I really wanted to start a thread about Jordan Peterson, and was disappointed to find that this one got only ten posts deep and died out.
In a nutshell:
Jordan Peterson rose to prominence with his (misguided) criticism of Canada’s Bill C16, which he claims will compel Canadian citizens to address transgender individuals by their preferred pronouns under threat of fine or imprisonment. In fact, as has been pointed out upthread, the bill makes no mention of either pronouns or fines. It does state that specific enforcement of the law will be left up to the courts and local commissions, and specifically references the Ontario Human Rights Commission. It is on the website of that commission that the bill’s detractors find language about pronouns, but they are only included as one component that may be considered in assessing whether someone has been a victim of hate speech, and it only refers to specific social areas such as employment, housing, and education. In other words, your average Jordan Peterson fan is not in danger of getting fined or arrested for refusing to do a transgender person the far simpler favor of simply using their preferred pronouns.
I agree with the poster upthread who called this “Chicken Littleism,” and I note again that none of this gloom and doom has actually come to pass. What has happened is that Jordan Peterson has become a cause célèbre among the angry young (white) men of the alt-right and men’s rights movement, and has monetized his newfound celebrity through lecture tours and self-help books in which he advocates for men to be men and women to be women, and rails against the boogiemen of PC Culture, Social Justice Warriors, Leftist Authoritarianism, a poorly-defined caricature of Postmodernism, and (shudder) Cultural Marxism. His countless Youtube videos are drenched in fawning comments from his shitty fans, who insist that he has demolished everyone he has ever debated.
I have not listened to his entire Joe Rogan appearance, but I have listened to pieces. If you search for it on Youtube you can find many shorter clips that will give you a taste of his views without requiring you to listen to the entire thing.
Jordan Peterson brings a kind of intellectual gravitas to old-school sexism and “it’s a man’s world” thinking. He is beloved by Men’s Rights advocates, Alt-Right dipshits, Tucker Carlson, and Fox and Friends. Really, that’s all you need to know about him.
A really excellent discussion of C16 that clears up a lot of the hullabaloo:
And a really excellent critique of Peterson’s views: