in — in this Bank internally about whether or not the word “Flip chart” — you know referring to those large p — pads of paper that you put up on a stand you can flip forward and draw on, kind of an archaic technology now — whether or not the word “flip chart” was pe — pejorative and racist. And the reason for that was that — apparently the word “flip” can be used pejoratively to refer to Filipinos — which was something I didn’t even know and I suppose a Filipino could conceivably take offense to having a pad of paper named “flip chart” although it’s hard to imagine the circumstances under which that might arise or at least once it was hard to imagine that. Anyways, she gave me access to a string of email conversations about that particular topic and the — the bank did eventually agree to stop using the term “flip chart.” I don’t know what they replaced it with.

[13:15]

Peterson: But you know, she was a very very sensible person — an immigrant by the way — who couldn’t reconcile her requirement, you know, her moral requirement to work hard and be productive and be sensible and be conscientious with the fact that people were being called on — called on to alter their behavior in ways that were absolutely nonsensical. And she was from an Eastern European country and of course for her this was reminiscent of the tactics of the worst of the ideologues in the 1970s and 80s and before that. So it was very very hard on her. She — she — she was very very stressed by the situation at work and then I had another client who worked in an HR department in a major educational institute and….he was always being called on to manifest his support for various feminist initiatives at the educational institute and he wasn’t really all that comfortable presenting himself as a pro-feminist because he actually wasn’t one and you can argue one way or another about the propriety of that and that’s really not my point. My point is, is that he believed — and I think with cause — that his job would have been in jeopardy if he would have let his objections to the demands of the political environment within the workplace, if he would have made those objections known. And I — and I would say he wo — he’s a little bit more — he was a little bit more to the right than most of the people that…that I’ve talked with, but not to any great degree although like many people, I think he’s being driven in that direction by the continual radical moves to the left that seem to be part and parcel of every organization in — in — in maybe in modern Western society now.

[15:13]

Peterson: And then — then the other client that I had who was very much troubled by this was a social worker who was — was I think she was — she was — she was a immigrant as well, quite conservative from — she was from a conservative culture and was very much…had very much difficulty with the demands for example that she allow non surgically altered transsexual men free access to the women’s shelters and the women’s shelters for example here are — are some of the people in them obviously say, are Muslim women who come from very conservative cultures who really can’t even function in a situation where — you know a — a — a — a male — a biological male has been given access to what in principle is supposed to be a woman shelter and — and that was one of many things that — that bothered her…but we don’t need to get into that. The point is is that I’ve had people who’ve been driven to seek psychological counseling because of the effect of politically correct oppression on them in the workplace and…so that’s worrisome. So that’s a whole bunch of things that make me nervous.

[Slide 16:28–19:52:

•My own response scares me

→•I’m scared to do this lecture

→•I think some of the things I am teaching may now be illegal to even say]

Peterson: And then my own response scares me. I find this stuff maddening. I can’t really believe the amount of foolishness that — that — that — that — that has accumulated around these rather contentious…Marxist, semi-Marxist political issues which I have — which I don’t — I have no respect for. As I said already, I think that Marxism and neo-Marxism is no better than fascism and neo-fascism. I think the historical evidence for that is absolutely clear. I can’t understand why we think it’s acceptable for academics and their followers to call themselves Marxist and neo-Marxists but we — we — we would — we — we would not for a second countenance the same thing from the fascists and the neo-fascists. [9][Pause] Anyways the upshot of it is is that I’m nervous about doing this lecture and I’ve also become nervous about some of the things that I’m teaching which I think — and I’m going to discuss this a little bit further or [look] — further on in this — in this discussion — I think that some of the things that I say in my lectures now might be illegal. I think they might even be — I think that they might even be sufficient to me to be — for me to be brought before the Ontario Human Rights Commission under their amended hate speech laws. And that scares me as well, and it scares me that I think that because it sounds paranoid but….most of the time in the past when I’ve been concerned that the — that something is going to happen at an administrative or bureaucratic level at the university that it — it’s — it’s frequently the case that when I’m worried about something happening that it does actually happen and that it’s not so much worry as an ability to see high probability outcomes down into the future.[10] So — and you know — even if — even if the things that I’m saying are — haven’t been made illegal or — you know — heaven forbid — transformed into — suddenly — into hate speech.[11] I am nervous that they might be and even that’s making it more difficult for me to teach because in order for me to teach I have to say what I think is true and I can’t do that if I’m afraid — if I have to be afraid of the consequences. I’ll — I’ll — I’ll stop talking — you know — even — I’ll…[sigh] If you can say one thing or the other and there’s a lot of pressure not to say the first thing and you could just as easily say the second thing, it’s just as easy to say the second thing. Why not just — not bother with it — you know — well, the reason I can’t do that is because if I have something to say and I don’t say it then it drives me crazy and so — and that’s not something I’m willing to — I’m not willing to go down that path and I’ve already decided that I’m gonna try to tell people what I think and — and to tell them what I think to be the truth even though — it’s the truth that I think that, I’m not saying that what I think is true. I mean who knows what’s true? That’s why we have freedom of speech, right? To sort out what’s true. So — but I can tell you that it’s true that I’m scared about this and I think that’s appalling, I really think that’s appalling.

[Slide 19:52–23:18

Bill C-16: An act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code

→•This enactment amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.

→•The enactment also amends the Criminal Code to extend the protection against hate propaganda set out in that Act to any section of the public that is distinguished by gender identity or expression and to clearly set out that evidence that an offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on gender identity or expression constitutes an aggravating circumstance that a court must take into consideration when it imposes a sentence.]

Peterson: All right, so this is Bill C-16 and — and somebody sent this to me this week and pointing out what was happening with regards to this fundamental Canadian human rights legislation and I’m gonna do a bad job of this because it take — it takes more time than I have to do this properly, so all I can do is tell you my initial thoughts and try to justify them as best I can. It would take months to do this lecture properly and I haven’t got months to do it property so I’m gonna have to do it badly.[12] So here we go.

[20:27]

Peterson: So “Bill C-16 is an Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code.” So these are major — this is a major Amendment because the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code are major pieces of legislation, they affect everyone and the consequences for contravening them are severe. As severe as…severe consequences can be short of — you know…of illness and death. So they’re are non-trivial pieces of legislation. Now if you guys aren’t in Canada you might wonder why you should care about this but what’s happening in Canada is happening throughout the West. So I’m gonna concentrate on the local occurrences but you can think — you can be sure they’re emblematic of similar things happening in your jurisdictions. So, cause this is certainly not only a Canadian problem and in fact I would say — to — to some fairly large degree Canada has been reasonably free of this especially at the University level and — and it’s almost as if we’re importing it unnecessarily. But okay. “This enactment amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.”

[21:38]

Peterson: Now this amendment has only gone through first reading, this was back in May. But similar legislation has already been passed in a number of provinces — those are the smaller — like — this — they’re like states. They’re the smaller subdivisions of — of the Canadian political system. So this hasn’t been made into law federally. But it — it — it’s — it’s likely going to and it already has at the provincial level as I said. So “this enactment also amends the Criminal Code to extend the protection against hate propaganda set out in that Act to any section of the public that is distinguished by gender identity or expression and it clearly set out that evidence that an offense was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on gender identity or expression constitutes an aggravating circumstance that a court must take into consideration when it imposes a sentence.” Okay, so that’s basically a hate crime — modification. So if you commit a crime, well that’s one thing. But if you commit a crime and it’s motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on age, sex, race, ethnic identity and so — so — so and other things including now gender identity or expression — then that makes the crime worse. It falls into the category of hate crime and so that’s what this modification is intended to — produce or to bring about. So j — any — any crime that is associated with “bias, prejudice or hate based on gender identity or expression is now an aggravating circumstance.” Okay so — so it’s a hate crime.

[Slide 23:18–27:11:

Hate Speech

→•Making hate speech go away does not make hate go away.

→→•It drives it underground, where it festers invisibly.

→→• If you want to know where the ahters are, then let them talk.

→• Hate speech vs “you are making me uncomfortable”

→→• The recent case of Lionel Shriver]

Peterson: Now I have some real problems with hate speech legislation and the reason I have problems with it is that it’s not obvious when speech is motivated by hate. Angry speech can feel like it’s motivated by hate. But angry speech is the only kind of speech, in some sense, that is indicative of real disagreement. I mean I’m not saying that all disagreement should be angry, I’m just saying that — if there is real disagreement — the — it’s anger is often the evidence for the existence of real disagreement and if there’s real disagreement angry people have to talk it out. Because if they don’t then…well then a bunch of terrible things happen. First of all you start losing track of who the angry people are, second they don’t get to say it — what’s on their mind and even listen to themselves. They don’t get to have other people tell them that they’re wrong, they don’t get to modify their viewpoints. Because talking is thinking, you know? And if you stop people from talking then you stop them from thinking, and that’s a really bad thing. And then if you — if you — if you interpret hate speech too broadly then you drive the so-called haters underground and then you don’t know what they’re up to and when people go underground that isn’t good. That — that’s really not good.[13] You get the rise of all sorts of underground political movements when people aren’t able to express what they think even though it’s unpleasant. So if you want to know where the haters are then you have to let them talk.

[24:52]

Peterson: You know, and we even tell two-year-olds who are angry, we say, well, ‘use your words.’ And the reason we tell two-year-olds that is because the alternative to using your words is using your fists. And so if we don’t let angry people talk, then the only — they only have two — two alternatives. Well, apart from changing their mind and they’re not gonna change their mind — just — if you just shut someone up that doesn’t change their mind because….partly the way you change your mind is by talking and thinking and communicating with other people and if you shut that avenue off for people then they can’t change their minds. Well then — they either — they pull it in and get resentful — you know that’s one option — they don’t take any action, or they get aggressive and violent or they start agitating for violence. And so, you know, I can’t help but think that…well there’s a famous psychoanalict dit — psychoanalytic dictum: if you don’t understand the motivation for something, look at the outcome and infer the motivation.[14] Well, if the outcome of shutting people up is that they get violent then it’s hard for me to suppress the suspicion that it was the incitement of violence that was at least part of the initial motivation for — for producing the restriction. Now I think there’s a lot more to it than that. You know, I think a lot of it is — a lot of it is desire for people not to ever say anything upsetting is actually a consequence of Trait Agreeableness which is a Big Five psychological trait and really agreeable people are egalitarian by nature but they also don’t like conflict and — but what that means is they don’t like short-term conflict. You know, they don’t like anybody to be upset, and the problem is sometimes you have to be upset in the present to solve problems in the medium- and the long-term, you know? You can’t stop people from talking about upsetting things because as I said, that’s just the same as stopping them from thinking. And — and if they can’t think really complicated things through, well then they don’t solve problems and then the problems manifest themselves in the real world. It’s no joke. So there’s a recent case of Lionel Shriver who’s a — who’s a — well I won’t talk about her, you can look her up. I’ll try to stick to the point here.

[Slide 27:11–29:56 :

Canadian Human Rights Act Modification

→•1. Modification of Section 2

→→•Purpose: the purpose of this act is to extend the laws in Canada to give effect, within the purview of matters coming within legislative authority of Parliament,

→→• to the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society,

→→• without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.]

Peterson: So this is also part of Bill C-16. This is modification of Section Two of the Canadian Human Rights Act. “Purpose: the purpose of this Act is to extend the laws in Canada to give effect within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament” — that’s Canada’s highest governing body — “the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation,” — and now hypothetically — “gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offense for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.” Okay — so — well what’s problematic about this, well I’ve outlined some of it in yellow. I don’t really like the idea of “wish to have” “the lives that they’re able and wish to have” and then “to have their needs accommodated.” Well — it’s messy. It’s messy terminology. It’s not easy to delineate needs. There’s an infinite number of them. It’s very very difficult to determine whose needs should take priority. In fact that’s why we have a free-market society. We have a free-market society so that people’s needs can be voted on, in some sense, by the purchasing power of free individuals so that nobody, no central committee, no governing body has to decide whose needs should be accommodated.[15] It’s an infinitely complex problem and it can’t be solved by fiat. It’s not possible. And — and — and this was happened in places like the Sov — this — this was attempted in places like the Soviet Union where need decisions were constantly made by centralized committees and the consequence was absolutely catastrophic. Not only was it economically suicidal it was also murderous. So the whole idea of having needs accommodated is a very, very — it’s a very, very slippery idea and it sounds good but it’s very, very dangerous. It’s dangerous because the question — who decides whose needs are paramount? — is the crucial question. And how is that — it’s answered is the crucial issue. And that can go seriously wrong. And then — well the inclusion of “gender identity or expression.” Well we’ll — we’ll discuss that momentarily.

[Slide 29:56–30:16:

CHRA Modifications, continued

→• 1. Modification of Section 3 (1)

→→• For all purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, disability and conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.]

Peterson: And there’s also Modification of Section 3. “For all purposes of this act the prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation” — and then again newly — “gender identity or expression, marital status, family status.”

[Slide 30:16–30:46:

CHRA Modifications, continued

→• Modification of subsection 318 (4) of the Criminal Code:

→→• Definition of an identifiable group

→→→• (4) In this section, identifiable group means any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.]

Peterson: So this is the Criminal Code modification. Modification of subsection 318 (4), where they define an identifiable group and this is for the purpose of determining who, fundamentally, is uttering hate speech or discriminatory speech and this includes all the candidates we already described: color, race, religion, national/ethnic origin etc. and includes “gender identity or expression.” And so well — we’ll — we’ll continue to talk about that.

[Slide 30:46–31:13:

CHRA Modifications, continued / →•Modifications of of subparagraph 718.2(a)(i)4: /→→•(i) evidence that the offense was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression, or on any other similar factor,]

Peterson: And then there’s modifications of subparagraph 718.2(a). Again with regards to hate crime: “evidence that the offense was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, color, religion etc.” including “gender identity expression or any other simpler — similar factor” “the offense was motivated by.”

[Slide 31:13–31:44:

Provincial Spread

→•Alberta

→•British Columbia

→•Newfoundland and Labrador

→•Nova Scotia

→•Prince Edward Island

→•Ontario]

Peterson: Okay. So this sort of legislation has already come into play in provinces in Canada. “Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island,” and and “Ontario.” And I’m gonna concentrate on Ontario because I think a lot of this is emanating from a small coterie of people behind the Ontario Human Rights Commission which is a particularly pathological organization in my estimation and perhaps the biggest enemy of freedom currently extant in Canada and I don’t say that light —

[Slide 31:44–33:16:

Definitions

→•From Ontario Human Rights Commission

→•Wording on their site ((http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/gender-identity-and-gender-expression-brochure) is identical to that on the Canadian Department of Justice (http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/identity-identite/about-apropos.html).[16] ]

Peterson: So the reason I think the Ontario Human Rights Commission is — is an emblematic institution in this regard is partly because I think that the — that social justice warrior type activists are over-represented in the current provincial government fed — or the current Liberal Provincial government and I can’t help but shake this — I can’t help but manifest the suspicion that that’s partly because our current Premier is lesbian in her sexual preference and that in — in itself doesn’t bother me one way or another. I don’t think it’s relevant to the political discussion except insofar as the LBGT community has become extraordinarily good at organising themselves and has a fairly pronounced and very, very sophisticated radical fringe and [Pause] I can’t help but see the hand of that in what I’m going to read to you and you can make up your own mind and see if you think the same thing. So the wording on the Ontario Human Rights Commission with regards to legislation like Bill C-16 is the same. It’s identical to that on the Canadian Department of Justice. I — I’ve given you the links here.[17] And so that’s another indication to me that there’s tremendous crosstalk between these institutions, one at the provincial level — that’s the Ontario one — it and one at the federal level, because the wording is identical. So that’s the argument for overlap.

[Slide 33:16–39:51:

→• Here are the definitions, which are now explicit categories and implicit presumptions of our most fundamental legal structure

→→•”Gender identity is each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither or anywhere along the gender spectrum.”

→→•”Gender expression is the way in which people publicly present their gender. It is the presentation of gender through such aspects as dress, hair, make-up, body language, and voice.”]

Peterson: And the other thing too, with regards to the LBGT angle on this is that the wording is identical in many regards to that that’s commonly used by LBGT activists. And so that’s why I’m putting the different organizations together. And as I said before, I’m not saying this is right, it’s what I’ve been able to sort out. It’s — it’s what I’ve been able to puzzle out and I’m putting it forward as an element of discussion. Okay, so here are some of the definitions that they use and these are “now explicit categories and implicit presumptions of our most fundamental legal structures.” So now these have become something — these definitions have become something more than fact.[18] They’ve become facts that you question at your legal peril.[19] So here’s the first one: “Gender identity” this is directly from the Ontario Human Resource — Human Rights Commission website “gender identity is each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither or anywhere along the gender spectrum.”[20] Oh, I’d also like to point out that that’s relatively — this is a petty thing to say, I suppose. But one of the things that struck me about the Ontario Human Rights Commission website is that it’s very poor — very poorly written and this particular sentence is very poorly written and policy that’s on its way to be transformed into legislation should not be poorly written because it means it’s being poorly thought through and poorly specified and it means that the people who are doing it aren’t being careful. And that makes me nervous.

