Pronoun Sensitive Authoritarianism

"Because the logic underlying the arguments is that ... biological sex, gender identity and gender expression vary independently [happens to be] absolutely contradicted by the data. It has become unmoored from the underlying reality [representing] all interpretation."
"Well, if it's all interpretation it's not distinguishable from fashion."
"I started to understand the role that ideology played in these underlying horrors of the 20th century and that put me deep into the study of the psychology of religion and that's really what happened."
"I've had a number of clients who have been bullied into states of mental uncertainty by their politically correct peers."
University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson, psychologist, author, intellectual, iconoclast

Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto professor who refuses to use gender neutral pronouns, participates in a heated discussion with some students at the university's downtown campus.  (Eduardo Lima / METRO NEWS)

Professor Peterson has no love of pretension and demandingly entitled social blackmail engaged in by gender-confused, alt-gender and all other individuals who refuse to conform to their biologically determined sex, pouting and blaming general society for their lack of acceptance as "normal but different", a group that includes so many alternates to the binary relationships of nature-conventional male and female, that he has risked his professional standing by taking a deliberate stand to express his denial and frustration with the issues of political correctness in the tender matter of gender.

It is most certainly worth asking the question: when did social sanity fly out the door to become a mass psychosis genuflecting to the petulance and accusations coming out of the alt-gender community? The answer may very well be when society surrendered to guilt over never having in the past, taken the situation seriously and using the issue as a topic for light-hearted incredulity. And, of course, much, much worse in less polite and politic, diplomacy-absent portions of society. When, then, society opened the window to increasingly absurdly dysfunctional socially-gendered demands and took them seriously.

Sex and gender, in fact, are private matters. And as such have no loudly, glaringly visible place in the social arena. In the sense that what happens in the bedrooms of the nation should remain there, discreetly, behind locked doors. As in who, really, cares? Do your own thing. Enjoy it, take pleasure in it, keep it to yourselves, don't flaunt it, because no one is interested. Of course under the new, open and accepting mind-bending social aura, what was once viewed as an absurd circus is now viewed as a respected sideshow, and gay parades are vaunted and lauded as a symbol of society's accepting manner.

Where once people paid admission to enter circus sideshows, they now flock to downtown streets of towns and cities in the Western world to show their grovelling support for the garish display of rude and nasty costuming and behaviour that once was guaranteed to bring embarrassment and shame to the minds and hearts of ordinary people. Ordinary people have now become aficionados of coarse and offensive behaviour in public, chuckling with appreciation at the bizarre and the wretched display of sexual license gone frantically insane.

Professor Peterson alleges none of this; he is an academic, a diplomat though his detractors would deny that, who simply insists on making a distinction between the absurd and the acceptable. Language in particular matters to him very particularly, and when language is contorted unreasonably and made effectively meaningless on the assertively loud whims of a minority he finds it unacceptably offensive. He advocates for simple, intelligent and workable language to defy the chaos of reworking society, subordinating it to a juvenile whim, complicating human inter-communication.

"One of the things I've come to understand is that the central functional axiom of Western civilization is that language ... is the process that keeps chaos and order in balance ... and that when [language is] corrupted, we careen into chaos or pathological order." Not for him the efficacy of appeasing the demands of the LGBTQIA community or communities by surrendering to the dire necessity not to continue hurting their tender feelings by committing to their non-binary gender pronouns. "The people who made these words are possessed by ideology and not to be trusted", he claims.

"We're going to have 31 different classes of pronouns? No, we're not. It's just not possible. People can't do that. Our language doesn't allow for that; we can't remember that; what if we make a mistake?" In New York City, evidently 31 gender identities and expressions have now been formally recognized. From "bi-gendered" to "agender", "gender-gifted" to "genderbender", and how about "genderfluid"? To make light of these demands is to insult those who count upon the goodwill and weak spines of those unwilling to be identified as philosophically Philistine.

"Part of it, apart from the untenability, is that ... you actually don't have the right to demand that of someone. You know that every individual is surrounded by the mass of humanity. And the mass of humanity is to be categorized in the fastest and simplest manner possible because you can't do it any other way. We use 'he' and 'she', and we use 'they' when there's more than one person, and we do that for purposes of simplicity of interaction. And for you to come to say, 'You have to mark me out as singularly special in the manner that I require and you have to remember it, no, it's like, no, you can't ask that of me, because you're actually not singularly special."

Michael Peake/Postmedia/File     Professor Jordan Peterson claims that the University of Toronto is attempting to transform its human resources department into "a politically correct institution."

His colleagues at University of Toronto are scandalized. He received two warning letters, one from the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences which Dr. Peterson identifies as "an exemplar of Orwellian doublespeak", reminding him that the university is engaged in protecting the issue of gender neutrality, as gender identity and expression are now protected classes in the human rights code. The arts dean wrote of the university stance on free speech to be defended, and a paragraph later felt the need to impose a limit on free speech emanating from Dr. Peterson.