The problem here is where the message is coming from. If I, as someone sympathetic to trans issues and who will use whatever pronouns I’m asked to, because what’s the big fricken deal to me anyways, counsel a trans person to stop whining and get over the outside world not always using your preferred pronouns, because as oppression goes it’s rather weak tea, that’s one thing. If the person who refuses to use the preferred pronouns says that, it means something rather different. In the end, the whole pronoun issue is just one of whether or not to be an asshole. People who insist on addressing others in ways those others would prefer they didn’t are assholes, because it’s no real burden to address them as they prefer. While it’s true that non-preferred forms of address aren’t a huge deal compared to, say, imprisonment or lynching or whatever, it’s still being an asshole. So if the asshole who refuses to address a person as that person prefers justifies their assholery by saying it’s no big deal, stop whining and buck up because the world isn’t fair, etc, that’s not good advise about how to deal with assholes, it’s just saying, “Hey, I’m going to be an asshole to you and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
If you re-read your post, don’t you think it is a bit too black and white? According to you, if I refuse to address a gender confused person or however this could be described with a pronoun that is wrong from their side but right for me as from visuals I decide to which of the two existing (!) genders that person belongs, I am automatically an asshole? This is just like too many other persons commenting on the web. “You don’t share my opinion so you are an asshole.” That stance is so wrong, and it is at the same time proving exactly what I mean. Stop whining, and if you are really convinced about your gender identity, be satisfied - why do you need others to confirm?
I forgive you calling me an asshole, however - maybe you acknowledge with your next comment that the world has more opinions than assholes.
Jumping in here as it’s a little unclear in your hypothetical whether you know how someone wants to be addressed.
It’s OK to get it wrong once, we all make mistakes. But once someone has told you, yeah, it’s rude to ignore their preference. It doesn’t make you an asshole in itself, we’d need more examples, but it’s consistent with the behavior of an asshole.
It’s like if I call someone “Bill”, and they say they prefer “William”, and I just say “So anyway, Bill…”
What does that make me?
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Thank you for pointing this out. Surely I would be polite enough to use the epiphet someone tells or asks me to use for him. But I refuse to ask everybody first about any pronoun preference, and I also refuse to cover all possible form of gender or not in public speech. For me, “Ladies and Gentlemen” suffices.
Also I refuse to go where I think it is ridiculous. If a fat bearded guy in a lumberjack outfit would ask me to call him Ms, that would be a no-go.
For me, I would try to call them by whatever appellation or pronoun they asked me to use. But if they asked me if I saw them as “woman”, I would probably tell them I am not there yet with that. Maybe I would one day. But the beard and lumberjack outfit would make it difficult.
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I like JP although sometimes he can get preachy. I wish he would stop throwing post-modernism into everything. Yes, it’s a sham and we all know it, but it doesn’t need to be invoked 10 times per hour and repeated ad nauseum.
In general, Peterson has a very interesting take on things. I’ve enjoyed some of his non-political lectures.
He has a fascination with how societies seem to collectively go insane (or evil), which results in things like the Holocaust and the Soviet gulags and Mao’s forced labor camps. I guess we all wonder about that on some level. He’s at a loss to explain it; however, there are plenty of examples of similar phenomena in different ages and in different parts of the world. It seems to be built into human capacity and the question is how to see it early and how to stop it before it becomes sheer madness.
I think Peterson is correct in that we all like to envision ourselves as heroic saints, but very few of us are saints and chances are that we would cave the very minute the storm troopers showed up at the door and hauled our families away to be tortured and starved for our rebelliousness.
It’s one thing to sacrifice yourself; it’s entirely something else when others are sacrificed as a direct result of your activity. You’d think twice about it to avoid putting even more innocents into the crosshairs.
The whole thing is psychological warfare and, as a psychologist, it must be a fascinating phenomenon to contemplate. There are plenty of historical examples. These things happened in varying degrees throughout history. It is technology, large armies, and global involvement that made it possible to see such previously unseen horrors and their unimaginable scale.
Peterson’s self-authoring and self-help books are based on sound behavioral and cognitive principles. If you’re a bit of a wreck, then starting out with a small and manageable goal will build your ability to take on bigger things. It’s a process, not an event. Every time a success is achieved, no matter how small and simple it appears to be, it builds confidence in the ability to take on more significant tasks. We may know this on an intuitive level, but you sometimes just need a push to get started.
Speaking just for myself, when someone with a chainsaw asks me to do something my general policy is to comply. 
He’s the incel equivalent of Gwyneth Paltrow. His lobster woo and other mythic truth nonsense are like jade eggs.
So, a transperson being addressed by the wrong pronoun just needs to “get over it,” but a cisperson being required to respect someone’s pronouns is experiencing “language fascism?”
Seems a bit of a double standard, there.
Do you prefer I call you PitJ or is it fine if the entire board just calls you Shithead?
Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall down a manhole and break your leg.
I’m not familiar with Peterson’s full opinions of gender pronouns but think of it this way…
The trans/non-binary population is very small. It is very rare that in the course of a day a cis person will find themselves in a situation that requires “uncomfortable” or “odd” use of pronouns. Even if you work or live with a trans person, you spend almost all of your time not having to deal with their names and pronouns.