[34:56]

Peterson: And so then there’s things in here that I don’t believe to be true. “Gender identity is each person’s sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither or anywhere along the gender spectrum.” I don’t know what neither means because I don’t know what the options are if you’re not a man or a woman.[21] It’s not obvious to me how you can be both because those are by definition binary categories. There’s an idea that there’s a gender spectrum but I don’t think that that’s a valid idea, I don’t think there’s any evidence for it. Biological sexuality is ancient it’s hundreds of millions of years old and it’s binary because there’s two forms of — of — of biological sex. Now of course, this is predicated on the idea that your gender is somehow independent from your — from your biological sex but that’s a proposition not a fact. And even if it’s true — it’s — even if it even if it in some manner was determined to be true, it is certainly not determined to be true to that degree now and certainly not to the degree that it should be instantiated in law. At most it’s an opinion, and I think it’s an ill-informed opinion. I think it’s a politically motivated and ill-informed opinion, and now it’s got the force of law. And then there’s another modification which is “gender expression” which is something different than gender identity so I guess there’s biological sex and then on top of that there’s “gender identity” which is separate — they’re not even correlated, they’re — they don’t bear one — any relationship to one another. I guess one is choice or it isn’t exactly clear. I mean here’s one of the things I find very confusing: it seems to me that the leftist activists have made the claim that — with regards to transsexual individuals for example, that you can be a man in a woman’s body and that that’s a biological reality, or that you can be a woman in a man’s body and that’s a biological reality. So as long as your gender identity is opposite to that of your biological — cardinal biological sexual attributes then that’s biologically determined, but if your gender identity is in sync with your biological attributes then that’s a free-floating cultural construct. Unless I’ve got my logic wrong somehow.[22] And I cannot see how both of those things can possibly be true, but — I don’t think that coherence is one of the hallmarks of radical politically correct thinking and you can tell that because politically correct people — like the people who have produced this legislation and these policies — are capable of saying things like: “it is their sense” — meaning each person’s by the way — “it is there a sense of being” maybe…maybe an individual can decide to be a plurality as well and that’s why “their” is being used as the pronoun in this particular sentence. Although I think the real reason is is that the person who wrote this can’t write. “It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither or anywhere along the gender spectrum” from my perspective that sentence is entirely nonsensical and now it’s law.

[38:23]

Peterson: And then — okay so we’ve got biological sex, we’ve got gender identity, and then on top of that we’ve got gender expression which I guess is how you express your gender identity which is separate from your biological sexual orientation. It’s “the way people publicly present their gender. It is the presentation of gender through such aspects as dress, hair, makeup, body language, and voice.” Okay, well, those are canonical categories now and it isn’t clear to me because of the legislation it — it’s possible I believe it’s possible, that my commentary on these definitions is now illegal and that it’s also now potentially classifiable as hate speech and I would say if that’s the case then[23]…like [Pause] Well it’s the sort of thing I’m gonna question and if someone should be put in jail for questioning them — then I — questioning that, then I guess I should be put in jail because I’m going to continue to question it. I think it’s nonsensical, I think the formulation is absurd, I think it has no scientific standing,[24] I think it’s ideologically motivated, I think it’s divisive, I think it’s dangerous, it causes chaos, it confuses people. There’s no upside to it. And for any — for every one person that this potential transformation of legislation is going to free from oppression it’s going to deathly confuse a hundred more.

[Slide 39:51–41:06:

Definitions, continued

→•”The Code does not define the grounds of gender identity, gender expression or sex. Instead, the understanding of these and other related terms, and the implications of the Code and the OHRC policy, is evolving from tribunal and court decisions, social science research as well as self-identity and common everyday use.”

→•”Sex is the anatomical classification of people as male, female or intersex, usually assigned at birth.”]

Peterson: And I say that as — I say that as a clinician with some experience in this matter. More definitions: “The Code does not define the grounds of gender identity, gender expression or sex. Instead the understanding of these and other related terms and the implications for the code” — that’s the Ontario Human Rights Code, and Ontario Human Rights Commission policies — ”is evolving from tribunal and Court decisions, social science research as well as self identity and common everyday use.” More definitions: “Sex is the anatomical classification of people as male, female or intersex usually assigned at birth.” I should also point out that the class of the — class of intersex is so rare to be virtually non-existent and it isn’t reasonable to make standard policy on the basis of extreme exceptions and the reason for that is that there are myriads — millions of extreme exceptions and it’s not possible to constitute a collective society on the basis of legislation that’s designed for — for exceptions. It can’t be done by definition. The laws is to — the law is fundamentally there to produce a collective agreement.[25]

[Slide 41:06–43:03:

Definitions, continued

→•”Gender identity is each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is a person’s sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum. A person’s gender identity may be the same as or different from their birth-assigned sex.”

→•”Gender expression is how a person publicly expresses or presents their gender. This can include behaviour and outward appearance such as dress, hair, make-up body language and voice. A person’s chosen name and pronoun are also common ways of expressing gender. Others perceive a person’s gender through these attributes.]

Peterson: Okay, back, definitions. Once again “Gender identity is each person’s internal and individual experience of gender” we’ve already said that, “a person’s gender identity may be the same or — the same as or different from their birth-assigned sex.” Well, that’s the theory. “Gender expression is how a person publicly expresses — or presents their gender.” Well, we’ve covered that. There’s another addition here. “a person’s chosen name and pronoun are also common ways of expressing gender. Others perceive a person’s gender through those attributes.” Well, this is also Ontario Human Rights Commission policy. Okay so this is the scenario I’ve been running through my head: I can envision a student or a colleague insisting that I ca — call them using gender-neutral pronouns. Zhe: Zed-h-ee — or Zee-h-ee for you Americans, zhe or xir I think it is.[26] I’m not doing that. I’m not doing that. I think it’s manipulative. I — I and I don’t — I don’t — I don’t recognize another person’s right to determine what pronouns I use to address them. I won’t do it.[27] Now — again I think that because of these new laws [inaudible] that — that — that my decision might be illegal and maybe it’s even a decision of hate, but I’m not doing it. I think that those gender-neutral pronouns are politically motivated. I think they’re connected to a — an entire underground apparatus of political motivations — radical left political motivations. And I think uttering those words makes me a tool of those motivations. And I’m gonna try to be a tool of my own motivations as clearly as I can articulate them and not the mouthpiece of some murderous ideology.[28]

[Slide 43:03–47:36:

Definitions, continued

→•”A person’s gender identity is fundamentally different from and not related to their sexual orientation.”

→•”Trans or transgender is an umbrella term referring to people with diverse gender identities and expressions that can differ from stereotypical gender norms. It includes but is not limited to people who identify as trangender, trans woman (male-to-female MTF), trans man (female-to-male FTM), transsexual, cross-dressers, or gender non-conforming, gender variant or gender queer.”]

Peterson: “A person’s gender identity” — “definitions continued” — “a person’s gender identity is fundamentally different from and not related to their sexual orientation.” Well, that’s rubbish fundamentally because if you ran a correlation analysis between gender identity and sexual orientation, the correlation is going to be something like .95 which indicates an almost perfect correlation for the vast majority of people — gender identity and sexual orientation are the same thing. And so — it “is not fundamentally different from and not related to their sexual orientation” that’s just a misstatement of fact. Perhaps for a minority of people sometimes they’re dissociable. But that — that doesn’t mean that a gender identity is fundamentally different from and not related to sexual orientation. It’s a complete misstatement of fact. If there’s a correlation of — if there’s a correlation of any magnitude between two things then one is related to another and when the correlation is just about perfect, well then they are fundamentally related. So — so that’s another policy that’s based actually on a lie, a misstatement, an untruth. All right so — “trans or transgender is an umbrella term referring to people with diverse gender identities and expressions that differ from stereotypical gender norms. It includes but is not limited to people who identify as transgender, trans woman, trans man, transsexual crossdressers or gender non-conforming, gender variant or genderqueer.”

[44:33]

Peterson: Now here’s what I think about these terms: you see, the people who use these terms want everyone to believe that they’re for all the good things that they say they’re for. But I don’t believe any of that. I don’t think that they’re for good things at all. I think that they use the pretense that they’re for good things — you know that they stand for good things — to continue their nefarious activity. And one of the most nefarious elements of their activity is the use of these ideological clubs — you know — when the club basically is — here’s the club. I mean the kind of club that you hit people with. If there’s a difference in outcome, then it’s a consequent of — consequence of racism and bias. And then if I point out the difference, then I’m a good person. So my little routine for wandering through the world making sure that I’m a good person unlike those other people who aren’t good people that — that need to be punished and perhaps jailed — I look for inequalities and wherever I find them, I attribute them to racism. And so that means I can spend my whole life doing nothing but…being on the side of good by ferreting out all the evil that resides in other people and not in me. I don’t trust people like that. I think that the continual generation of these terms is a consequence of the desire to make that game continue for as long as possible, regardless of the consequences, so that the people who hold those opinions can always be morally correct and have a whole set of enemies to go after. And that’s why the terms keep multiplying because every time Society moves to become more tolerant, more liberal, well then that interferes with the game because the game is ‘well we have to find racist and horrible people’ and so the solution to that is ‘well, let’s just continue to generate categories — more and more categories to demonstrate how unequal people are. Well, because the categories are infinitely divisible — and we’ll get to that later — it’s a game that never runs out. And if you’re a professional, if you’re someone whose profession is to be politically correct or to be a social justice warrior and — that might be an academic, especially a Marxist one and in all sorts of sub disciplines — we’ll also get to that later like sociology and Social Work, and many of the Social Sciences apart from those two and — and Educational Psychology that’s another major offender, and Social Psychology another major offender — then you’re — you’re publicly subsidized for your damn viewpoints and if you can continue to make the case that the world is full of racist racists and…and people possessed by ethnic hatred, you know, persecuting the — the poor minorities that your schtick lasts forever and you can fully justify your — your subsidised position as well as being on the side of right and morality and making the world a better place. What a good deal for everyone who’s politically correct.

[Slide 47:36–51:57:

Definition of discrimination and harassment

→•”Discrimination happens when a person experiences negative treatment or impact, intentional or not, because of their gender identity or gender expression.”

→•”Harassment is a form of discrimination. It can include sexually explicit or other inappropriate comments, questions, jokes, name-calling, images, email and social media, transphobic, homophobic or other bullying, sexual advances, touching and other unwelcome and ongoing behaviour that insults, demeans, harms or threatens a person in some say.”

→→•Note that this has been written to cover the broadest possible range of possibilities (which is precisely the opposite of what good legislation does):]

Peterson: “Definition of discrimination and harassment” now these are truly terrifying. “Discrimination happens when a person experiences negative treatment or impact, intentional or not, because of their gender identity or gender expression.” Okay and that could be age, sex, race etc. Okay, think about that sentence. “Discrimination happens when a person experiences negative treatment or impact.” Okay so let’s say negative impact. Well so what that means is that if I say something that makes you feel negative emotion or maybe even interferes with your happiness — because those are actually separate things — then you’ve experienced negative impact. Okay now — that — okay that’s bad enough because it means that you get to decide when what I’ve said is not appropriate. But the worst part of it — and that’s not so good — because you could misunderstand me or maybe what I’m saying is right and you just don’t like it or, you know, there’s a whole variety of reasons you might get upset about what I say. So the fact that you get upset about something — that’s negative impact — but that doesn’t necessarily mean that something bad has happened, it might even mean that something’s good — good has happened. I don’t think I’ve ever learned anything in my entire life that wasn’t preceded by some kind of negative impact, we always learn things the hard way. But the worst part of it is the next phrase “discrimination happens when a person experiences negative treatment or impact intentional or not.” Okay, so here, think about this. When it — when — when — when you have little children and maybe one — one runs into the other and knocks — knocks even your child down. You set your child up and the first thing you say is: ‘Well Bobby didn’t mean it.’ And the reason you say that is because we’ve learned — and this is painful — this is — this is a painful thing that human beings have learned it’s at the base of our modern legal systems — that intent matters. It isn’t consequences that you judge, it’s intent. If I accidentally run into you that’s way different than if I run into you on purpose. You know if I — if I — if — if I kill you accidentally that’s manslaughter at its worst. If I kill you with intent that’s — that’s — that’s the worst form of homicide. We judge people on intent not on consequences. And so this policy is designed to reverse that. It’s now possible that you can — didn’t discriminate against someone and violate the law and — and I think maybe even be persecuted for hate crimes because this is written in such a messy manner — by doing something accidental, intentional or not. Well who’s going to judge that? Well you can imagine who’s going to judge that: the kind of people who would dare to judge that.[29]

[50:25]

Peterson: Harassment: “Harassment is a form of discrimination. It can include sexually explicit or other inappropriate comments” Not defined. “Questions, jokes, name-calling images, email and social media” It — it doesn’t say what email and social media content, just “email and social media” which is another indication of the appalling level of literacy behind these — behind these statements. “Transphobic, homophobic or other bullying, sexual advances, touching, and other unwelcome and ongoing behavior that insults, demeans, harms or threatens a person in some way.” Alright so the first thing you might note is that this has been written to cover the broadest possible range of possibilities. That’s the exact opposite of what good legislation does. So if you combine these discrimination and — and harassment that — that — the — the policies basically allow for people to — like if I in — int — if I unintentionally negatively impact you with a joke, then I’m harassing you and that’s well on its way to being — well it’s a violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code, it’s an offence according to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and it’s on the way to being a hate crime as far as I can tell with the modifications of federal legislation. So — and then to — to cap it all off they throw this in at the end of the sentence: “Other unwelcome and ongoing behavior that insults, demeans, harms or threatens a person in some way.”

[Slide 51:57–53:16:

Liability: specific to trans people

→•”Organizations are liable for any discrimination and harassment that happens.

→•They are also liable for not accommodating a trans person’s needs unless it would cause undue hardship. →•They must deal with complaints, take steps to prevent problems and provide a safe, welcoming environment for trans people.”]

Peterson: Okay so that’s all pretty scary but then there’s more, of course. And so this is the Ontario Human Rights Commission developing policies on organizational liability, so listen to this: “Organizations are liable for any discrimination and harassment that happens. They are also liable for not accommodating a trans person needs unless it would cause undue hardship.” The whole issue of undue hardship is a tricky one because I’m not exactly sure who adjudicates that. I mean — you know — we’ll get to that later. “They must deal with complaints, take steps to prevent problems, and provide a safe welcoming environment for trans people.” Okay and — and — you know, old people and — and ethnic — ethnically diverse people and you know, differently gendered people and all of that so, fine. “Organizations are liable for any discrimination and harassment that happens.” Okay well that puts a hell of an onus on the organization because it isn’t exactly clear to me how organizations are going to monitor all of their people all of the time in the organizations. What if they’re using social media outside the organization? So organizations are now liable for all of this. So how are you gonna police all that? Okay, next.

[Slide 53:16–55:01:

Liability: general (Ontario Human Rights Code)

→•”Under section 46.3 of the Code, a corporation, trade union or occupational association, unincorporated association or employers’ organization will be held responsible for discrimination, including acts of omissions, committed by employees or agents in the course of their employment. This is known as “vicarious liability.”

→• Responsible parties violate the Code where they directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally infringe the Code, or where they otherwise authorize, condone or adopt behaviour that is contrary to the Code. / →•It is unacceptable to choose to remain unaware, ignore or fail to address potential or actual human rights violations, whether or not a complaint is made.”]

Peterson: More on liability. From the Ontario Human Rights Code: “Under Section 46.3 of the Code, a corporation, trade union or occupational association, unincorporated association or employees organization” now listen to this: “will be held responsible for discrimination including acts or omissions committed by employees or agents in the course of their employment. This is known as vicarious liability.” Okay “Responsible parties violate the Code” now this is where it gets — this is where it gets horrible, I think. “where they directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally infringe the Code, or whether they otherwise authorize, condone or adopt behavior that is contrary to the Code. It is unacceptable to choose to remain unaware, ignore or fail to address potential or actual human rights violations, whether or not a complaint is made.” God, you couldn’t possibly design a broader definition of liability. “Potential or actual human rights violations whether or not a complaint is made.” Okay so does that — that means that you have vicarious liability, if you “fail to address a potential” human rights violation, “whether or not a complaint is made.” The only thing I can say about legislation that’s written in this manner is that it seems to me to be consciously designed to get as many people in trouble as possible…that’s it. It — it — it’s designed to get as many people as possible in trouble at the same time.

[Slide 55:01–56:12:

Conclusion: End of Part I

→•The fear spread by political correctness

→•The increasing all-pervasiveness of the viewpoint

→•Bill C-16: the shape of things to come]

Peterson: So that brings us to the end of Part 1 of this talk on political correctness. In it I describe the increasing fear that’s spread by politically correct activism throughout large organizations including academic institutions like the University of Toronto. I also discussed the increasing all-pervasiveness of this viewpoint because it’s not something that’s localized anymore to academic institutions. It’s spread beyond them and is — is characteristic of the…preoccupations of — of a certain kind of administrator at a very large multitude of large organizations. Then I described in detail the Canadian Bill C-16 which is an attempt to modify the Canadian Human Rights Code and the Criminal Code to make a whole variety of speech acts and the holding of certain opinions or the articulating of them criminal and maybe even criminal under the provisions of the hate — of hate crime legislation.

[Slide 55:01–56:12: Coming Next

→•In Part II, I will give a more detailed analysis of the U of T’s attempts to transform its HR department into a PC organization.

→•In Part III, I will talk about what can be done about this.

→•Thank you for listening. If you want to support such endeavors, please visit my Patreon site, which allows you to do so.

→•Google “Patreon Jordan Peterson”]

Peterson: “In Part 2 I’m going to give you a more detailed analysis of the University of Toronto’s attempts to transform its H — HR department into a politically correct organization.” I’m using the — the goals of the University of Toronto as a cautionary tale about how such political maneuvers operate at a local level. Again, on the principle that a good story about something local is a good story about something with general significance. In Part 3, I’m going to talk about what individuals can do about these sorts of things, what you as a citizen — how you as a citizen might arm yourself intellectually so that you can articulate a stance against this kind of movement if you feel that that’s in your best interests. “Thanks for listening. If you want to support endeavors such of these — such as these please visit my Patreon site which allows you to do so.” It’s a monthly subscription site that helps me develop these videos and — and continue my work on them. And who knows? If things keep up the way they are maybe it’ll be my on — only source of income after it becomes impossible for me to work at a University and say what I want to say. If you want to provide such support just Google “Patreon Jordan Peterson.” Thanks a lot and we’ll talk to you very soon.

