- 19 Nov 2016 10:08
#14739608
This discussion is probably the most hilarious one yet. Read the part about New York City if you're short on time, it's highlighted.
This debate is beyond hilarious and I think we should start using the descriptor: "their special little language".
Here is a debate between the professor in question and a transgender professor they dragged up in order to defend the indefensible:
At 6:00 the transgender professor tries to defend that the average person should know 30 pronouns or more in the name of common decency. His 'Ghost In The Shell' response is genuinely hilarious and slightly frightening.
Why I won’t use ‘preferred’ pronouns – and why you shouldn’t either
Jordan Peterson, Special to the Toronto Sun
First posted: Thursday, November 03, 2016 08:29 PM EDT | Updated: Thursday, November 03, 2016 08:48 PM
In early October, I recorded a set of three videos about political correctness and posted them on my YouTube channel, Jordan Peterson Videos.
The first of these decried the latest legislative moves to make “gender identity” and “gender expression” protected categories under the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code.
This set off a firestorm online and in the traditional media, particularly after a free-speech rally, organized by students, met with counter-protesters who tried to shut it down with white noise, chanted cries of “shame” and, finally, assault and deceit.
Perhaps three million people have watched the cellphone videos of these events online.
I noted in the videos that the policy statements surrounding similar laws already in place in Ontario and several other provinces were dangerously vague and ill-formulated. I also indicated my refusal to apply what have become known as “preferred” pronouns to people who do not fit easily into traditional gender categories (although I am willing to call someone “he” or “she” in accordance with their manner of self-presentation).
I noted that under the new provisions of federal Bill C-16, now past second reading, discrimination for reasons of “gender identity” and “gender expression” has now become not only illegal, but part of the special category of hate crime.
Why exactly might that be a problem?
There are a plethora of reasons.
The first is that Bill C-16 and its sister laws at a provincial level constitute an entirely new form of legislation. In the past, legal restrictions limiting what citizens of this country can say have been put in place, most famously in laws regulating hate speech. I am not a fan of hate speech laws. I think that “hate” is not so easy to define, and that one man’s reasonable criticism can too easily become another man’s hated dialogue.
I also think it is better to have haters — or critics — up in the sunlight, so to speak, where corrective opposition can be generated, and public eye can be kept on their activities.
In any case, the new laws, to which I am objecting, take things one very dangerous step farther. For the first time, the government, advised by radical leftist social justice warriors, has decided what we must say, instead of what we can’t say. I believe this is extremely ill-advised. I believe it constitutes a serious restriction of free speech.
Since free speech is the mechanism by which we formulate problems, discuss their solution, and reach voluntary consensus, any act (particularly any legislative act) which constrains it is, at minimum, perilous.
I also objected to the requirement that I mouth words that have been produced by those pushing an ideology with which I strenuously and deeply disagree. I regard artificially formulated words such as the so-called “gender neutral” pronouns as part of the vanguard of a wave of political correctness which has historical roots that disturb me (the association with Marxism) and psychological motivations that I do not trust (based as they are on an excess of care best devoted to infants and grounded in an intense resentment of anyone who has become successful for any reason whatsoever).
On Oct. 3, the University of Toronto sent me a letter warning me about the potential illegality of my actions, and reminding me of my obligations to students as detailed in its own recent equity-based policies.
On Oct. 18, U of T sent me another letter requesting that I stop talking about such things.
The fact that my discussion may have already been rendered illegal by legislation of the type I was objecting to was precisely the point I had been originally making. When I first made the videos, several articles immediately appeared, penned by lawyers, stating that I was making too much of the dangers posed by federal Bill C-16 and its ilk.
However, as far as I am concerned, the letters from the University of Toronto indicated that my concerns were well-founded. Why else warn me that my actions potentially contravened the Ontario Human Rights Code? So much for the scare-mongering accusations.
In the aftermath of my comments, and their public criticism, I have also become aware of two other reasons why legislation such as Bill C-16 disturbs me — and should disturb everyone.
First is the sheer untenability of the request. I believe that when the formulators of Bill C-16 and the writers of the Ontario Human Rights Commission originally conceptualized the doctrine of “personal pronouns,” they had no idea that two genders would immediately mutate into, say, the more than 30 that now have legal protection in New York City.
In the Big Apple it is now a crime, punishable by fines of up to $250,000, to “misgender” someone. Perhaps our use of two pronouns, he and she, could be expanded to 2.1, or something like that. Perhaps we could even learn to use “they” to refer to persons who request it, because they do not fit well into the traditional categories.
But 30 is clearly impossible — and there are now lists that include many more so-called gender identities than 30. Thus, we appear to be in a position in Ontario where the government has made it a hate crime not to speak in an impossible manner. I don’t think anyone saw this coming.
The second additional reason is one, I think, of narcissism. A few days ago I was sitting with my wife and son trying to puzzle out exactly why the pronoun issues is so problematic. It’s not easy to think through. I use the pronouns I use because everyone else does. That’s how language works.
When suddenly put on the spot with regards to exactly why I do that, and not something else, I am rendered speechless. Justification of this sort has never been required previously. It’s convention, and it is not a simple manner to understand the evolution of or rationale for convention. But here’s what we came up with.
Civilized people present themselves in a manner that makes dealing with them simple. This is because each of us is only one person — but one person surrounded by a multitude of others. It is impossible for us to interact with that multitude, even one-on-one, without conventions that make each of us more straightforward than we are.
If I am interacting with a bank teller, for example, I do not want to know about his or her sexual proclivities, medical problems, financial issues, and past traumas. To do her job, she has to dress in a relatively innocuous manner, and present herself in way that enables particularized, efficient and relatively shallow interactions. That’s how society functions.
I might ask her, “How’s your day?” Depending on the genuineness of my request, she might share a bit of personal information. But there are strict implicit limits on how far she can (and should) go in revealing the person behind the persona.
It is simply not reasonable for a stranger — say, a student in one of my classes — to request that I learn, speak and remember a whole set of personal descriptors as a precondition for our interactions. It is certainly not reasonable to demand that I do so — and it is absolutely unreasonable for that demand to have been given the force of law. You don’t get to exercise control over my speech.
The demand for use of preferred pronouns is not an issue of equality, inclusion or respect for others. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s a purposeful assault on the structure of language. It’s a dangerous incursion into the domain of free speech. It’s narcissistic self-centeredness. It’s part and parcel of the PC madness that threatens to engulf our culture.
A line must be drawn somewhere, and this is a good place to draw it. We should, further, abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission and its enforcement wing, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. We should reject Bill C-16, and we should repeal its sister legislation in those provinces where it has already been instantiated.
We should refuse, in no uncertain terms, the demands by the ideologically possessed that we speak their special language. Or we should await the consequences, and they won’t be pretty.
— Peterson is a University of Toronto professor and clinical psychologist
Toronto Sun
This debate is beyond hilarious and I think we should start using the descriptor: "their special little language".
Here is a debate between the professor in question and a transgender professor they dragged up in order to defend the indefensible:
At 6:00 the transgender professor tries to defend that the average person should know 30 pronouns or more in the name of common decency. His 'Ghost In The Shell' response is genuinely hilarious and slightly frightening.
Someone stole my sig.
Forum-autist, coming through!
"Ack-Ack-Ack!"
Forum-autist, coming through!
"Ack-Ack-Ack!"