Today Google disabled a Jordan Peterson's account, including his YouTube channel with millions of views. This is a clinical psychologist professor who is openly anti-Marxist (but also openly anti-fascist, and anti-antisemitic). No explanation given. Just plainly said he wasn't following the ToS but not particularly what.
Only after hours of pressure from many people they reinstated it silently.
We need anti-trust laws to curve this authoritarian Internet rising.
"His employers have warned that, while they support his right to academic freedom and free speech, he could run afoul of the Ontario Human Rights code and his faculty responsibilities should he refuse to use alternative pronouns when requested."
Now I'm sure there's more to the issue, but that's kind of my point - increasingly, not ceding to every demand by group X is labelled as being 'anti-X', and ending any discussion.
> At the event, Peterson outlined his criticism of transgender people, arguing that the idea that biological sex and gender were independent quantities was “wrong.”
You're proving my point - both disagreeing with the idea that sex and gender are independent, and hating and assaulting trans people, get thrown in the same 'anti-trans' bucket.
Wouldn't it be more fair, even necessary, to just say "he doesn't want pronoun choice to be enforced, and doesn't think biological sex and gender are distinct"? Why distort his views by condensing them to 'anti-trans'?
That just makes him a dickhead that should be ignored.
> doesn't think biological sex and gender are distinct
Which makes him wrong, scientifically (his testimony to the Canadian Senate has him saying that because the vast majority of people express their biological* sex as their gender, it would violate causality to accept they weren't linked), and, because he keeps using this nonsense to push his "trans people are just SJW leftists trying to take control" rhetoric, that makes him anti-trans.
For more about the spectrum of biological sex (way more than 2) and the expressed biological genders that can result (more than 2, not necessarily matching the biological sex) -
He is not against trans people at all. He is against being legally _forced_ to use dozens of new gender pronouns.
You keep using far left sources who don't back their claims. Jordan Peterson has hundreds of _hours_ of videos and lectures where he explais his positions. Link one of those to have an argument. Not some paraphrased nonsense to justify your position.
you should listen to his arguments before making such a swift assumption. He isn't anti-trans at all, and in fact has quite a few trans supporters - his argument is that compelled speech (legally mandating the use of non-binary pronouns) is a line that should not be crossed. In one of his videos he said that if someone asked him to use a pronoun decently he would do so, just that he strongly disagreed with the legislation.
> At the event, Peterson outlined his criticism of transgender people, arguing that the idea that biological sex and gender were independent quantities was “wrong.”
those aren't his own words though are they? they're someone paraphrasing his words. If you can link me to a quote from him directly then I'll believe it but that statement is ambiguous outside of context. For example, it seems that born-male-sex individuals are more likely to be transgender than born-female-sex individuals, which suggests non-independence of the factors. Is this observation transphobic? I don't believe it is. And that's not me citing Dr Peterson's argument - just one I've noticed personally.
To me, his words directly quoted in that article are sufficient to show he's transphobic (but certainly doing a good job of cloaking it in "free speech" rhetoric.)
if in your mind he's doing a good job cloaking hate in free speech rhetoric, how can you be so sure that he isn't actually arguing the free speech case? Hate isn't a subtle emotion, and Dr Peterson's arguments are reasonable to those who aren't fully committed to the postmodern understanding of sex and gender. Both sides of the debate are perfectly reasonable to hold and the issue isn't in any way settled (at least in part due to how politicised the study of gender and sex has become) so to suggest that Dr Peterson hates trans people because he disagrees with the far-left narrative on gender is misguided at best. If you think his views are outdated then that's a fair criticism but it's not like the current postmodern perspective on the issue is old and well-established.
> how can you be so sure that he isn't actually arguing the free speech case?
A fair point. But I'd suggest that if he was just actually arguing the free speech case, there would be no need for arguing whether trans people are a legitimate thing (cf his comments on biological sex <=> gender causality). His broadening of his argument to that and "leftists are trying to force new words into the language" (cf Canadian Senate testimony) suggests he's not actually entirely about the free speech but rather just finding a fanatical new audience for his railing against SJWs and snowflakes and political correctness.
> to suggest that Dr Peterson hates trans people
I'd say "anti-trans" rather than "hates trans" - there can be a world between those two viewpoints.
it doesn't seem to me that he's saying trans people aren't a legitimate thing. My read is that he's saying that gender is related to sex in the sense that your gender is somewhere in a spectrum of male-female (in a similar sense to masculinity-femininity). Which every single trans person I've ever met or spoken to fits into.
Only after hours of pressure from many people they reinstated it silently.
We need anti-trust laws to curve this authoritarian Internet rising.