[End of Transcript]

Editor’s Endnote: I intended this transcript to make the content of this video more available for serious consideration since I find Peterson’s rhetorical power comes from a combination of three sources: insistence of personal expertise from his institutional credentials in fields he knows very little about, persistent use of obfuscatory language and using media formats that resist serious engagement by those knowledgeable in the fields he is speaking about. My commentary was an afterthought and I hope brings people back to the actual texts and scholarly commentary rather than Peterson’s obfuscations and misinformation. However, since Peterson made the original videos private and unavailable, I felt like the preparation gained an added importance.

I am available for comments and suggestions through Twitter DMs: @Litanscombe. If any journalist or academic wishes to verify the accuracy of the transcript with the original video, I could provide it if presented with the appropriate credentials.

Sources

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Ashley, F. (2018). Professorship versus censorship: Should Jordan Peterson continue to be given a platform on trans rights? [Blog post]. Now Toronto. Retrieved from: https://nowtoronto.com/news/professorship-versus-censorship-jordan-peterson-speak/

Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code, 42nd Parliament, 2015–2016.

Basque, R.J. (2017, May 10). CBA Position on Bill C-16 [Open Letter]. Ottawa, The Canadian Bar Association. Retrieved from: https://www.cba.org/News-Media/News/2017/May/CBA-position-on-Bill-C-16

Burgis, B. (Host, Producer). (2021, March 2). Give them an Argument: 63 Jordan Peterson Wants You to Clean 12 More Room‪s [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-36-jordan-peterson-wants-you-to-clean-12-more-rooms/id1527096105?i=1000511337673

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Canada. Parliament. Senate. (June 15, 2017). Minutes of Proceedings. 42nd Parliament, 1st Session, Volume 150, Issue 130. Retrieved from: https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/421/debates/133db_2017-06-15-e

Cossman, B. (2018, January 11). Gender identity, gender pronouns, and freedom of expression: Bill C-16 and the traction of specious legal claims. The University of Toronto Law Journal, 68(1), 37–79. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.3138/utlj.2017-0073

Gross, N. and Simmons, S. (2014). Professors and their Politics. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1974). The Psychoanalytic Years (Hull, R.F.C. and Stein, L. Trans.). Princeton. Princeton University Press.

Kirkup, K. (2018). The origins of gender identity and gender expression in Anglo-American legal discourse. The University of Toronto Law Journal, 68(1), 80–117. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3138/utlj.2017-0080

Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2013). Appendix 3: Human Rights Legislation in Canada. [Curriculum]. Retrieved from: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/teaching-human-rights-ontario-guide-ontario-schools/appendix-3-%E2%80%93-human-rights-legislation-canada

Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2014). Questions and answers about gender identity and pronouns. [FAQ]. Retrieved from: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/questions-and-answers-about-gender-identity-and-pronouns

Peterson, J.B. (2018). 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Toronto. Random House of Canada.

Peterson, J.B. (2019, May 9). Book List. [Personal Website Page]. Retrieved from https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/books/book-list/

Peterson, J.B. (2019, May 15). Equity: When the Left Goes Too Far. [Personal Website Page]. Retrieved from: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/political-correctness/equity-when-the-left-goes-too-far/

Rennie, B. (2018, September 13). Mircea Eliade and Antisemitism: An Exchange. LA Review of Books. Retrieved from: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mircea-eliade-and-antisemitism-an-exchange/

Thompson, J. (1984). Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Cambridge, Polity Press.

Appendix-Original Video Description

This is the video that caused the recent media storm over Bill C-16 and free speech. In it I outline my concerns about political correctness.

Subscribe. Support this channel’s development at https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3019121.

Audio only version available at http://snip.ly/sfzp1

This is a one hour discussion of political correctness. It is the first of a planned three part series on the topic. Part I deals with the fear that PC types are producing, and the profound legal ramifications of their continual activism. Part II is a case study, assessing the PC-ification of the University of Toronto HR department.

Part III is a description of what can be done at the individual level to oppose political correctness and its dangerously totalitarian aspirations.

Please share this with anyone interested.

Additional relevant links:

Website: http://jordanbpeterson.com/

Books:

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-...

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: https://jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-m...

Blog: https://jordanbpeterson.com/blog/

Podcast: https://jordanbpeterson.com/jordan-b-...

Reading List: https://jordanbpeterson.com/2017/10/g...

12 Rules for Life Tour: Dates, Cities and Venues: https://jordanbpeterson.com/events/

Self Authoring Suite: http://selfauthoring.com/

Understand Myself personality test: http://understandmyself.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordan.b.pe...

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drjordanpete...

Support this channel: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/donate

[1] Peterson constantly refers to this figure in speeches and writings, but it is difficult to find a source. The closest paper widely cited in the right-wing press seems to be by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons (2014) where the results were obtained by asking professors whether they identified as “radical”, “political activist” or “Marxist.” There 18% of social scientists self-identified as “Marxist” (p.33). However it should be noted, this was self-identification rather than any rigorous test; among sociologists it may simply refer to Marxist sociological analysis.

[2] It should be mentioned (as have many including Ben Burgis (2021)) that while Peterson implicates academic figures describing themselves as Marxist for condoning or advocating murderous historical regimes, Peterson identifies his own work explicitly with Martin Heidegger — a full and outspoken member of the Nazi party (Peterson, 2018, p. xxxi) — and claims he is “heavily influenced by” Mircea Eliade (Peterson, May 5 2019) — a supporter of the fascist and antisemitic Romanian fascist movement (Rennie, 2018). While there may be a real debate to be had about figures associated with various nefarious political regimes, Peterson’s attempt here is at facile and completely hypocritical on his own terms.

[3] My method for slides has been to use the number of → to indicate sub bullet points.

[4] Bill C-16 amends the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code, (Bill C-16, 2016) while the Canadian Bill of Human Rights is a separate and unrelated piece of legislation.

[5] Bill C-16 is a federal bill applies to institutions and corporations operating under federal jurisdiction, while the Ontario Human Rights Commission applies to Human Rights legislation within Ontario’s provincial jurisdiction and does not affect the implementation of federal law. Federal Human Rights in Canada are governed the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2013). Peterson does not seem to be aware of the distinction or the latter.

[6] Peterson gives no citation for this dubious claim, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission has no jurisdiction outside of Ontario (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2013). Other provinces in Canada implemented policies on Human Rights for trans people in their independent legislatures by elected candidates, rather than a policy by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. In Kyle Kirkup (2018) points out the first instance of a provincial Human Rights Commission proposing recognition of “gender identity” occurred at the British Columbia Human Rights Commission (p. 96).

[7] The phrase “seems to me” is one frequently used by Peterson to bridge the gap between personal unqualified suspicion and his ideological conclusions, especially when used in fields where he is very ignorant.

[8] It should be noted here that we are introduced to one of Peterson’s long-term themes in his political activism, that the world is polarized between those motivated by “ideologies” and “classical liberals” who are uniquely credited as not having any “ideology.” To do requires, of course, a naïve suspension of self scrutiny in politics described by the sociologist John B. Thompson (1984): “Few people today would proudly proclaim themselves to be ‘ideologists’, whereas many would not hesitate to declare they were conservatives, socialists, or revolutionaries. Ideology is the thought of the other, the thought of someone other than oneself. To characterize a view as ‘ideological’ is already to criticize it, for ‘ideology’ is not a neutral term” (p. 1)

[9] See Footnote 2.

[10] The phrasing “not so much worry as an ability to see high probability outcomes down into the future” indicates a theme with most of Peterson’s public rhetoric of his misusing exaggerated jargon of rationality, science and evidence to lend credibility to his personal feelings.

[11] Senator Grant Mitchell noted when commenting on Gad Saad’s testimony that Peterson’s classroom activities fall under provincial jurisdiction. By the time of recording this video, Peterson had already been living for four years in a province that recognized “gender identity” and “gender expression” legislation including pronoun use under the Ontario Human Rights Commission policy (Canada 2017).

[12] It should be noted, this seems to be the only place Peterson directly deals with primary sources when criticizing Bill C-16. All other references I could find simply referred back to his criticism presented here.

[13] It should be pointed out here the Canadian Supreme Court agrees with the principle that Peterson believes to be at risk here, explicitly ruling that hate speech legislation should not be used to “discourage repugnant or offensive ideas” in public debate, and many such repugnant expressions and ideas need to be tolerated on grounds of free expression (qtd. In Basque, 2017).

[14] While Peterson refers frequently to this “psychoanalytic dictum” and “psychological scalpel” in Jung, he seldom cites where he found it or how Jung intended it to be used. On source is Jung’s (1911) “A Contribution to the Psychology of Rumour” (p.66) where it should be pointed out, Jung is referring to the inference of unconscious drives on conscious action of a child. Peterson in turn has taken the “dictum” to be licensed to manufacture whatever motivations satisfy his own ideology: here that the Canadian government, by extending existing protections that already apply to several “identifiable groups” in society motivated by a wish to enact an “incitement of violence.”

[15] Here it is possible to see Peterson misreading a text for the sake of his own ideological commitments in real time. While the original text clearly frames the protections in terms of “all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals” — which clearly aligns with both Peterson’s (May 14 2019) own public championing of “equality of opportunity” and broadly free market ideology, Peterson has taken the text of the Human Rights Act (1985) to be suddenly obligating the government to satisfy the needs and wishes of special groups.

[16] The material that previously appeared at the linked page was moved but was captured by the Internet Archive a month before Peterson made this video and appears to represent the exact text he quotes. [https://web.archive.org/web/20160802194455/http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/identity-identite/about-apropos.html]s

[17] Peterson cites two definitions — one from the Ontario Human Rights Commission and one from the Canadian Department of Justice — which have relatively identical text of the definitions for “gender identity” and “gender expression.” However he elides that the federal definition significantly does not include the phrase “A person’s chosen name and pronoun are also common ways of expressing gender” present in the Ontario Human Rights Commission policies. This would appear very important in an argument about whether the current law can enforce pronoun use, but Peterson simply assumes the two are identical from here on in. However, it should be pointed out both definitions appear nearly identical to the wording of definitions given by health bodies like the American Psychological Association in 2011 and almost certainly originated in psychological literature. (https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/transgender.pdf)

[18] While Peterson objects here to the imposition of categories of gender identity for human rights legislation, many other identity groups in the list of protected “identifiable groups” will use terms and categories that are widely acknowledged as socially constructed. Religion, race, national or ethnic origin are all grounds of protection from discrimination in the legislation in a society with anything but consensus around what each of these terms might mean with regards to identity.

[19] The Canadian Supreme Court has affirmed that hate speech legislation “does not, for example, prohibit expression which debates the merits of reducing the rights of vulnerable groups in society” (qtd. In Basque, 2017). Senator Joyal (Canada, June 15 2017) compared the debate permissible about gender identity to that of conversion therapy, where objectionable views may still be circulated :“I think scientists can debate. The passage of this bill will not prevent those who hold the conviction — be they psychologists, doctors or any kind of profession — that gender identity is a social construction from continuing to research, debate, publish, animate and whatnot, as much as those who hold the view that you can be cured from being gay can continue to research and whatnot. That doesn’t prevent it. It’s when you wilfully stigmatize the person in front of you so that the person is outed and on the Internet they run after you and you become the object of vilification — that’s where the balance between my rights and your rights stems. I think the court knows the answer very well.”

[20] See Footnote 15: Again, Peterson ignores differences between the two definitions, as well as the possibility both definitions come from a single source.

[21] Throughout this lecture Peterson blames his ignorance of the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression” on legal and government institutions like the Ontario Human Rights Commission promulgating new terms or “ideology”, but his ignorance is actually of his own field — Psychology. Kyle Kirkup (2018) has shown that “gender identity” appears to have been first used by Robert J Stoller and Ralph R Greenson in 1963 at the International Psycho-Analytic Congress in Stockholm (p.87), while “gender expression” was first used by Richard Green and John Money in 1960 (p.103), to be more used in Child psychology shortly after. Likewise, Kirkup found that the first use of “gender identity” by a Human Rights Commission in Canada occurred with the British Columbia Human Rights Commission calling for protection for trans people after a report by the Trangender Law Reform Project (p. 96).

[22] It should be pointed out how Peterson struggles with these formulations without citing where he might have heard them, and thus preventing them from being brought into actual critical consideration. This follows one of the hallmarks of his rhetorical techniques: ventriloquizing the views of others in order to make them sound foolish and thus impressing his audience by “refuting” views not demonstrably held by anybody, and making actual discussion seem redundant.

[23] See Footnote 13.

[24] See Footnote 21.

[25] It should be noted on a philosophical level how far this position strays from the type of individual liberty Peterson nominally advocates elsewhere, and the general history of human rights. He here advocates that intersex people — a population estimated to be 1.7% of the population by Amnesty Interational and 1 in 100 by the Intersex Society of North America — ought to be negligible for legal consideration because their population prevents an anticipated legal “collective agreement” due to their being a set minority of the population.

[26] Peterson does not make clear by spelling out which pronouns he means in each example or whether he is referring to a different set of pronouns (conceivably xi and xir) with the final two but his pronunciation seems to be [ʒi] and [ʒɜ:ʳ]. He likewise never spells them out on his screen throughout this video.

[27] See Foonote 11. Peterson’s University and what happens there falls under provincial, not federal jurisdiction (Ontario Human Rights Commission 2013). Bill C-16 cannot affect he does while teaching.

[28] As Florence Ashley (2017, 2018), Barbara Cossman (2018) and the Canadian Bar Association (2017) point out, this argument is wildly ignorant of how Canadian hate speech jurisdiction has operated in the past, and further, how C-16 would actually apply. Likewise, the arguably most strenuous policy analyzed by Peterson in this lecture, that of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (2014) says of misgendering “Refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity, or purposely misgendering, will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education. The law is otherwise unsettled as to whether someone can insist on any one gender-neutral pronoun in particular” but of addressing trans people “Gender-neutral pronouns may not be well known. Some people may not know how to determine what pronoun to use. Others may feel uncomfortable using gender-neutral pronouns. Generally, when in doubt, ask a person how they wish to be addressed. Use “they” if you don’t know which pronoun is preferred. Simply referring to the person by their chosen name is always a respectful approach”

[29] The definitions Peterson is citing here are those of discrimination occurring of any kind including in interpersonal relationships that may not be legally actionable, but nonetheless important for consideration of human rights. The Ontario Human Rights Commission (2013) elsewhere points out that many valid cases of discrimination are not legally actionable.

Professor against Political Correctness: Part 1 Video Transcript

Original Upload Date: September 27, 2016

Transcribed and Edited by @Litanscombe

Note: I have attempted to transcribe the entire video without correcting any material, so as with any ordinary speech, many grammatical errors should naturally exist within the transcript. Likewise, all punctuation, paragraph separation and time stamps are entirely editorial. My aim was fidelity to the source and I attempted to transcribe every word possible including repetitions, mispronunciations with the only omissions being obvious hesitation markers. I have attempted to transcribe Peterson’s slides as they appear without reconciling them and the transcript of what he says during the video. However I have indicated with quotation marks (“”) when he reasonably appears to be reading from his slides, even if the text differs but used single quotation marks (‘’) when he seems to be ventriloquizing the voice of others. I have reserved any critical or polemical responses to footnotes.

[Slide 0:00–1:53:

Professor against political correctness: Part I

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

University of Toronto]

Peterson: So I’ve been informed about a couple of things this week that have really been bothering me, and I thought that — I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I’ve been communicating with some of my friends and colleagues about it but….that wasn’t enough. So, I thought I’d try to write my thoughts down and then talk about them a little bit and see where I got with that. So. I’ve entitled this talk “Professor Against Political Correctness” and the reason for that is because it’s blunt and to the point.

Peterson: I’m very concerned about what’s happening in the Universities. It’s not so bad in Canada I — I’ve been fortunate — very fortunate at the University of Toronto — but there are continually things happening including in the administration here and in the broader political world that make me very nervous. I like to attribute that to the fact that I know something about the way that totalitarian and authoritarian political states develop and I can’t help but think that I’m seeing a fair bit of that right now. So — I guess I also wanted to do this because there’s a misapprehension that everyone in academia is politically correct and that’s — is true very frequently among social scientists, about 20 percent of whom identify themselves as Marxists,[1] which in my estimation, by the way, is no better than identifying as Nazis given the murderousness of the Marxist doctrine and the fact that we know how it’s turned out when implemented in multiple countries now.[2] But I’m not politically correct and…I want to talk to you today about why all this worries me.

[Slide 1:53–3:10:

Two events this week

→•Notification of Bill C-16

→•Ontario Human Rights Commission

→•University of Toronto HR Initiative[3]]

Peterson: So I got wind of two events this week. One actually dates from last May. There is a legislation passed or the first reading of legislation in the federal house at — in Canada about a Bill called C-16 which was an — is an attempt to alter the Canadian Bill of Human Rights.[4] It’s tangled up with another organization that operates at a provincial level in Canada, in Ontario — which is the province I reside in — called the Ontario Human Rights Commission.[5] And as far as I can tell, what happens at the Ontario Human Rights Commission is rapidly turned into policy in multiple provinces across Canada and perhaps increasingly at the federal level.[6] There’s a Liberal government in power — that’s the name of the political party in Ontario and now there’s a Liberal government federally and…there’s obviously a fair bit of cross influence, for better, for worse. Also this week I got wind of a University of Toronto Human Resources initiative that also upset me — I guess we could say — quite profoundly and so I thought I’d talk about all of those and try to see if I could make some sense out of them.

[Slide 3:10–4:06:

→•In Part I, I will speak about legislation

→•In Part II, I will speak about the University of Toronto’s attempts to transform its HR department into a politically correct institution

→•And my speculations about implications for the future

→•In Part III, I will speak about what can be done, on a personal level, about such things]

[The Slide is shown without narration]

[Slide 4:06–7:03:

I’ve had enough

→•The new laws scare me

→•The doctrines behind the new laws scare me.

→• The buy-in by organizational administrators scares me.

→•The people behind the doctrines scare me]

Peterson: So I’ve — I’m making this video because I don’t really know what else to do. I’ve talked to some colleagues and I’ve talked to some colleagues — as I — or some some…some people inside the University and outside the University that I know — and I — they’re upset and worried about this but unclear about what to do and all of this scares me, I guess and here’s why. I’m — the law — the changes to the law scare me because they — they put into the legal substructure of the culture certain assumptions about basic human nature that not only do I believe to be untrue, I think they’re also dangerous and ideologically motivated. I also don’t think that the reason for the legal changes is the stated reason. The laws scare me, the doctrines behind the laws scare me. And you know — when there’s — when there’s a law, there’s a body of thought that’s associated with it — a body of interpretations that are associated with it that flesh out the law because the law is a pretty bare thing and I’ve read — I wouldn’t say extensively because extensively is a lot — but I’ve read enough about the doctrines behind the law so that — that has also ma — also makes me very nervous.

Peterson: Increasingly I see that these more radical ideas that — the ideas that we’re going to discuss are bought in — people buy in at the administrative level in large organizations — Corporate, Governmental — it doesn’t matter — it — it — as long as the organization is large, there’s increasing administrative buy-in, and a lot of this seems to me to be driven by Human Resources Departments,[7] which I think are generally the most pathological elements of large organizations, and I say that because of — I’ve actually had fairly extensive experience dealing with human resources departments. I think HR training is very politically correct like many disciplines — we’ll talk about that later. The people behind the doctrines also scare me. I think that generally they’re a very bad combination of resentful, uninformed and…that’s good enough, resentful and uninformed, that’s good enough. I also think that their aims are destructive rather than constructive. They — they claim constructive aims — but of course everyone claims constructive aims — but the actions that I see undertaken seem to be…to be driven by resentment and…primarily by resentment and — and so I di — I doubt the validity of the claims. The claims are always for equality and diversity and…that kind of thing and those words are very easy to say but a lot harder to put into practice so I’m scared by the people behind the doctrines.

[Slide 7:03–11:43:

• The response of my colleagues scares me:

→•The things that I’m seeing at work will have to be discussed in a phone conversation. It’s hard for me personally to explain it in email. I’m not certain this is the career path I’m interested in anymore. I actually find myself censoring things that I’d normally say to students and I’m not sure how to stop that self-censorship. The censorship leads to me not truly educating them in a manner that will let me feel like I’ve had a job well done. It’s not as much from the administration (yet) as it is from the students.

→•The personal consequences of objecting are huge. The effect of my objection on society is miniscule. The risk isn’t worth it. We should have acted ten years ago.]

Peterson: I’m scared by the response of my colleagues at the University. A number of them are unnerved by the continual move towards political correctness and I’m gonna tell you a couple of responses that I’ve got recently from people that I think are quite brave by the way — but worried about making a statement, putting their careers on their line, worried about being tortured to death by people online, worried about administrative over-response or even administrative response, worried — well here’s why. “The things that I’m seeing at work will have to be discussed in a phone conversation” — this is a professor, an American professor at — I asked how this person was feeling about…the position that they held at the University. The person said “the thing that I’m seeing at work will have to be discussed in a phone conversation. It’s hard for me personally to explain it in email. I’m not certain this is the career path I’m interested in anymore. I actually find myself sensory things — censoring things that I’d normally say to students and I’m not sure how to stop that self-censorship. The censorship leads to me not truly educating them in a manner that will m — let me feel like I’ve done my job well. It’s not as much from the administration yet as it is from the students.” See I don’t see that so much at the University of Toronto. The students here are so terrified of the job market and — and generally speaking so diligent, conscientious that they are not particularly sidetracked by political correctness. So, but that’s obviously not my colleague’s experience in the US, this is in California.

[8:41]

Peterson: Another colleague — this is more local — said something I thought was very intelligent and I — I think that’s why this sort of thing is so difficult to stand up to. “The personal consequences of objecting are huge” and this person is referring to the possibility of adverse job effects I guess, effects on employment. And you’d think tenure would protect people against that and I suppose it probably does but it’s — that doesn’t mean that people are necessarily willing to put it to the test. And they’re worried about being pilloried online by social justice warriors and — and — and — and so on and having their reputation savaged and — and demolished so… You know, and — and that — that’s a good — that’s a good — that’s a reasonable fear especially given the next part which is “the effect of my objection on society will be minuscule” so there’s this combination, that’s the idea anyways. The personal consequences of jep — of objecting are potentially huge and the — the social effects are minuscule. There’ll be no positive effect and so the — the — the thinking goes, why put yourself and potentially your family and your financial stability and all of that at risk by speaking out when the consequences will be — will be minimal?

[9:56]

Peterson: And, you know, I’ve talked to other people outside of acadiemia — academia. Writers for example, who’ve had friends who’ve made a comment online, you know, which they thought was rather innocuous that’s quoted over and over again and some — sometimes in major newspapers as, you know, emblematic of their particular stance and that shows them in a very harsh light. So. Anyways this particular colleague concluded by saying “we should have acted ten years ago.” Well, you know, I feel for both of these colleagues. I — I think they’re both excellent educators, by the way, and they’re also — I would say — classically liberal people, you know. They’re not — they’re not — you — you wouldn’t call them conservatives. You certainly wouldn’t call them right-wingers. They’re people…their concerns aren’t driven by their political ideologies, it’s as simple as that.[8] Their concerns are driven by their — by their…continual observations increasingly — continual observations…that things are not going in the proper direction in universities and that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for professors and — and — and students for that matter — at least of — of a particular kind of political orientation to even have the opportunity to say what they think. So okay.

[11:20]

Peterson: So that scares me. It scares me when I see — [we] — decent people, and I think people who are more courageous than average, frightened into submission and considering altering their career paths because they don’t feel that they can say what they think anymore and — and they’re afraid of the direction that the universities are going. So yeah that’s scary. So.

[Slide 11:43–16:28:

• The response of my clients scares me

→• Three clients in the last two years whose problems were caused or exacerbated greatly by PC-related work activity

→→• Flip Charts (bank)

→→• HR Department (educational institution)

→→•Social worker]

Peterson: Then I’m — I’m a clinical psychologist. This is starting to affect my clients, I’ve had three clients in the last two years who have been and — and — who have been driven near the point of insanity by politically correct occurrences at work. One of them was a bank employee. What — what finally did her in, fundamentally, was — she sent me a very long email chain referring to a — a ser — a series of discussions that happened in — in this Bank internally about whether or not the word “Flip chart” — you know referring to those large p — pads of paper that you put up on a stand you can flip forward and draw on, kind of an archaic technology now — whether or not the word “flip chart” was pe — pejorative and racist. And the reason for that was that — apparently the word “flip” can be used pejoratively to refer to Filipinos — which was something I didn’t even know and I suppose a Filipino could conceivably take offense to having a pad of paper named “flip chart” although it’s hard to imagine the circumstances under which that might arise or at least once it was hard to imagine that. Anyways, she gave me access to a string of email conversations about that particular topic and the — the bank did eventually agree to stop using the term “flip chart.” I don’t know what they replaced it with.

[13:15]

Peterson: But you know, she was a very very sensible person — an immigrant by the way — who couldn’t reconcile her requirement, you know, her moral requirement to work hard and be productive and be sensible and be conscientious with the fact that people were being called on — called on to alter their behavior in ways that were absolutely nonsensical. And she was from an Eastern European country and of course for her this was reminiscent of the tactics of the worst of the ideologues in the 1970s and 80s and before that. So it was very very hard on her. She — she — she was very very stressed by the situation at work and then I had another client who worked in an HR department in a major educational institute and….he was always being called on to manifest his support for various feminist initiatives at the educational institute and he wasn’t really all that comfortable presenting himself as a pro-feminist because he actually wasn’t one and you can argue one way or another about the propriety of that and that’s really not my point. My point is, is that he believed — and I think with cause — that his job would have been in jeopardy if he would have let his objections to the demands of the political environment within the workplace, if he would have made those objections known. And I — and I would say he wo — he’s a little bit more — he was a little bit more to the right than most of the people that…that I’ve talked with, but not to any great degree although like many people, I think he’s being driven in that direction by the continual radical moves to the left that seem to be part and parcel of every organization in — in — in maybe in modern Western society now.

[15:13]

Peterson: And then — then the other client that I had who was very much troubled by this was a social worker who was — was I think she was — she was — she was a immigrant as well, quite conservative from — she was from a conservative culture and was very much…had very much difficulty with the demands for example that she allow non surgically altered transsexual men free access to the women’s shelters and the women’s shelters for example here are — are some of the people in them obviously say, are Muslim women who come from very conservative cultures who really can’t even function in a situation where — you know a — a — a — a male — a biological male has been given access to what in principle is supposed to be a woman shelter and — and that was one of many things that — that bothered her…but we don’t need to get into that. The point is is that I’ve had people who’ve been driven to seek psychological counseling because of the effect of politically correct oppression on them in the workplace and…so that’s worrisome. So that’s a whole bunch of things that make me nervous.

[Slide 16:28–19:52:

•My own response scares me

→•I’m scared to do this lecture

→•I think some of the things I am teaching may now be illegal to even say]

Peterson: And then my own response scares me. I find this stuff maddening. I can’t really believe the amount of foolishness that — that — that — that — that has accumulated around these rather contentious…Marxist, semi-Marxist political issues which I have — which I don’t — I have no respect for. As I said already, I think that Marxism and neo-Marxism is no better than fascism and neo-fascism. I think the historical evidence for that is absolutely clear. I can’t understand why we think it’s acceptable for academics and their followers to call themselves Marxist and neo-Marxists but we — we — we would — we — we would not for a second countenance the same thing from the fascists and the neo-fascists. [9][Pause] Anyways the upshot of it is is that I’m nervous about doing this lecture and I’ve also become nervous about some of the things that I’m teaching which I think — and I’m going to discuss this a little bit further or [look] — further on in this — in this discussion — I think that some of the things that I say in my lectures now might be illegal. I think they might even be — I think that they might even be sufficient to me to be — for me to be brought before the Ontario Human Rights Commission under their amended hate speech laws. And that scares me as well, and it scares me that I think that because it sounds paranoid but….most of the time in the past when I’ve been concerned that the — that something is going to happen at an administrative or bureaucratic level at the university that it — it’s — it’s frequently the case that when I’m worried about something happening that it does actually happen and that it’s not so much worry as an ability to see high probability outcomes down into the future.[10] So — and you know — even if — even if the things that I’m saying are — haven’t been made illegal or — you know — heaven forbid — transformed into — suddenly — into hate speech.[11] I am nervous that they might be and even that’s making it more difficult for me to teach because in order for me to teach I have to say what I think is true and I can’t do that if I’m afraid — if I have to be afraid of the consequences. I’ll — I’ll — I’ll stop talking — you know — even — I’ll…[sigh] If you can say one thing or the other and there’s a lot of pressure not to say the first thing and you could just as easily say the second thing, it’s just as easy to say the second thing. Why not just — not bother with it — you know — well, the reason I can’t do that is because if I have something to say and I don’t say it then it drives me crazy and so — and that’s not something I’m willing to — I’m not willing to go down that path and I’ve already decided that I’m gonna try to tell people what I think and — and to tell them what I think to be the truth even though — it’s the truth that I think that, I’m not saying that what I think is true. I mean who knows what’s true? That’s why we have freedom of speech, right? To sort out what’s true. So — but I can tell you that it’s true that I’m scared about this and I think that’s appalling, I really think that’s appalling.

[Slide 19:52–23:18

Bill C-16: An act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code

→•This enactment amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.

→•The enactment also amends the Criminal Code to extend the protection against hate propaganda set out in that Act to any section of the public that is distinguished by gender identity or expression and to clearly set out that evidence that an offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on gender identity or expression constitutes an aggravating circumstance that a court must take into consideration when it imposes a sentence.]

Peterson: All right, so this is Bill C-16 and — and somebody sent this to me this week and pointing out what was happening with regards to this fundamental Canadian human rights legislation and I’m gonna do a bad job of this because it take — it takes more time than I have to do this properly, so all I can do is tell you my initial thoughts and try to justify them as best I can. It would take months to do this lecture properly and I haven’t got months to do it property so I’m gonna have to do it badly.[12] So here we go.

[20:27]

Peterson: So “Bill C-16 is an Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code.” So these are major — this is a major Amendment because the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code are major pieces of legislation, they affect everyone and the consequences for contravening them are severe. As severe as…severe consequences can be short of — you know…of illness and death. So they’re are non-trivial pieces of legislation. Now if you guys aren’t in Canada you might wonder why you should care about this but what’s happening in Canada is happening throughout the West. So I’m gonna concentrate on the local occurrences but you can think — you can be sure they’re emblematic of similar things happening in your jurisdictions. So, cause this is certainly not only a Canadian problem and in fact I would say — to — to some fairly large degree Canada has been reasonably free of this especially at the University level and — and it’s almost as if we’re importing it unnecessarily. But okay. “This enactment amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.”

[21:38]

Peterson: Now this amendment has only gone through first reading, this was back in May. But similar legislation has already been passed in a number of provinces — those are the smaller — like — this — they’re like states. They’re the smaller subdivisions of — of the Canadian political system. So this hasn’t been made into law federally. But it — it — it’s — it’s likely going to and it already has at the provincial level as I said. So “this enactment also amends the Criminal Code to extend the protection against hate propaganda set out in that Act to any section of the public that is distinguished by gender identity or expression and it clearly set out that evidence that an offense was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on gender identity or expression constitutes an aggravating circumstance that a court must take into consideration when it imposes a sentence.” Okay, so that’s basically a hate crime — modification. So if you commit a crime, well that’s one thing. But if you commit a crime and it’s motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on age, sex, race, ethnic identity and so — so — so and other things including now gender identity or expression — then that makes the crime worse. It falls into the category of hate crime and so that’s what this modification is intended to — produce or to bring about. So j — any — any crime that is associated with “bias, prejudice or hate based on gender identity or expression is now an aggravating circumstance.” Okay so — so it’s a hate crime.

[Slide 23:18–27:11:

Hate Speech

→•Making hate speech go away does not make hate go away.

→→•It drives it underground, where it festers invisibly.

→→• If you want to know where the ahters are, then let them talk.

→• Hate speech vs “you are making me uncomfortable”

→→• The recent case of Lionel Shriver]

Peterson: Now I have some real problems with hate speech legislation and the reason I have problems with it is that it’s not obvious when speech is motivated by hate. Angry speech can feel like it’s motivated by hate. But angry speech is the only kind of speech, in some sense, that is indicative of real disagreement. I mean I’m not saying that all disagreement should be angry, I’m just saying that — if there is real disagreement — the — it’s anger is often the evidence for the existence of real disagreement and if there’s real disagreement angry people have to talk it out. Because if they don’t then…well then a bunch of terrible things happen. First of all you start losing track of who the angry people are, second they don’t get to say it — what’s on their mind and even listen to themselves. They don’t get to have other people tell them that they’re wrong, they don’t get to modify their viewpoints. Because talking is thinking, you know? And if you stop people from talking then you stop them from thinking, and that’s a really bad thing. And then if you — if you — if you interpret hate speech too broadly then you drive the so-called haters underground and then you don’t know what they’re up to and when people go underground that isn’t good. That — that’s really not good.[13] You get the rise of all sorts of underground political movements when people aren’t able to express what they think even though it’s unpleasant. So if you want to know where the haters are then you have to let them talk.

[24:52]

Peterson: You know, and we even tell two-year-olds who are angry, we say, well, ‘use your words.’ And the reason we tell two-year-olds that is because the alternative to using your words is using your fists. And so if we don’t let angry people talk, then the only — they only have two — two alternatives. Well, apart from changing their mind and they’re not gonna change their mind — just — if you just shut someone up that doesn’t change their mind because….partly the way you change your mind is by talking and thinking and communicating with other people and if you shut that avenue off for people then they can’t change their minds. Well then — they either — they pull it in and get resentful — you know that’s one option — they don’t take any action, or they get aggressive and violent or they start agitating for violence. And so, you know, I can’t help but think that…well there’s a famous psychoanalict dit — psychoanalytic dictum: if you don’t understand the motivation for something, look at the outcome and infer the motivation.[14] Well, if the outcome of shutting people up is that they get violent then it’s hard for me to suppress the suspicion that it was the incitement of violence that was at least part of the initial motivation for — for producing the restriction. Now I think there’s a lot more to it than that. You know, I think a lot of it is — a lot of it is desire for people not to ever say anything upsetting is actually a consequence of Trait Agreeableness which is a Big Five psychological trait and really agreeable people are egalitarian by nature but they also don’t like conflict and — but what that means is they don’t like short-term conflict. You know, they don’t like anybody to be upset, and the problem is sometimes you have to be upset in the present to solve problems in the medium- and the long-term, you know? You can’t stop people from talking about upsetting things because as I said, that’s just the same as stopping them from thinking. And — and if they can’t think really complicated things through, well then they don’t solve problems and then the problems manifest themselves in the real world. It’s no joke. So there’s a recent case of Lionel Shriver who’s a — who’s a — well I won’t talk about her, you can look her up. I’ll try to stick to the point here.