For the trans/non-binary person themselves, they are always the odd person out. Always. They are always a trans/non-binary person. They are always in situations where people confuse their pronouns or names. Always being reminded that they’re “not quite…” whatever, or that people “know their secret” or that people find them uncomfortable to be around. From the gym to work to the gas station to the grocery store to a restaurant, it’s all day every day, everywhere.
Who has the path of least resistance to getting over it? For whom might it be easier to change their habits? Who’s life is least affected by making a small change?
What most people call “political correctness” is really just basic decency with a dash of empathy.
Dear Snarky_Kong,
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Following the logic prevailing on this board you should stick to my original user name.
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I don’t really care how you call me but let us stay civilized. Insulting others on an anonymous board is not only wrong and impolite, it is also cowardly. I don’t call you names in return since I don’t know you.
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By the way: Who made you speaker of this board?
Best regards
PitJ
You really put him in his place. Well done you.
Now perhaps you can leverage your position from the moral high ground to address Miller’s response just one post above Snarky’s?
The moral high ground is not on the top of my priority list but you are right, I have failed to answer Miller. This was perhaps because I thought I had made my point clear a bit further up, where I said:
Thank you for pointing this out. Surely I would be polite enough to use the epiphet someone tells or asks me to use for him. But I refuse to ask everybody first about any pronoun preference, and I also refuse to cover all possible form of gender or not in public speech. For me, “Ladies and Gentlemen” suffices.
Have a nice weekend
PitJ
So if asked to change the pronoun you would use towards a specific individual, you would comply. But you “refuse” to do so when addressing a larger audience? Why, if I may ask? Is there a specific rule or law with respect to addressing a large congregation that requires you to say, “Ladies and Gentlemen…”? What’s wrong with, “Good morning! Thank you all for coming…”
My point isn’t that the use of the common address, “Ladies and Gentlemen”, should be prohibited. My point is that its conventional usage, if abandoned, would not make society or communication between speaker and audience any worse.
Peterson first came to my attention when he started to criticise amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act and to the Criminal Code. The amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act added gender identity as a prohibited ground of discrimination, while the âmendment to the Criminal Code added gender identity to the grounds protected by the hate speech offences.
As far as I can tell, that’s when Peterson started his “forced pronouns” campaign. The thing is, though, there’s nothing in those amendments that talk about pronouns. The main reason for adding gender identity to the Human Rights Act was to protect trans people’s right to hold down a job without risk of being fired, to get accommodation without discrimination, and to exercise their professions without distinction based on gender identity. Those are pretty substantial protections, to meet a real need: trans people have been denied housing and have run into employment issues, because of their gender identity. Those amendments were to meet a substantive need, not about pronouns.
And yet that’s what Peterson jumped on: not that the amendments were to protect other people’s right to live their lives, hold down jobs and have housing. His beef was that the law affected him! Not because he hires people, or is a landlord, but because of “forced pronoun usage”! “Free speech violation!” “Political correctness gone crazy!”
So there are some problems with his take on the law. For one thing, the pronoun issue, if it really is an issue, is a pretty small part of it. His approach really trivialises an important change in the law, by focusing on such a minor issue, as if the amendments were all about pronouns.
Second, the amendments were to the federal human rights code. Peterson is employed by a provincial university, under provincial law. The amendments to the federal Act therefore do not apply to him, full stop.
Third, he has said that if a student approached him, explained the pronouns that student preferred and why, he would be willing to use those pronouns, as a result of that personal interaction. But that’s exactly how the human rights law is meant to work, if it extends to pronouns at all: reasonable accommodation of individual requests. If Professor Peterson in fact followed that approach, he would be in full compliance with the spirit and purpose of the Act (if it applies to pronouns at all).
These points have been made by defenders of the amendments, many times, publicly. And yet as far as I know, Professor Peterson continues to ride the “pronoun-forced speech” hobby horse.
Why is that?
So I’m afraid i don’t see Professor Peterson as a brave insightful critic. His comments on the law are completely over-blown and ideological, and are not based on the actual law, only his exaggerated, incorrect take on it. If he is that wrong on this area, I assume he is equally wrong in other areas.
(The Peterson criticism of the amendment to the hate speech offences, about how he could go to jail for using the wrong pronouns, is even more strained. The Supreme Court has held that those provisions only apply to the most extreme cases, where speech is used to de-humanise people by their personal characteristics. Things like calling for ethnic genocide, for gays to be killed, for the forced expatriation of people because of their ethnic background. Pronoun usage does not rise to that strict standard.)
In this case (pronouns) it certainly is. Once it gets into things like the kinds of stuff FIRE complains about more people begin to have a problem, and rightfully so. Pronouns are a horrible example of the speech codes which need to be fought because they’re a great example of how you can be polite to someone in a way which is meaningful to them and not harmful for you. However, when a school punishes you for holding up a sign asking others to talk about their opinions on legalizing weed, I think we can agree that something’s gone very wrong in the campaign to reduce the incidence of people acting like dillholes.
The thing to watch out for here is Motte-and-Bailey argumentation:
So:
Motte: “I should be able to say potentially offensive things without being legally prosecuted.”
Bailey: “I should be able to say transphobic things without any consequences at all.”
Motte: “Speech codes are needed to protect minorities from speech which makes them feel unwelcome.”
Bailey: “Speech codes are needed to regulate all speech the management dislikes.”
As for whether not Jordan Peterson is “alt-right” I would like to point out that a main proponent of the “alt-right”, Vox Day, wrote a whole book criticizing Peterson and his “philosophy”.