• Jordan Peterson Critiques and Commentary – He’s the Secular Complementarian

 Jordan Peterson Critiques and Commentary – He’s the Secular Complementarian

When anyone disagrees with anything Jordan Peterson says or writes, his fan boys – his advocates, his supporters, whatever you wish to call them (some of them are touchy about this!) – tend to react in the same way that supporters of James Damore, of Google Memo infamy react.

The moment you say on Twitter or a blog post that you disagreed with Damore’s memo about women in tech fields, invariably, you get one of these reactions:

“I bet you didn’t read the memo!”

And you reply,

“Why, yes, actually, I did read the memo.”

Then you get the next comment:

“Well, you didn’t understand it! I understood it! Stop mischaracterizing Damore or his memo!”

And you say, why yes, you understood the memo just fine, and you’re not misrepresenting it, but you still disagree with Damore’s assumptions, his use of gender stereotypes, and his premises.

And so it is with disciples of Lobster-loving Peterson.

Jordan Peterson sycophants play at the same game.

First, they will ask if you have read EVERY book or article he’s ever written.

If you have not, some of them will dismiss you out of hand.

Some will start pasting in 456,334 links to very long articles (that would take days to read) explaining Peterson or his views and expect you to read all of them.

Even if you have read Peterson’s works, or have read some material he’s written, read interviews with him in magazines, watched interviews he’s given, and so forth, the Peterson acolyte will insist you do not understand Peterson, and so, you are misrepresenting Peterson or his views (even though you are not).

This comic sums up Jordan Peterson fan boys succinctly (and it’s accurate):

Every Conversation with a Jordan Peterson Fan

I am right wing, a moderate conservative. I am not a liberal.

I’ve seen Peterson in television interviews, I’ve read some of his interviews online, I watched a video or two of him on You Tube, and I’ve read articles about him and his views.

About one of the only areas of agreement I have with Peterson is that many staff, faculty, and student bodies of many university campuses are very liberal, and they try to silence the views of conservatives who dissent from whatever the liberal talking points are.

I agree with him that this problem or situation exists, and it’s not a good thing.

I’m familiar enough with Peterson’s work and his view points on some issues to say his views strike me as sexist (I can say the same thing about Damore, but as I’ve written about Damore in the past, I’ll try to stick more to discussing Peterson here).

Here is what I’ve concluded about Peterson after reading some of his articles, comments, or listening to him in video or televised interviews:

Peterson is the secular equivalent of Christian gender complementarians.

I am an ex-complementarian, and I have no intention of jumping back into that mindset or world of ideas.

Christian gender complementarianism is nothing but sexism with a religious or biblical-sounding veneer applied to it, to make it sound as though it is God-approved and that it’s not immoral or insulting.

Based upon what I’ve been exposed to so far, here’s my understanding of Peterson’s views in regards to the biological sexes and gender roles:

Peterson seems to think that men and women are biologically programmed, since the dawn of time or the start of civilization, to want to prefer and to live out traditional gender roles, and he feels this is a good thing, that it provides structure for a culture, and women would be at their happiest and most fulfilled if they would abide by traditional gender roles.

• Three Sexist Myths About the Brain, Debunked, by Murali Doraiswamy and Tara Swart

For those who, for some strange reason, place much stock in Scandanavian studies (because Scandanavia is supposedly the most gender fair set of nations in the world), one of the points on this list references a Scandanavian study.

I notice a lot of people like to attempt to defend treating women unfairly by pointing to so-called scientific studies which supposedly show women as a whole are worse at X or Y than most men. I find this tendency to be deplorable.

I don’t wish to reproduce 100% of the article on my blog here, so I would ask that you please use the link below to visit their page read the page in its entirety.

Three Sexist Myths About the Brain, Debunked – published October 2016

Snippets:

 Written by Murali Doraiswamy, Professor, Duke University Health System

Tara Swart, CEO, The Unlimited Mind. She is also a Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and coauthor of Neuroscience for Leadership.

….From succeeding in a man’s world, perhaps it is now women who are wired for success? As technology disrupts and levels the playing field, leaders need to be emotionally intelligent, able to handle competing demands and intuitive – traits more traditionally associated with women.

But is there any neuroscientific grounding behind these gender stereotypes?
What is clear from extensive research from institutes such as McMaster University, the University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge University is that there are physical differences between a man and a woman’s brain – in structure and chemicals, as well as function.

• Men Depicted as Victims Part 2 – “Depressed, Repressed, Objectified: Are Men the New Women?” by E. Day – Or: Is it Scientifically Plausible That Men Are Innately Dumber Than Women And Do Men Biologically Prefer to Fail School?

 Men Depicted as Victims Part 2 – “Depressed, Repressed, Objectified: Are Men the New Women?” by E. Day – Or: Is it Scientifically Plausible That Men Are Innately Dumber Than Women And Do Men Biologically Prefer to Fail School?