[Slide 27:11–29:56 :

Canadian Human Rights Act Modification

→•1. Modification of Section 2

→→•Purpose: the purpose of this act is to extend the laws in Canada to give effect, within the purview of matters coming within legislative authority of Parliament,

→→• to the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society,

→→• without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.]

Peterson: So this is also part of Bill C-16. This is modification of Section Two of the Canadian Human Rights Act. “Purpose: the purpose of this Act is to extend the laws in Canada to give effect within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament” — that’s Canada’s highest governing body — “the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation,” — and now hypothetically — “gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offense for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.” Okay — so — well what’s problematic about this, well I’ve outlined some of it in yellow. I don’t really like the idea of “wish to have” “the lives that they’re able and wish to have” and then “to have their needs accommodated.” Well — it’s messy. It’s messy terminology. It’s not easy to delineate needs. There’s an infinite number of them. It’s very very difficult to determine whose needs should take priority. In fact that’s why we have a free-market society. We have a free-market society so that people’s needs can be voted on, in some sense, by the purchasing power of free individuals so that nobody, no central committee, no governing body has to decide whose needs should be accommodated.[15] It’s an infinitely complex problem and it can’t be solved by fiat. It’s not possible. And — and — and this was happened in places like the Sov — this — this was attempted in places like the Soviet Union where need decisions were constantly made by centralized committees and the consequence was absolutely catastrophic. Not only was it economically suicidal it was also murderous. So the whole idea of having needs accommodated is a very, very — it’s a very, very slippery idea and it sounds good but it’s very, very dangerous. It’s dangerous because the question — who decides whose needs are paramount? — is the crucial question. And how is that — it’s answered is the crucial issue. And that can go seriously wrong. And then — well the inclusion of “gender identity or expression.” Well we’ll — we’ll discuss that momentarily.

[Slide 29:56–30:16:

CHRA Modifications, continued

→• 1. Modification of Section 3 (1)

→→• For all purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, disability and conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.]

Peterson: And there’s also Modification of Section 3. “For all purposes of this act the prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation” — and then again newly — “gender identity or expression, marital status, family status.”

[Slide 30:16–30:46:

CHRA Modifications, continued

→• Modification of subsection 318 (4) of the Criminal Code:

→→• Definition of an identifiable group

→→→• (4) In this section, identifiable group means any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.]

Peterson: So this is the Criminal Code modification. Modification of subsection 318 (4), where they define an identifiable group and this is for the purpose of determining who, fundamentally, is uttering hate speech or discriminatory speech and this includes all the candidates we already described: color, race, religion, national/ethnic origin etc. and includes “gender identity or expression.” And so well — we’ll — we’ll continue to talk about that.

[Slide 30:46–31:13:

CHRA Modifications, continued / →•Modifications of of subparagraph 718.2(a)(i)4: /→→•(i) evidence that the offense was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression, or on any other similar factor,]

Peterson: And then there’s modifications of subparagraph 718.2(a). Again with regards to hate crime: “evidence that the offense was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, color, religion etc.” including “gender identity expression or any other simpler — similar factor” “the offense was motivated by.”

[Slide 31:13–31:44:

Provincial Spread

→•Alberta

→•British Columbia

→•Newfoundland and Labrador

→•Nova Scotia

→•Prince Edward Island

→•Ontario]

Peterson: Okay. So this sort of legislation has already come into play in provinces in Canada. “Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island,” and and “Ontario.” And I’m gonna concentrate on Ontario because I think a lot of this is emanating from a small coterie of people behind the Ontario Human Rights Commission which is a particularly pathological organization in my estimation and perhaps the biggest enemy of freedom currently extant in Canada and I don’t say that light —

[Slide 31:44–33:16:

Definitions

→•From Ontario Human Rights Commission

→•Wording on their site ((http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/gender-identity-and-gender-expression-brochure) is identical to that on the Canadian Department of Justice (http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/identity-identite/about-apropos.html).[16] ]

Peterson: So the reason I think the Ontario Human Rights Commission is — is an emblematic institution in this regard is partly because I think that the — that social justice warrior type activists are over-represented in the current provincial government fed — or the current Liberal Provincial government and I can’t help but shake this — I can’t help but manifest the suspicion that that’s partly because our current Premier is lesbian in her sexual preference and that in — in itself doesn’t bother me one way or another. I don’t think it’s relevant to the political discussion except insofar as the LBGT community has become extraordinarily good at organising themselves and has a fairly pronounced and very, very sophisticated radical fringe and [Pause] I can’t help but see the hand of that in what I’m going to read to you and you can make up your own mind and see if you think the same thing. So the wording on the Ontario Human Rights Commission with regards to legislation like Bill C-16 is the same. It’s identical to that on the Canadian Department of Justice. I — I’ve given you the links here.[17] And so that’s another indication to me that there’s tremendous crosstalk between these institutions, one at the provincial level — that’s the Ontario one — it and one at the federal level, because the wording is identical. So that’s the argument for overlap.

[Slide 33:16–39:51:

→• Here are the definitions, which are now explicit categories and implicit presumptions of our most fundamental legal structure

→→•”Gender identity is each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither or anywhere along the gender spectrum.”

→→•”Gender expression is the way in which people publicly present their gender. It is the presentation of gender through such aspects as dress, hair, make-up, body language, and voice.”]

Peterson: And the other thing too, with regards to the LBGT angle on this is that the wording is identical in many regards to that that’s commonly used by LBGT activists. And so that’s why I’m putting the different organizations together. And as I said before, I’m not saying this is right, it’s what I’ve been able to sort out. It’s — it’s what I’ve been able to puzzle out and I’m putting it forward as an element of discussion. Okay, so here are some of the definitions that they use and these are “now explicit categories and implicit presumptions of our most fundamental legal structures.” So now these have become something — these definitions have become something more than fact.[18] They’ve become facts that you question at your legal peril.[19] So here’s the first one: “Gender identity” this is directly from the Ontario Human Resource — Human Rights Commission website “gender identity is each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither or anywhere along the gender spectrum.”[20] Oh, I’d also like to point out that that’s relatively — this is a petty thing to say, I suppose. But one of the things that struck me about the Ontario Human Rights Commission website is that it’s very poor — very poorly written and this particular sentence is very poorly written and policy that’s on its way to be transformed into legislation should not be poorly written because it means it’s being poorly thought through and poorly specified and it means that the people who are doing it aren’t being careful. And that makes me nervous.

[34:56]

Peterson: And so then there’s things in here that I don’t believe to be true. “Gender identity is each person’s sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither or anywhere along the gender spectrum.” I don’t know what neither means because I don’t know what the options are if you’re not a man or a woman.[21] It’s not obvious to me how you can be both because those are by definition binary categories. There’s an idea that there’s a gender spectrum but I don’t think that that’s a valid idea, I don’t think there’s any evidence for it. Biological sexuality is ancient it’s hundreds of millions of years old and it’s binary because there’s two forms of — of — of biological sex. Now of course, this is predicated on the idea that your gender is somehow independent from your — from your biological sex but that’s a proposition not a fact. And even if it’s true — it’s — even if it even if it in some manner was determined to be true, it is certainly not determined to be true to that degree now and certainly not to the degree that it should be instantiated in law. At most it’s an opinion, and I think it’s an ill-informed opinion. I think it’s a politically motivated and ill-informed opinion, and now it’s got the force of law. And then there’s another modification which is “gender expression” which is something different than gender identity so I guess there’s biological sex and then on top of that there’s “gender identity” which is separate — they’re not even correlated, they’re — they don’t bear one — any relationship to one another. I guess one is choice or it isn’t exactly clear. I mean here’s one of the things I find very confusing: it seems to me that the leftist activists have made the claim that — with regards to transsexual individuals for example, that you can be a man in a woman’s body and that that’s a biological reality, or that you can be a woman in a man’s body and that’s a biological reality. So as long as your gender identity is opposite to that of your biological — cardinal biological sexual attributes then that’s biologically determined, but if your gender identity is in sync with your biological attributes then that’s a free-floating cultural construct. Unless I’ve got my logic wrong somehow.[22] And I cannot see how both of those things can possibly be true, but — I don’t think that coherence is one of the hallmarks of radical politically correct thinking and you can tell that because politically correct people — like the people who have produced this legislation and these policies — are capable of saying things like: “it is their sense” — meaning each person’s by the way — “it is there a sense of being” maybe…maybe an individual can decide to be a plurality as well and that’s why “their” is being used as the pronoun in this particular sentence. Although I think the real reason is is that the person who wrote this can’t write. “It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither or anywhere along the gender spectrum” from my perspective that sentence is entirely nonsensical and now it’s law.

[38:23]

Peterson: And then — okay so we’ve got biological sex, we’ve got gender identity, and then on top of that we’ve got gender expression which I guess is how you express your gender identity which is separate from your biological sexual orientation. It’s “the way people publicly present their gender. It is the presentation of gender through such aspects as dress, hair, makeup, body language, and voice.” Okay, well, those are canonical categories now and it isn’t clear to me because of the legislation it — it’s possible I believe it’s possible, that my commentary on these definitions is now illegal and that it’s also now potentially classifiable as hate speech and I would say if that’s the case then[23]…like [Pause] Well it’s the sort of thing I’m gonna question and if someone should be put in jail for questioning them — then I — questioning that, then I guess I should be put in jail because I’m going to continue to question it. I think it’s nonsensical, I think the formulation is absurd, I think it has no scientific standing,[24] I think it’s ideologically motivated, I think it’s divisive, I think it’s dangerous, it causes chaos, it confuses people. There’s no upside to it. And for any — for every one person that this potential transformation of legislation is going to free from oppression it’s going to deathly confuse a hundred more.

[Slide 39:51–41:06:

Definitions, continued

→•”The Code does not define the grounds of gender identity, gender expression or sex. Instead, the understanding of these and other related terms, and the implications of the Code and the OHRC policy, is evolving from tribunal and court decisions, social science research as well as self-identity and common everyday use.”

→•”Sex is the anatomical classification of people as male, female or intersex, usually assigned at birth.”]

Peterson: And I say that as — I say that as a clinician with some experience in this matter. More definitions: “The Code does not define the grounds of gender identity, gender expression or sex. Instead the understanding of these and other related terms and the implications for the code” — that’s the Ontario Human Rights Code, and Ontario Human Rights Commission policies — ”is evolving from tribunal and Court decisions, social science research as well as self identity and common everyday use.” More definitions: “Sex is the anatomical classification of people as male, female or intersex usually assigned at birth.” I should also point out that the class of the — class of intersex is so rare to be virtually non-existent and it isn’t reasonable to make standard policy on the basis of extreme exceptions and the reason for that is that there are myriads — millions of extreme exceptions and it’s not possible to constitute a collective society on the basis of legislation that’s designed for — for exceptions. It can’t be done by definition. The laws is to — the law is fundamentally there to produce a collective agreement.[25]

[Slide 41:06–43:03:

Definitions, continued

→•”Gender identity is each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is a person’s sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum. A person’s gender identity may be the same as or different from their birth-assigned sex.”

→•”Gender expression is how a person publicly expresses or presents their gender. This can include behaviour and outward appearance such as dress, hair, make-up body language and voice. A person’s chosen name and pronoun are also common ways of expressing gender. Others perceive a person’s gender through these attributes.]

Peterson: Okay, back, definitions. Once again “Gender identity is each person’s internal and individual experience of gender” we’ve already said that, “a person’s gender identity may be the same or — the same as or different from their birth-assigned sex.” Well, that’s the theory. “Gender expression is how a person publicly expresses — or presents their gender.” Well, we’ve covered that. There’s another addition here. “a person’s chosen name and pronoun are also common ways of expressing gender. Others perceive a person’s gender through those attributes.” Well, this is also Ontario Human Rights Commission policy. Okay so this is the scenario I’ve been running through my head: I can envision a student or a colleague insisting that I ca — call them using gender-neutral pronouns. Zhe: Zed-h-ee — or Zee-h-ee for you Americans, zhe or xir I think it is.[26] I’m not doing that. I’m not doing that. I think it’s manipulative. I — I and I don’t — I don’t — I don’t recognize another person’s right to determine what pronouns I use to address them. I won’t do it.[27] Now — again I think that because of these new laws [inaudible] that — that — that my decision might be illegal and maybe it’s even a decision of hate, but I’m not doing it. I think that those gender-neutral pronouns are politically motivated. I think they’re connected to a — an entire underground apparatus of political motivations — radical left political motivations. And I think uttering those words makes me a tool of those motivations. And I’m gonna try to be a tool of my own motivations as clearly as I can articulate them and not the mouthpiece of some murderous ideology.[28]

[Slide 43:03–47:36:

Definitions, continued

→•”A person’s gender identity is fundamentally different from and not related to their sexual orientation.”

→•”Trans or transgender is an umbrella term referring to people with diverse gender identities and expressions that can differ from stereotypical gender norms. It includes but is not limited to people who identify as trangender, trans woman (male-to-female MTF), trans man (female-to-male FTM), transsexual, cross-dressers, or gender non-conforming, gender variant or gender queer.”]

Peterson: “A person’s gender identity” — “definitions continued” — “a person’s gender identity is fundamentally different from and not related to their sexual orientation.” Well, that’s rubbish fundamentally because if you ran a correlation analysis between gender identity and sexual orientation, the correlation is going to be something like .95 which indicates an almost perfect correlation for the vast majority of people — gender identity and sexual orientation are the same thing. And so — it “is not fundamentally different from and not related to their sexual orientation” that’s just a misstatement of fact. Perhaps for a minority of people sometimes they’re dissociable. But that — that doesn’t mean that a gender identity is fundamentally different from and not related to sexual orientation. It’s a complete misstatement of fact. If there’s a correlation of — if there’s a correlation of any magnitude between two things then one is related to another and when the correlation is just about perfect, well then they are fundamentally related. So — so that’s another policy that’s based actually on a lie, a misstatement, an untruth. All right so — “trans or transgender is an umbrella term referring to people with diverse gender identities and expressions that differ from stereotypical gender norms. It includes but is not limited to people who identify as transgender, trans woman, trans man, transsexual crossdressers or gender non-conforming, gender variant or genderqueer.”

[44:33]

Peterson: Now here’s what I think about these terms: you see, the people who use these terms want everyone to believe that they’re for all the good things that they say they’re for. But I don’t believe any of that. I don’t think that they’re for good things at all. I think that they use the pretense that they’re for good things — you know that they stand for good things — to continue their nefarious activity. And one of the most nefarious elements of their activity is the use of these ideological clubs — you know — when the club basically is — here’s the club. I mean the kind of club that you hit people with. If there’s a difference in outcome, then it’s a consequent of — consequence of racism and bias. And then if I point out the difference, then I’m a good person. So my little routine for wandering through the world making sure that I’m a good person unlike those other people who aren’t good people that — that need to be punished and perhaps jailed — I look for inequalities and wherever I find them, I attribute them to racism. And so that means I can spend my whole life doing nothing but…being on the side of good by ferreting out all the evil that resides in other people and not in me. I don’t trust people like that. I think that the continual generation of these terms is a consequence of the desire to make that game continue for as long as possible, regardless of the consequences, so that the people who hold those opinions can always be morally correct and have a whole set of enemies to go after. And that’s why the terms keep multiplying because every time Society moves to become more tolerant, more liberal, well then that interferes with the game because the game is ‘well we have to find racist and horrible people’ and so the solution to that is ‘well, let’s just continue to generate categories — more and more categories to demonstrate how unequal people are. Well, because the categories are infinitely divisible — and we’ll get to that later — it’s a game that never runs out. And if you’re a professional, if you’re someone whose profession is to be politically correct or to be a social justice warrior and — that might be an academic, especially a Marxist one and in all sorts of sub disciplines — we’ll also get to that later like sociology and Social Work, and many of the Social Sciences apart from those two and — and Educational Psychology that’s another major offender, and Social Psychology another major offender — then you’re — you’re publicly subsidized for your damn viewpoints and if you can continue to make the case that the world is full of racist racists and…and people possessed by ethnic hatred, you know, persecuting the — the poor minorities that your schtick lasts forever and you can fully justify your — your subsidised position as well as being on the side of right and morality and making the world a better place. What a good deal for everyone who’s politically correct.

[Slide 47:36–51:57:

Definition of discrimination and harassment

→•”Discrimination happens when a person experiences negative treatment or impact, intentional or not, because of their gender identity or gender expression.”

→•”Harassment is a form of discrimination. It can include sexually explicit or other inappropriate comments, questions, jokes, name-calling, images, email and social media, transphobic, homophobic or other bullying, sexual advances, touching and other unwelcome and ongoing behaviour that insults, demeans, harms or threatens a person in some say.”

→→•Note that this has been written to cover the broadest possible range of possibilities (which is precisely the opposite of what good legislation does):]

Peterson: “Definition of discrimination and harassment” now these are truly terrifying. “Discrimination happens when a person experiences negative treatment or impact, intentional or not, because of their gender identity or gender expression.” Okay and that could be age, sex, race etc. Okay, think about that sentence. “Discrimination happens when a person experiences negative treatment or impact.” Okay so let’s say negative impact. Well so what that means is that if I say something that makes you feel negative emotion or maybe even interferes with your happiness — because those are actually separate things — then you’ve experienced negative impact. Okay now — that — okay that’s bad enough because it means that you get to decide when what I’ve said is not appropriate. But the worst part of it — and that’s not so good — because you could misunderstand me or maybe what I’m saying is right and you just don’t like it or, you know, there’s a whole variety of reasons you might get upset about what I say. So the fact that you get upset about something — that’s negative impact — but that doesn’t necessarily mean that something bad has happened, it might even mean that something’s good — good has happened. I don’t think I’ve ever learned anything in my entire life that wasn’t preceded by some kind of negative impact, we always learn things the hard way. But the worst part of it is the next phrase “discrimination happens when a person experiences negative treatment or impact intentional or not.” Okay, so here, think about this. When it — when — when — when you have little children and maybe one — one runs into the other and knocks — knocks even your child down. You set your child up and the first thing you say is: ‘Well Bobby didn’t mean it.’ And the reason you say that is because we’ve learned — and this is painful — this is — this is a painful thing that human beings have learned it’s at the base of our modern legal systems — that intent matters. It isn’t consequences that you judge, it’s intent. If I accidentally run into you that’s way different than if I run into you on purpose. You know if I — if I — if — if I kill you accidentally that’s manslaughter at its worst. If I kill you with intent that’s — that’s — that’s the worst form of homicide. We judge people on intent not on consequences. And so this policy is designed to reverse that. It’s now possible that you can — didn’t discriminate against someone and violate the law and — and I think maybe even be persecuted for hate crimes because this is written in such a messy manner — by doing something accidental, intentional or not. Well who’s going to judge that? Well you can imagine who’s going to judge that: the kind of people who would dare to judge that.[29]

[50:25]

Peterson: Harassment: “Harassment is a form of discrimination. It can include sexually explicit or other inappropriate comments” Not defined. “Questions, jokes, name-calling images, email and social media” It — it doesn’t say what email and social media content, just “email and social media” which is another indication of the appalling level of literacy behind these — behind these statements. “Transphobic, homophobic or other bullying, sexual advances, touching, and other unwelcome and ongoing behavior that insults, demeans, harms or threatens a person in some way.” Alright so the first thing you might note is that this has been written to cover the broadest possible range of possibilities. That’s the exact opposite of what good legislation does. So if you combine these discrimination and — and harassment that — that — the — the policies basically allow for people to — like if I in — int — if I unintentionally negatively impact you with a joke, then I’m harassing you and that’s well on its way to being — well it’s a violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code, it’s an offence according to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and it’s on the way to being a hate crime as far as I can tell with the modifications of federal legislation. So — and then to — to cap it all off they throw this in at the end of the sentence: “Other unwelcome and ongoing behavior that insults, demeans, harms or threatens a person in some way.”

[Slide 51:57–53:16:

Liability: specific to trans people

→•”Organizations are liable for any discrimination and harassment that happens.

→•They are also liable for not accommodating a trans person’s needs unless it would cause undue hardship. →•They must deal with complaints, take steps to prevent problems and provide a safe, welcoming environment for trans people.”]

Peterson: Okay so that’s all pretty scary but then there’s more, of course. And so this is the Ontario Human Rights Commission developing policies on organizational liability, so listen to this: “Organizations are liable for any discrimination and harassment that happens. They are also liable for not accommodating a trans person needs unless it would cause undue hardship.” The whole issue of undue hardship is a tricky one because I’m not exactly sure who adjudicates that. I mean — you know — we’ll get to that later. “They must deal with complaints, take steps to prevent problems, and provide a safe welcoming environment for trans people.” Okay and — and — you know, old people and — and ethnic — ethnically diverse people and you know, differently gendered people and all of that so, fine. “Organizations are liable for any discrimination and harassment that happens.” Okay well that puts a hell of an onus on the organization because it isn’t exactly clear to me how organizations are going to monitor all of their people all of the time in the organizations. What if they’re using social media outside the organization? So organizations are now liable for all of this. So how are you gonna police all that? Okay, next.

[Slide 53:16–55:01:

Liability: general (Ontario Human Rights Code)

→•”Under section 46.3 of the Code, a corporation, trade union or occupational association, unincorporated association or employers’ organization will be held responsible for discrimination, including acts of omissions, committed by employees or agents in the course of their employment. This is known as “vicarious liability.”

→• Responsible parties violate the Code where they directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally infringe the Code, or where they otherwise authorize, condone or adopt behaviour that is contrary to the Code. / →•It is unacceptable to choose to remain unaware, ignore or fail to address potential or actual human rights violations, whether or not a complaint is made.”]

Peterson: More on liability. From the Ontario Human Rights Code: “Under Section 46.3 of the Code, a corporation, trade union or occupational association, unincorporated association or employees organization” now listen to this: “will be held responsible for discrimination including acts or omissions committed by employees or agents in the course of their employment. This is known as vicarious liability.” Okay “Responsible parties violate the Code” now this is where it gets — this is where it gets horrible, I think. “where they directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally infringe the Code, or whether they otherwise authorize, condone or adopt behavior that is contrary to the Code. It is unacceptable to choose to remain unaware, ignore or fail to address potential or actual human rights violations, whether or not a complaint is made.” God, you couldn’t possibly design a broader definition of liability. “Potential or actual human rights violations whether or not a complaint is made.” Okay so does that — that means that you have vicarious liability, if you “fail to address a potential” human rights violation, “whether or not a complaint is made.” The only thing I can say about legislation that’s written in this manner is that it seems to me to be consciously designed to get as many people in trouble as possible…that’s it. It — it — it’s designed to get as many people as possible in trouble at the same time.

[Slide 55:01–56:12:

Conclusion: End of Part I

→•The fear spread by political correctness

→•The increasing all-pervasiveness of the viewpoint

→•Bill C-16: the shape of things to come]

Peterson: So that brings us to the end of Part 1 of this talk on political correctness. In it I describe the increasing fear that’s spread by politically correct activism throughout large organizations including academic institutions like the University of Toronto. I also discussed the increasing all-pervasiveness of this viewpoint because it’s not something that’s localized anymore to academic institutions. It’s spread beyond them and is — is characteristic of the…preoccupations of — of a certain kind of administrator at a very large multitude of large organizations. Then I described in detail the Canadian Bill C-16 which is an attempt to modify the Canadian Human Rights Code and the Criminal Code to make a whole variety of speech acts and the holding of certain opinions or the articulating of them criminal and maybe even criminal under the provisions of the hate — of hate crime legislation.

[Slide 55:01–56:12: Coming Next

→•In Part II, I will give a more detailed analysis of the U of T’s attempts to transform its HR department into a PC organization.

→•In Part III, I will talk about what can be done about this.

→•Thank you for listening. If you want to support such endeavors, please visit my Patreon site, which allows you to do so.

→•Google “Patreon Jordan Peterson”]

Peterson: “In Part 2 I’m going to give you a more detailed analysis of the University of Toronto’s attempts to transform its H — HR department into a politically correct organization.” I’m using the — the goals of the University of Toronto as a cautionary tale about how such political maneuvers operate at a local level. Again, on the principle that a good story about something local is a good story about something with general significance. In Part 3, I’m going to talk about what individuals can do about these sorts of things, what you as a citizen — how you as a citizen might arm yourself intellectually so that you can articulate a stance against this kind of movement if you feel that that’s in your best interests. “Thanks for listening. If you want to support endeavors such of these — such as these please visit my Patreon site which allows you to do so.” It’s a monthly subscription site that helps me develop these videos and — and continue my work on them. And who knows? If things keep up the way they are maybe it’ll be my on — only source of income after it becomes impossible for me to work at a University and say what I want to say. If you want to provide such support just Google “Patreon Jordan Peterson.” Thanks a lot and we’ll talk to you very soon.

[End of Transcript]

Editor’s Endnote: I intended this transcript to make the content of this video more available for serious consideration since I find Peterson’s rhetorical power comes from a combination of three sources: insistence of personal expertise from his institutional credentials in fields he knows very little about, persistent use of obfuscatory language and using media formats that resist serious engagement by those knowledgeable in the fields he is speaking about. My commentary was an afterthought and I hope brings people back to the actual texts and scholarly commentary rather than Peterson’s obfuscations and misinformation. However, since Peterson made the original videos private and unavailable, I felt like the preparation gained an added importance.

I am available for comments and suggestions through Twitter DMs: @Litanscombe. If any journalist or academic wishes to verify the accuracy of the transcript with the original video, I could provide it if presented with the appropriate credentials.

Sources

Ashley, F. (2017). No, pronouns won’t send you to jail: The misunderstood scope of Bill C-16 [Blog post]. McGill Daily. Retrieved from: https://www.mcgilldaily.com/2017/09/no-pronouns-wont-send-you-to-jail/

Ashley, F. (2018). Professorship versus censorship: Should Jordan Peterson continue to be given a platform on trans rights? [Blog post]. Now Toronto. Retrieved from: https://nowtoronto.com/news/professorship-versus-censorship-jordan-peterson-speak/

Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code, 42nd Parliament, 2015–2016.

Basque, R.J. (2017, May 10). CBA Position on Bill C-16 [Open Letter]. Ottawa, The Canadian Bar Association. Retrieved from: https://www.cba.org/News-Media/News/2017/May/CBA-position-on-Bill-C-16

Burgis, B. (Host, Producer). (2021, March 2). Give them an Argument: 63 Jordan Peterson Wants You to Clean 12 More Room‪s [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-36-jordan-peterson-wants-you-to-clean-12-more-rooms/id1527096105?i=1000511337673

Canada. Parliament. Senate. (June 8, 2017). Minutes of Proceedings. 42nd Parliament, 1st Session, Volume 150, Issue 130. Retrieved from: https://sencanada.ca/en/Content/Sen/Chamber/421/Debates/130db_2017-06-08-e

Canada. Parliament. Senate. (June 15, 2017). Minutes of Proceedings. 42nd Parliament, 1st Session, Volume 150, Issue 130. Retrieved from: https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/421/debates/133db_2017-06-15-e

Cossman, B. (2018, January 11). Gender identity, gender pronouns, and freedom of expression: Bill C-16 and the traction of specious legal claims. The University of Toronto Law Journal, 68(1), 37–79. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.3138/utlj.2017-0073

Gross, N. and Simmons, S. (2014). Professors and their Politics. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1974). The Psychoanalytic Years (Hull, R.F.C. and Stein, L. Trans.). Princeton. Princeton University Press.

Kirkup, K. (2018). The origins of gender identity and gender expression in Anglo-American legal discourse. The University of Toronto Law Journal, 68(1), 80–117. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3138/utlj.2017-0080

Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2013). Appendix 3: Human Rights Legislation in Canada. [Curriculum]. Retrieved from: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/teaching-human-rights-ontario-guide-ontario-schools/appendix-3-%E2%80%93-human-rights-legislation-canada

Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2014). Questions and answers about gender identity and pronouns. [FAQ]. Retrieved from: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/questions-and-answers-about-gender-identity-and-pronouns

Peterson, J.B. (2018). 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Toronto. Random House of Canada.

Peterson, J.B. (2019, May 9). Book List. [Personal Website Page]. Retrieved from https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/books/book-list/

Peterson, J.B. (2019, May 15). Equity: When the Left Goes Too Far. [Personal Website Page]. Retrieved from: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/political-correctness/equity-when-the-left-goes-too-far/

Rennie, B. (2018, September 13). Mircea Eliade and Antisemitism: An Exchange. LA Review of Books. Retrieved from: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mircea-eliade-and-antisemitism-an-exchange/

Thompson, J. (1984). Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Cambridge, Polity Press.

Appendix-Original Video Description

This is the video that caused the recent media storm over Bill C-16 and free speech. In it I outline my concerns about political correctness.

Subscribe. Support this channel’s development at https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3019121.

Audio only version available at http://snip.ly/sfzp1

This is a one hour discussion of political correctness. It is the first of a planned three part series on the topic. Part I deals with the fear that PC types are producing, and the profound legal ramifications of their continual activism. Part II is a case study, assessing the PC-ification of the University of Toronto HR department.

Part III is a description of what can be done at the individual level to oppose political correctness and its dangerously totalitarian aspirations.

Please share this with anyone interested.

Additional relevant links:

Website: http://jordanbpeterson.com/

Books:

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-...

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: https://jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-m...

Blog: https://jordanbpeterson.com/blog/

Podcast: https://jordanbpeterson.com/jordan-b-...

Reading List: https://jordanbpeterson.com/2017/10/g...

12 Rules for Life Tour: Dates, Cities and Venues: https://jordanbpeterson.com/events/

Self Authoring Suite: http://selfauthoring.com/

Understand Myself personality test: http://understandmyself.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordan.b.pe...

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drjordanpete...

Support this channel: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/donate

[1] Peterson constantly refers to this figure in speeches and writings, but it is difficult to find a source. The closest paper widely cited in the right-wing press seems to be by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons (2014) where the results were obtained by asking professors whether they identified as “radical”, “political activist” or “Marxist.” There 18% of social scientists self-identified as “Marxist” (p.33). However it should be noted, this was self-identification rather than any rigorous test; among sociologists it may simply refer to Marxist sociological analysis.

[2] It should be mentioned (as have many including Ben Burgis (2021)) that while Peterson implicates academic figures describing themselves as Marxist for condoning or advocating murderous historical regimes, Peterson identifies his own work explicitly with Martin Heidegger — a full and outspoken member of the Nazi party (Peterson, 2018, p. xxxi) — and claims he is “heavily influenced by” Mircea Eliade (Peterson, May 5 2019) — a supporter of the fascist and antisemitic Romanian fascist movement (Rennie, 2018). While there may be a real debate to be had about figures associated with various nefarious political regimes, Peterson’s attempt here is at facile and completely hypocritical on his own terms.

[3] My method for slides has been to use the number of → to indicate sub bullet points.

[4] Bill C-16 amends the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code, (Bill C-16, 2016) while the Canadian Bill of Human Rights is a separate and unrelated piece of legislation.

[5] Bill C-16 is a federal bill applies to institutions and corporations operating under federal jurisdiction, while the Ontario Human Rights Commission applies to Human Rights legislation within Ontario’s provincial jurisdiction and does not affect the implementation of federal law. Federal Human Rights in Canada are governed the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2013). Peterson does not seem to be aware of the distinction or the latter.

[6] Peterson gives no citation for this dubious claim, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission has no jurisdiction outside of Ontario (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2013). Other provinces in Canada implemented policies on Human Rights for trans people in their independent legislatures by elected candidates, rather than a policy by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. In Kyle Kirkup (2018) points out the first instance of a provincial Human Rights Commission proposing recognition of “gender identity” occurred at the British Columbia Human Rights Commission (p. 96).

[7] The phrase “seems to me” is one frequently used by Peterson to bridge the gap between personal unqualified suspicion and his ideological conclusions, especially when used in fields where he is very ignorant.

[8] It should be noted here that we are introduced to one of Peterson’s long-term themes in his political activism, that the world is polarized between those motivated by “ideologies” and “classical liberals” who are uniquely credited as not having any “ideology.” To do requires, of course, a naïve suspension of self scrutiny in politics described by the sociologist John B. Thompson (1984): “Few people today would proudly proclaim themselves to be ‘ideologists’, whereas many would not hesitate to declare they were conservatives, socialists, or revolutionaries. Ideology is the thought of the other, the thought of someone other than oneself. To characterize a view as ‘ideological’ is already to criticize it, for ‘ideology’ is not a neutral term” (p. 1)

[9] See Footnote 2.

[10] The phrasing “not so much worry as an ability to see high probability outcomes down into the future” indicates a theme with most of Peterson’s public rhetoric of his misusing exaggerated jargon of rationality, science and evidence to lend credibility to his personal feelings.

[11] Senator Grant Mitchell noted when commenting on Gad Saad’s testimony that Peterson’s classroom activities fall under provincial jurisdiction. By the time of recording this video, Peterson had already been living for four years in a province that recognized “gender identity” and “gender expression” legislation including pronoun use under the Ontario Human Rights Commission policy (Canada 2017).

[12] It should be noted, this seems to be the only place Peterson directly deals with primary sources when criticizing Bill C-16. All other references I could find simply referred back to his criticism presented here.

[13] It should be pointed out here the Canadian Supreme Court agrees with the principle that Peterson believes to be at risk here, explicitly ruling that hate speech legislation should not be used to “discourage repugnant or offensive ideas” in public debate, and many such repugnant expressions and ideas need to be tolerated on grounds of free expression (qtd. In Basque, 2017).

[14] While Peterson refers frequently to this “psychoanalytic dictum” and “psychological scalpel” in Jung, he seldom cites where he found it or how Jung intended it to be used. On source is Jung’s (1911) “A Contribution to the Psychology of Rumour” (p.66) where it should be pointed out, Jung is referring to the inference of unconscious drives on conscious action of a child. Peterson in turn has taken the “dictum” to be licensed to manufacture whatever motivations satisfy his own ideology: here that the Canadian government, by extending existing protections that already apply to several “identifiable groups” in society motivated by a wish to enact an “incitement of violence.”

[15] Here it is possible to see Peterson misreading a text for the sake of his own ideological commitments in real time. While the original text clearly frames the protections in terms of “all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals” — which clearly aligns with both Peterson’s (May 14 2019) own public championing of “equality of opportunity” and broadly free market ideology, Peterson has taken the text of the Human Rights Act (1985) to be suddenly obligating the government to satisfy the needs and wishes of special groups.

[16] The material that previously appeared at the linked page was moved but was captured by the Internet Archive a month before Peterson made this video and appears to represent the exact text he quotes. [https://web.archive.org/web/20160802194455/http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/identity-identite/about-apropos.html]s

[17] Peterson cites two definitions — one from the Ontario Human Rights Commission and one from the Canadian Department of Justice — which have relatively identical text of the definitions for “gender identity” and “gender expression.” However he elides that the federal definition significantly does not include the phrase “A person’s chosen name and pronoun are also common ways of expressing gender” present in the Ontario Human Rights Commission policies. This would appear very important in an argument about whether the current law can enforce pronoun use, but Peterson simply assumes the two are identical from here on in. However, it should be pointed out both definitions appear nearly identical to the wording of definitions given by health bodies like the American Psychological Association in 2011 and almost certainly originated in psychological literature. (https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/transgender.pdf)

[18] While Peterson objects here to the imposition of categories of gender identity for human rights legislation, many other identity groups in the list of protected “identifiable groups” will use terms and categories that are widely acknowledged as socially constructed. Religion, race, national or ethnic origin are all grounds of protection from discrimination in the legislation in a society with anything but consensus around what each of these terms might mean with regards to identity.

[19] The Canadian Supreme Court has affirmed that hate speech legislation “does not, for example, prohibit expression which debates the merits of reducing the rights of vulnerable groups in society” (qtd. In Basque, 2017). Senator Joyal (Canada, June 15 2017) compared the debate permissible about gender identity to that of conversion therapy, where objectionable views may still be circulated :“I think scientists can debate. The passage of this bill will not prevent those who hold the conviction — be they psychologists, doctors or any kind of profession — that gender identity is a social construction from continuing to research, debate, publish, animate and whatnot, as much as those who hold the view that you can be cured from being gay can continue to research and whatnot. That doesn’t prevent it. It’s when you wilfully stigmatize the person in front of you so that the person is outed and on the Internet they run after you and you become the object of vilification — that’s where the balance between my rights and your rights stems. I think the court knows the answer very well.”

[20] See Footnote 15: Again, Peterson ignores differences between the two definitions, as well as the possibility both definitions come from a single source.

[21] Throughout this lecture Peterson blames his ignorance of the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression” on legal and government institutions like the Ontario Human Rights Commission promulgating new terms or “ideology”, but his ignorance is actually of his own field — Psychology. Kyle Kirkup (2018) has shown that “gender identity” appears to have been first used by Robert J Stoller and Ralph R Greenson in 1963 at the International Psycho-Analytic Congress in Stockholm (p.87), while “gender expression” was first used by Richard Green and John Money in 1960 (p.103), to be more used in Child psychology shortly after. Likewise, Kirkup found that the first use of “gender identity” by a Human Rights Commission in Canada occurred with the British Columbia Human Rights Commission calling for protection for trans people after a report by the Trangender Law Reform Project (p. 96).

[22] It should be pointed out how Peterson struggles with these formulations without citing where he might have heard them, and thus preventing them from being brought into actual critical consideration. This follows one of the hallmarks of his rhetorical techniques: ventriloquizing the views of others in order to make them sound foolish and thus impressing his audience by “refuting” views not demonstrably held by anybody, and making actual discussion seem redundant.

[23] See Footnote 13.

[24] See Footnote 21.

[25] It should be noted on a philosophical level how far this position strays from the type of individual liberty Peterson nominally advocates elsewhere, and the general history of human rights. He here advocates that intersex people — a population estimated to be 1.7% of the population by Amnesty Interational and 1 in 100 by the Intersex Society of North America — ought to be negligible for legal consideration because their population prevents an anticipated legal “collective agreement” due to their being a set minority of the population.

[26] Peterson does not make clear by spelling out which pronouns he means in each example or whether he is referring to a different set of pronouns (conceivably xi and xir) with the final two but his pronunciation seems to be [ʒi] and [ʒɜ:ʳ]. He likewise never spells them out on his screen throughout this video.

[27] See Foonote 11. Peterson’s University and what happens there falls under provincial, not federal jurisdiction (Ontario Human Rights Commission 2013). Bill C-16 cannot affect he does while teaching.

[28] As Florence Ashley (2017, 2018), Barbara Cossman (2018) and the Canadian Bar Association (2017) point out, this argument is wildly ignorant of how Canadian hate speech jurisdiction has operated in the past, and further, how C-16 would actually apply. Likewise, the arguably most strenuous policy analyzed by Peterson in this lecture, that of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (2014) says of misgendering “Refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity, or purposely , will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education. The law is otherwise unsettled as to whether someone can insist on any one gender-neutral pronoun in particular” but of addressing trans people “Gender-neutral pronouns may not be well known. Some people may not know how to determine what pronoun to use. Others may feel uncomfortable using gender-neutral pronouns. Generally, when in doubt, ask a person how they wish to be addressed. Use “they” if you don’t know which pronoun is preferred. Simply referring to the person by their chosen name is always a respectful approach”

[29] The definitions Peterson is citing here are those of discrimination occurring of any kind including in interpersonal relationships that may not be legally actionable, but nonetheless important for consideration of human rights. The Ontario Human Rights Commission (2013) elsewhere points out that many valid cases of discrimination are not legally actionable.

So a while back a Redditor brought the following video to my attention where Jordan Peterson discusses the nature of English Common Law.

In the video Peterson claims

the English common law is one of the most remarkable well developments of civilization ever period because what see in the English system basically the presupposition is that you have all the rights there are they’re not enumerated you just have all of them except when one of those rights imposes a restriction on someone else

once though the first Trudeau brought in the Human Rights Code the Bill of Rights the Canadian Bill of Rights there were lots of people who are upset by it because it’s a different form of legal reasoning the Bill of Rights says here’s the rights you have that the government is granting you that’s not how it works under the English : the English code is you have all the rights there are but they rub up against other people’s right so we have to sort that

What is absolutely remarkable about this is how it’s flat out untrue.

Common Law is a legal orientation in Britain and many of its ex-colonies that precedent is taken from previous court judgments rather than trying derive all judgments from a specific code of law, an orientation we would call Civil Law. However Common Law is not an explicit doctrine that the English adopted (like a constitution or civil code), but something that gradually developed after the Norman Invasion in 1066. In his Historical Foundations of the Common Law legal historian S.F.C. Milsom points to Common Law, like a great deal of British history, being a historical happy accident founded on the paradox of William the Conquerer successfully invading Britain promising to both establish centralized lawful practice but maintain the laws and traditions of the forefathers of the population. In the Introduction to his later book A Natural History of Common Law Milsom goes further to suggest that most of the assumptions of Common Law practice routinely preceding written laws only really exist in documented form in the sixteenth century, and our earlier assumptions may be coloured by optimistic jurists attached with central power like Henry de Bracton writing about what they aspire the practice of law to be in the thirteenth century. However, for simplicity’s sake, let’s stick with the very optimistic estimate of the practice being in place somewhere in 1066.

Peterson’s claim that there was a time during which Common law existed without a set of established rights “given by the government” is kind of silly since the period during which these conditions might have most optimistically existed before the first statutes of rights like the Charter of Liberties of 1100 limiting the power of the King and enumerating the rights of the nobility, the Assize of Clarendon of 1166 forcing the right to trial by jury and evidential examination for many subjects and the famous Magna Carta of 1215 whose full title literally means Great Charter of Liberties would have lasted a grand total of 34 years. Not to mention, Henry I explicitly justified instituting the Charter of Liberties on the basis of maintaining the rights of citizens under the Anglo-Saxon Kings which were being undermined during a troublesome reign of “an evil presence in England” of “oppressive practices” following the Norman invasions. In other words, it’s patent historical nonsense to claim that there was a time when English Common Law existed without Rights being explicitly enumerated by the government. The process of Common Law being born in England, and the first Rights-based legislation being enacted happened almost exactly the same time, under the aegis of exactly the same Kings. To suggest we can go back to a time of pure Common Law assuring assumed rights is one of those utopian libertarian ideas that is simply a bridge to nowhere because of how historically ignorant and disdainful of tradition it is. Not to mention, it should be noted as a rhetorical move that such an argument excuses the person suggesting it from ever stating what they object to in the legislation they are opposing, or giving any thought to the common sense and common law that made it into that legislation.

However, is there a precedent for un-enumerated English Common law assuring primordial existing rights of the accused against federal statues, especially a fair legal process? Absolutely, so much so that it is explicitly part of each of the early Charters where the King granted rights, especially the Charter of Liberties which is justified as protecting these rights Is it possible to separate that precedent from the tendency by governments to over-legislate and ignore courts? Yes, Edmund Burke believed that caring for, recovering, and grappling with the real difficulties this tradition was the project of conservatism. He framed it especially in Reflections on the Revolution in France as grappling with the spirit of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and Bill of Rights of 1689 in Britain, contrasted with attempts to undermine those events. Notice how for Burke, protecting existing liberties and enumerating rights into law are the exact same process.

I certainly have the honor to belong to more clubs than one, in which the constitution of this kingdom and the principles of the glorious Revolution are held in high reverence, and I reckon myself among the most forward in my zeal for maintaining that constitution and those principles in their utmost purity and vigor. It is because I do so, that I think it necessary for me that there should be no mistake. Those who cultivate the memory of our Revolution and those who are attached to the constitution of this kingdom will take good care how they are involved with persons who, under the pretext of zeal toward the Revolution and constitution, too frequently wander from their true principles and are ready on every occasion to depart from the firm but cautious and deliberate spirit which produced the one, and which presides in the other.

….

We wished at the period of the [Glorious] Revolution [of 1688], and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any cyon alien to the nature of the original plant. All the reformations we have hitherto made have proceeded upon the principle of reverence to antiquity; and I hope, nay, I am persuaded, that all those which possibly may be made hereafter will be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, authority, and example.

…

You will observe that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity — as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right. By this means our constitution preserves a unity in so great a diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown, an inheritable peerage, and a House of Commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties from a long line of ancestors.

…

By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood, binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections, keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

There were gaps in rights protections that Burke took issue with throughout his life, especially religious liberty for Catholics and the rights of the Irish which Burke believed could be protected by Common Law precedent, but did not feel were adequately protected in the existing Constitution or Bills of Rights. Burke grappled with these issues throughout his career. But to pretend there was an extended period where common law precedent without enumerated laws was the norm is simply a non-starter and a historical falsehood. Likewise, Burke’s main criticism of the American Project was that rights are not absolute or “self-evident”, and explicitly enumerating constitutionally without reference to prior institutions or precedent would harm the traditions that gave rise to their recognition like aristocracy and the crown. His strongest defense of the American Constitution was that the institutions it erected closely resembled English Parliament. It’s difficult to square Peterson’s insistence on the absolute necessity of a legal right to Free Speech with either Burke’s tradition of preserving a continuity of assumed rights into legislation, or Peterson’s own objection to the Canadian Bills of Rights being too reliant on explicit legislation. It should strongly be noted that for Burkean conservatives a generation or two ago, the high water mark for good Bills of Rights were the Magna Carta, and Burke himself energetically defends the Bill of Rights of 1689 as a strong representative of the same tradition.

Peterson also brings up the Canadian “Bill of Rights”,¹ but if you ask anybody knowledgable about his career, the primary difficulty of dealing with any of aspect good or bad of Pierre Trudeau’s career including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is that simply he wasn’t dealing with British tradition alone. Quebec, the biggest French-speaking province in Canada has a system based on civil law like a constitution, not common law which believe it or not, includes some aspects of the Napoleonic Code. Part of the sheer difficulty of Canadian Federal policy is that Canada as a nation only exists because the founders guaranteed they would respect Quebec’s legal tradition rather than assimilate it, and it was Quebec that consistently requested veto power over enactment of a repatriation of the Constitution in 1982. On this basis, finding a precedent for why the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is simple: you could simply say English Common Law is made on the basis of Charters gradually enumerating rights to guarantee assumed freedoms, and the Canadian Charter is made to accommodate a tradition of civil law. Probably the greatest Canadian Jurist of the 20th century working in both languages, Gérard Beadoin, pointed out that certain protections, especially those of second language rights and Aboriginal rights (which he found precedent for in both the Durham Report and John A Macdonald’s own writing) would not be protected without such explicit provisions. Not to mention, the Canadian Charter has many features that Peterson might ideologically be pleased with, especially the second Section including a vast enumeration of freedom of expression often taking precedent over other rights in the *Charter* justified on the basis of providing political change through Canada’s history.

The constant question with Petersonianity for me has been “What are we dealing with, and why do people find it so convincing?” My typical response now is to look for rhetorical precedence for Peterson in Martin Heidegger, and political precedence in Ayn Rand and Objectivist literature. Martin Heidegger is explicitly invoked in Maps of Meaning as well as 12 Rules though in a very manipulative way which likely misses Heidegger’s points altogether in favour of appropriating his vocabulary as a series of tropes. Heidegger had a strong tendency to falsify history and historical analysis (etymology, historical usage, documents) in favour of illustrating his points, using a process he called “hermeneutical violence” and at least rhetorically, Peterson seems to have a very strong affinity for Heidegger in this regard. I mentioned a few months ago the role of Objectivism in determining a lot of Peterson’s political leanings which has been all but confirmed in the number of Objectivist and Libertarian events and organizations Peterson has supported since. The typical Objectivist response to any civil rights is that groups facing discrimination should *never* be explicitly given rights or laws against discrimination. As such, it often just happens to be adopted as a position by those defending segregations in favour of States rights, albeit quite inconsistently. Part of the draw of Objectivist arguments is that they are so far from historical and political discussions that they appear centrist, or beyond political bias, while in reality, enjoying this state of novelty and invisibility mostly for being so far to the right wing of opposition to individual rights and anti-discrimination legislation in most countries. Part of this novelty is very likely why Peterson has such a strong draw with his fans, and sometimes like Derrida and Heidegger, makes issues interesting because you are left without ordinary assumptions. But as we’ve seen here, there is a profound argument from history alone that what he is talking about is untrue, and with very minimal reading, the issue he is opposing has a much stronger historical and traditional backing than he suggests.

In the end, the way of dealing with this is simple. Don’t buy Peterson’s bluster, especially his sloganeering-politics, and ask his fans to justify his claims. Most of them are simply untrue.

1. A Twitter user pointed out that the Canadian *Charter of Rights and Freedoms* was not the first instance of the Canadian government attempting to add a bill of rights. The first was the Canadian *Bill of Rights* of 1960 under the iconic Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. However, this Bill of Rights did not have Constitutional level of precedents, and R. v. Drybones in particular resulted in the Supreme Court being obligated to say parts of the Bill were “inoperable.” Beaudoin says that this state of uncertainty was one of the chief reasons for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Repatriation of the Constitution in 1982.

So I woke up this morning to see this and promptly went into a panic that was both calmed by the fact that it was posted back in 2011 and further alarmed when Shapiro since confirmed that [he still stands by this tweet and the views it represents and is a piece of shit For a while I’ve been wanting to post about this topic, but found that finally kicked into high gear now. Of course this from last night hits on the same problem but from the opposite angle.

One of the more difficult lessons about racism (at least for many people today) is that statements like “I admire x people” or “I have many friends of x race” or even “I am of x race” are entirely meaningless when it comes to a series of actions or ideology that are deeply racist. I’ve pointed out that Trump’s cabinet is a perfect example of this: Ben Carson is running a deeply discriminatory housing department. Betsy DeVos is running a Department of Education that is currently dismantling the meager protections and means of legal recourse afforded to survivors of sexual assault. We could just as easily criticize Barack Obama for continuing American imperial projects despite having a Kenyan father and surely having experienced racial discrimination himself. People who are members of groups that have faced discrimination can very easily turn around and practice discrimination and prejudice themselves.

Conservatives are recently particularly guilty of this appeal even while swearing off identity politics. We have been treated for years up unto the present to the argument from even institutionally accomplished figures that Milo Yiannopolous cannot be prejudiced in any way against any group because he has jewish heritage and allegedly married a black man. This week in Canada, we were treated to the argument that a protest movement whose leaders had posted conspiratorial and racist statements on social media and invited White Supremacist Faith Goldy to speak at their destination could not be considered white supremacist because one protester was black. Jordan Peterson himself notoriously lied about his connections with the Kwakwaka’wakw people as a defense against having made racist and insensitive (if not explicitly discriminatory statements on social media.) What we seem to be struggling with is people on the right misunderstanding that racism is best understood as a description of a type of action action (some conscious, some not), rather than being more narrowly identified an essential property of a person. Thus being the member of a group (or close to members of a group) that faces discrimination in no way inoculates you from doing disciminatory actions. As Briahna Joy Grey said about politics

Identity is, at best, a loose proxy for a person’s political commitments, and individual identity groups contain incredibly diverse perspectives. Failure to recognize that fact can result in dangerous consequences: it can lead us to support policies contrary to the best interests of a community simply because of optics, and it can turn us into a “firewall” to lean on, rather than a constituency to be won.

To rely entirely on membership of a particular group that has faced discrimination, or to state connection with such a group as defense of discriminatory action you have taken, is a deeply cynical and use of identity politics that is appealing to untruths. Sometimes fascism and cynical nationalism has taken the form of statements of admiration of a particular group. We have already seen this recently with evolutionary psychologist Kevin Macdonald’s work allegedly praising Jewish people while laundering clearly anti-Semitic sources. Likewise, many of the anti-Semitic nationalists during the Dreyfus affair and the run-up to World War II made their statements in the form of admiration for Jewish people while finding way to dehumanize almost all of them. Of course not every admiring statement is fascism, but should be interrogated since we have seen these patterns in the past and the horrifying results they can have. Especially when Jordan Peterson himself makes statements that minimize the role of prejudice in the Holocaust and never retracted or clarified these statements.

So the following is from Doctor Faustus, a novel by Thomas Mann, simultaneously about Nietzschean aesthetics in the form of a biography of a composer protagonist, and the social and intellectual conditions leading up to fascism and World War II. Notice in particular how at any point, the reactionary character(s) could easily mask their politics by stating their “admiration” for Jewish people, despite that admiration being extremely limited beyond the realm of actual human dignity, while in fact only expressing volkish nationalism that would ultimately lead to the Holocaust. Anyone with familiarity with Christian theology will note that like Peterson, the characters are particular hostile of the notion of sin which Peterson denies as being metaphysical and expresses hostility to prayer having a real object beyond self-reflection. The narrator himself is a notorious socially ambitious windbag who harbours some racist views, but generally tolerates anti-semitism as long as he is not personally affected: the “racial and intellectual type” described is almost certainly a Jewish character. The characters are vaguely academic and attending a would-be artistic salon, and the protagonist’s use of modernist aesthetics is used throughout as an expression of both his autonomy, but inability to deal with the rise of fascism. Mann uses free indirect discourse often, so many statements in narrative prose are intended to be in the mouths of his characters. I bolded the passages I thought were particularly relevant: yes, German sentences typically run as long as they do here, if not longer. My notes are in square brackets.

It was very strange, partly painful and partly comic, to observe Riedesel’s conservatism in contact with another brand of the same thing. Here it was a matter not so much of “still” as “again”; for this was an after- and anti-revolutionary conservatism, a revolt against bourgeois liberal standards from the other end, not from rear but from the front; not from the old but from the new.

Such a contact was encouraging as well as bewildering to the simple old conservatism; and occasion for it was afforded in our day, even in the Schlaginhaufen salon, where the social ambitions of the hostess brought people of every stripe together. For example, one of the guests was the private scholar Dr. Chaim Breisacher, a racial and intellectual type in high, one might almost say reckless development and of a fascinating ugliness. Here, obviously with a certain malicious pleasure, he played the role of ferment and foreigner. The hostess approved his dialectic readiness, produced with a decided Palatinate accent; also his turn for paradox, which made the ladies clap their hands over their heads in demure jubilation. As for himself, it was probably snobbishness that made him take pleasure in this society, as well as the need of astonishing elegant simplicity with ideas which, in a literary circle, would have made less of a sensation. I did not like him in the least, always saw in him an intellectual intrigant, and was convinced that he was repugnant to Adrian as well, although, on grounds to me unclear, we never came to any detailed conversation about Breisacher. But the man’s scent for the intellectual weather of the time, his nose for the newest views, I have never denied, and some of all that I met for the first time in his person and his conversation in society.

He was a polyhistor, who knew how to talk about anything and everything; he was concerned with the philosophy of culture, but his views were anti-cultural, in so far as he gave out to see in the whole history of culture nothing but a process of decline. The most contemptuous word on his lips was the word “progress”; he had an annihilating way of pronouncing it; and one felt that the conservative scorn which he devoted to the idea was regarded by himself as the true legitimation of his presence in this society, the mark of his fitness for it. He had wit, but of no very sympathetic kind; as when he poured scorn on the development of painting from the primitive flat to the presentation of perspective. To condemn as incapacity or ignorance, even as clumsy primitivism, the rejection of perspective eye-deception by pre-perspective art; even pityingly to shrug the shoulder over it: this, he declared to be the peak of silly modern arrogance. Rejection, renunciation, disdain were not incapacity, nor uninstructedness, nor evidence of poverty. As though illusion were not the cheapest principle in art, the most suited to the mob; as though it were not simply a sign of elevated taste to wish to know nothing of it! The gift of wanting to know nothing of certain things was very close to wisdom, was even a part of it; but it had unfortunately been lost, on ordinary, impudent know-nothings called themselves progressive.

The guests of Frau Schlaginhaufen nee von Plausig somehow found themselves very much at home listening to these remarks. They may have felt that Breisacher was not quite the right person to make them, but scarcely that they might not be the right people to applaud them.

It was the same thing, he said, with the change-over of music from monody to part-music, to harmony, which people liked to think of as cultural progress, when actually it had been just an acquisition of barbarism.

”That is . . .pardon, barbarism?” croaked Herr von Riedesel, who was of course accustomed to see in the barbaric a form, if a slightly compromising one, of the conservative.
”Yes indeed, Excellence. The origins of polyphonic music — that is, of singing simultaneously in fifths and fourths — lie remote from the centre of musical civilization, far from Rome, where the beautiful voice and the cult of it were at home. They lie in the raw-throated north and seem to have been a sort of compensation for the rawness. They lie in England and France, particularly in savage Britain, which was the first to accept the third into harmony. The so-called higher development, the complication, the progress are thus sometimes the achievement of barbarism. I leave it to you whether this is to be praised or not. . . .”

It was clear and plain that he was making fun of His Excellence and the whole company, at the same time as he was ingratiating himself with them as a conservative. Obviously he did not feel comfortable so long as any of his audience knew what they were to think. Of course polyphonic vocal music, this invention of progressivist barbarism, became the object of his conservative protection so soon as the historical transition from it to the harmonic-chordal principle and therewith to instrumental music of the last two centuries “was complete. This, then, was the decline, namely the deterioration of the great and only true art of counterpoint, the cool and sacred play of numbers, which, thank God, had had nothing to do with prostitution of feeling or blasphemous dynamic; and in this decline, right in the middle of it, belonged the great Bach from Eisenach, whom Goethe quite rightly called a harmonist. A man was not the inventor of the well-tempered clavichord, accordingly of the possibility of understanding every note ambiguously and exchanging them enharmonic ally, and thus of the newer harmonic romanticism of modulation, without deserving the hard name which the wise one of Weimar [i.e. Goethe] gave him.

Harmonic counterpoint? There was not such a thing. It was neither fish nor flesh. The softening, the effeminizing and falsification, the new interpretation put on the old and genuine polyphony understood as a combined sounding of various voices into the harmonic-chordal, had already begun in the sixteenth century, and people like Palestrina, the two Gabrielis, and our good Orlando di Lasso here on the spot had already played their shameful part in it. These gentlemen brought us the conception of the vocal polyphonic art, “humanly” at first, oh yes, and seemed to us therefore the greatest masters of this style. But that was simply because for the most part they delighted in a purely chordal texture of phrase, and their way of treating the polyphonic style had been miserably weakened by their regard for the harmonic factor, for the relation of consonance and dissonance.

While everybody marvelled and laughed and clapped his knees at these irritating remarks, I sought Adrian’s eye, but he would not look at me. As for von Riedesel, he was a prey to sheer confusion.

”Pardon me,” he said, “permit me . . .Bach, Palestrina . . . “

These names wore for him the nimbus of conservative authority, and here they were being assigned to the realm of modernistic disintegration. He sympathized and at the same time found it all so unnatural that he even took his monocle out of his eye, thus robbing his face of every gleam of intelligence. He fared no better when Breisacher’s cultural harangue shifted its theme to the field of Old Testament criticism, thus turning to his own personal sphere of origin, the Jewish race or people and its intellectual history. Even here he adhered to a double-faced, a crass and malicious conservatism. According to him, decline, besottedness, loss of every contact with the old and genuine, had set in earlier and in a more respectable place than anyone could have dreamed. I can only say that it was on the whole frantically funny. Biblical personages revered by every Christian child — King David, King Solomon, and the prophets drivelling about dear God in heaven, these were the already debased representatives of an exploded late theology, which no longer had any idea of the old and genuine Hebraic actuality of Jahve, the Elohim of the people; and in the rites with which at the time of genuine folkishness they served this national god or rather forced him to physical presence, saw only “riddles of primeval time.” He was particularly cutting about Solomon “the wise,” and treated him with so little ceremony that the gentlemen whistled through their teeth and the ladies cheered as well as they could for amazement.

”Pardon,” said van Riedesel. “I am, to put it mildly . . .King Solomon in all his glory. . . . Should you not — “

”No, Excellence, I should not,” answered Breisacher. “The man was an aesthete unnerved by erotic excesses and in a religious sense a progressivist blockhead, typical of the back-formation of the cult of the effectively present national god, the general concept of the metaphysical power of the folk, into the preaching of an abstract and generally human god in heaven; in other words, from the religion of the people to the religion of the world. To prove it we only need to read the scandalous speech which he made after the first temple was finished, where he asks: ‘But will God indeed dwell on the earth?’ as though Israel’s whole and unique task had not consisted therein, that it should build God a dwelling, a tent, and provide all means for His constant presence. But Solomon was so bold as to declaim: ‘Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee; how much less this house that I have built!’ That is just twaddle and the beginning of the end, that is the degenerate conception of the poets of the Psalms; with whom God is already entirely exiled into the sky, and who constantly sing of God in heaven, whereas the Pentateuch does not even know it as the seat of the Godhead. -Here the Elohim goes on ahead of the people in a pillar of fire, there He will dwell among the people, go about among the people and have His shambles–to avoid the thin word ‘altar’ substituted by a later humanity. Is it conceivable for a psalmist to make God ask: ‘Do I then eat the flesh of bulls and drink the blood of goats? ‘To put such words in God’s mouth is already simply unheard of, a slap of impertinent enlightenment in the face of the Pentateuch, which expressly describes the sacrifice as ‘the bread’ –that is, as the actual nourishment of Jahve. It is only a step from this question, as also from the phrases of Solomon the ‘wise,’ to Maimonides, supposedly the greatest rabbinical scholar of the Middle Ages, actually an assimilator of Aristotle, who manages to ‘explain’ the sacrifice as a concession by God to the heathen instincts of the people — ha, ha! Good, the sacrifice of blood and fat, which once, salted and seasoned with savoury smells, fed God, made Him a body, held Him to the present, is for the psalmist only a ‘symbol’’’ (I can still hear the accents of ineffable contempt in which Dr. Breisacher uttered the word); “one no longer slaughters the beast, but, incredibly enough, gratitude and humility. ‘Whoso offereth praise,’ is the word now, ‘glorifieth me’! And another time: ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.’ In short, all that ceased, long ago, to be folk and blood and religious reality; it is nothing any more but weak water-gruel.”

So much as a taste of Breisacher’s highly conservative exegesis. It was as amusing as it was repulsive. He could not say enough to display the genuine cult of the real and by no means abstractly universal, hence also not “almighty” and “all-present” God of the people as a magic technique, a manipulation of dynamic forces, physically not without its risks, in which mishaps might easily occur, catastrophic short circuits due to mistakes and failures. The sons of Aaron had died because they had brought on “strange fire.” That was an instance of a technical mischance, the consequence of an error. Somebody named Uzza had laid hands on the chest, the so-called ark of the covenant, as it threatened to slip when it was being transported by wagon, and he fell dead on the spot. That too was a transcendental dynamic discharge, occurring through negligence — the negligence, indeed, of King David, who was too fond of playing the harp, and had no real understanding of things any more; for he had the ark conveyed as the Philistines did, by wagon instead of on bearing-poles according to the weIl-founded prescript of the Pentateuch. David, indeed, “was quite as ignorant of origins and quite as besotted, not to say brutalized, as Solomon his son. He was too ignorant, for instance, to realize the dynamic dangers of a general census of the population; and by instituting one had brought about a serious biological misfortune, an epidemic with high mortality; a reaction of the metaphysical powers of the people, which might have been foreseen. For a genuine folk simply could not stand such a mechanizing registration, the dissolution by enumeration of the dynamic whole into similar individuals. . . .

It merely gratified Breisacher when a lady interposed and said she had not known that a census “was such a sin. [He is referring to an episode in I Chronicles 21 where King David is judged harshly by God for instituting a census for the purposes; note that the traditional interpretation of this passage was that David was being judged for building up the national military capabilities of Israel as warned in 1 Samuel 8:10–22: the reference to the character redirecting this passage is particularly important since it is occurring during Hitler’s consolidating power and building up the German military]

”Sin?” he responded, in an exaggeratedly questioning tone. No, in the genuine religion of a genuine folk such colourless theological conceptions as sin and punishment never occurred, in their merely ethical causal connection. What we had here was the causality of error, a working accident. Religion and ethics represented the decline of religion. All morality was “a purely intellectual” misunderstanding of the ritual. ‘Was there anything more god-forsaken than the “purely intellectual”? It had remained for the characterless world-religion, out of “prayer” –sit venict verbo [may there be forgiveness for the word] — to make a begging appeal for mercy, an “O Lord,” “God have mercy,” a “Help” and “Give” and “Be so good.” Our so-called prayer . . .”Pardon!” said von Riedesel, this time ‘with real emphasis. “Quite right, of course, but ‘Head bare at prayer was always my — “

”Prayer,” finished Dr. Breisacher relentlessly, “is the vulgarized and rationalistically watered-down late form of something very vital, active and strong: the magic invocation, the coercion of God.”

I really felt sorry for the Baron. Here was his aristocratic conservatism outbid by the frightfully clever playing of atavistic cards; by a radical conservatism that no longer had anything aristocratic about it, but rather something revolutionary; something more disrupting than any liberalism, and yet, as though in mockery, possessing a laudable conservative appeal. All that must bewilder the very depths of his soul. I imagined it giving him a sleepless night, but my sympathy may have been exaggerated. Certainly not everything that Breisacher said was correct. One could easily have disputed him and pointed out that the spirited condemnation of the sacrifice is not found first of all in the prophets but in the Pentateuch itself; for it is Moses who bluntly declares that the sacrifice is secondary and lays all the emphasis on obedience to God and the keeping of His commandments. But a sensitive man does not like to disturb another; it is unpleasant to break in on a train of thought with logical or historical objections; even in the anti-intellectual such a man respects and spares the intellectual. Today we see, of course, that it was the mistake of our civilization to have practised all too magnanimously this respect and forbearance. For we found after all that the opposite side met us with sheer impudence and the most determined intolerance.

I was already thinking of all these things when at the beginning of this work I made an exception to my general profession of friendliness towards the Jewish people, confessing that I had run across some pretty annoying specimens, and the name of the scholar Breisacher slipped prematurely from my pen. Yet can one quarrel with the Jewish spirit when its quick hearing and receptivity for the coming thing, the new, persists also in the most extraordinary situations, where the avant-garde coincides with the reactionary? In any case, it was at the Schlaginhaufens’, and through this very Breisacher, that I first came in touch with the new world of anti-humanity, of which my easy-going soul till then had known nothing at all.

I thought it might be worth looking up with Google’s search tools when the phrase was first used, as I had not heard of it before Peterson’s early criticism of C-16. Before 2016 Google only returned search results focusing on American Jurisprudence and large employers compelling their employees to voice opinions they did not agree with. However early in the year 2016 the phrase began being used as Apple’s legal defense against being obligated to unlock devices for American law enforcement. Then suddenly something else popped up.

In June 2016, a Cato scholar named Josh Blackman wrote a piece for the Washington Post about how New York’s State’s Gender Identity rights legislation which does mandate the use of neo-pronouns in certain cases is a case of “compelled speech” especially in the case of non-binary or agendered identities. The Koch Brothers’ Cato institute had previously written about the Apple defense and its wider applications so it is very likely the term was in the air around the office. So basically, a year before Jordan Peterson, the Cato institute was promoting the idea that compelled speech could be applied to socially conservative issues as a wedge issue. Peterson has quite openly associated himself with other Koch-backed enterprises (which may well simply align with his existing far-right libertarian politics) as well as explicitly endorsing Stephen Hicks and several Objectivist organizations. If I am correct, it really looks like Peterson picked up the issue from the editorial (or the more sprawling and confused form on Blackman’s blog which Peterson tweeted in December of 2016), and applied it to C-16 once he heard it would be discussed in Parliament. Lacking any content dealing with pronouns (and some trans legal analysts pointing out that the whole structure of Civil Rights in Canada can only be used to enforce what are well-known social norms making inclusion of pronouns in Canada a non-starter without existing case law), Peterson supplemented the bill with legislation from a different jurisdiction (which constitutionally cannot conflict with each other following Section 92 of the Canadian Constitution), the Ontario Human Rights Code (which itself is “undecided” about whether pronouns can be enforceable recognition of identity). I also found out recently in a podcast that despite their names being closely linked, Peterson came to his conclusions on C-16 before Jared Brown rather than the other way around. In fact, Brown explicitly says at ~10:33 that his account was mostly based on Peterson’s first video, and he believed Peterson “understood the law better” than Human Rights lawyers.

There are two things I should make clear with pointing this connection out. This is not hard evidence that Peterson used the editorial at all, and Peterson is notoriously murky about his sources (if he hints at them at all) being unclear, and his account of his own arguments gradually degrading over time. I can’t find any specific passages that echo Peterson’s statements, and don’t feel like going through the original video to do so especially considering how sloppy and repetitive it was in the first place. The second point is that pointing to Koch think tanks does not abrogate any of us from the responsibility to demonstrate why this term is manipulative and sloppy. What I hope to do is remove the mystique of Peterson’s rhetoric to properly interrogate his positions as part of a larger set of libertarian anti-rights tendencies and rhetoric. The Cato institute may have money on some of Peterson’s activities like the PragerU videos, but their outlets have also criticized some of Peterson’s rhetoric as being excessively unclear and possibly sophistical. Peterson himself admits in the conclusion of Maps of Meaning that he is not sure what insights he has chanced upon, but that he considers them to be new and valuable (in all fairness, Wittgenstein says something very similar in *On Certainty*).

This is a call to studying his work closer and looking for larger trends and errors rather than to lazily dismiss it unconsidered. As with my piece on Common Law, there is real history and good news for civil rights to be uncovered in the process. As I said earlier, I believe Peterson’s rhetoric is damaging, and will likely be with us longer than Peterson’s own public notoriety.

*Blackman has also made many hour-long Youtube videos both for his own channel and the channel of the Federalist Society in the States. I refuse to analyze any more long Youtube videos by reactionary men than I have to.