If you’ve seen the blog heading, please do me a favor and read the entire post before tweeting or posting nasty comments at me. Thank you. (Do I seriously think that all men are born dumber than all women, and so on? No. I’m trying to make a point that will become clearer as the post continues.)

I recently found this web page by E. Day below – it was published in 2008. It’s a report filled with quotes by men (and if I remember correctly, a few women) complaining that today, men are victims, that men have life so, so very difficult, those poor things.

What was I just saying in an older post?

I was just saying that my fellow conservatives disparage feminism for one reason of several because they claim that feminism creates a perpetual victim-hood status or victim-hood mentality in girls and women.

But, I noted in that older post, this anti-feminist and conservative supposed disdain for victim-hood mentality sure does not halt all the men in “men’s rights groups,” or conservatives, or other types of anti-feminist men and women, from pitying men, and depicting all men as victims.

Some of the things some of the men complain about in the article below – about how men are supposedly treated so unfairly by women or by culture, or how men have this or that aspect of life more difficult – are actually products of a patriarchal culture – not of feminism.

• James Damore Doesn’t Understand Women in STEM — or Even STEM Itself by Tabatha Southey

James Damore doesn’t understand women in STEM—or even STEM itself

by Tabatha Southey

Snippets:

Tabatha Southey: James Damore is suing Google for discrimination over his memo. But his beliefs ignore truths about science—and his own industry

That James Damore launched a series of earnest “Is there a bias against women in tech?” stories by sending out a 10-page internal memo in August detailing his bias against women in tech, says so much about what many women in science are up against.

… While he’s hardly alone, Damore’s laborious effort provides indisputable evidence of the attitudes that many women in STEM face.

When a woman submits her resume, she knows it may be read by a Damore.

When she negotiates a raise—an arena in which she’sdamned if she does and, as the Google memo explains, too innately high in “agreeableness” if she doesn’t—she weighs the possibility that she’s negotiating with a Damore.

• Labor Board Rules Google’s Firing of James Damore Was Legal

Google’s firing of engineer James Damore did not break labor law, NLRB lawyer concludes

Google’s firing of engineer James Damore over his controversial memo criticizing the company’s diversity policies and “politically correct monoculture” did not violate U.S. labor law, a federal agency lawyer concluded.

Statements in Damore’s 3,000-word memo “regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive” that they fell outside protections for collective action in the workplace, an associate general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board wrote in a six-page memo disclosed Thursday.

Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

James Damore’s labor complaint against Google was completely shut down

Labor Board Found Google Was Within Its Rights to Fire James Damore

by Kate Conger, Feb 2018

Google did not violate labor law by firing James Damore, the author of a memo that argued women were biologically less capable to work in software engineering than men, according to an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board.

…According to a memo written by NLRB attorney Jayme Sophir, Google was careful to note that it was firing Damore for his discriminatory comments, rather than his criticisms of Google’s diversity and inclusion efforts. The NLRB determined that, while his critique of Google was protected by law, his discriminatory statements were not—and that Google was therefore within its rights to fire him.

• Do All Or Most Women Innately Prefer Non-Tech Careers? Re: James Damore Google Memo (part 2)

Do All Or Most Women Innately Prefer Non-Tech Careers? Re: James Damore Google Memo (part 2)

Continued from Part 1

Related:

Are Schools or Pedagogical Systems Designed to Favor Girls Over Boys? No, Not By and Large

(Summary of blog post: Due to gender stereotypes and unconscious bias by teachers, many girls are discouraged from entering STEM fields, taking more math and science courses)

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More links and excerpts this page debunking and criticizing the concept that women innately prefer non-tech careers; also, bottom of this post: links refuting Hakim’s Preference Theory about women and careers.

Damore mostly denies that social conditioning plays a role in women’s career choices, as does some Finnish study or some such that Lydia (who harasses me on Twitter – and which I may blog about more in the future) keeps mentioning.

The following material not only argues against innate preferences but offers pro-social conditioning arguments as a factor in women’s career choices.

Using Biology to Debunk Google Memo on Women

A software engineer at Google cited biology when he issued a memo explaining the technology industry’s gender gap.

However, experts are quick to point out that biology alone can’t explain the high tech world’s gap between men and women.

Several meta-analyses, experts said, show that there are only small biological differences between men and women.

And the biggest one is obvious: physical strength.

In his 10-page memo, Google engineer James Damore said that “on average, men and women biologically differ in many ways.”

These differences aren’t “social constructs,” he added.

“That memo is roughly the equivalent of a memo denying climate change,” Janet Shibley Hyde, director of the Center for Research on Gender and Women at the University of Wisconsin, told Healthline. “It contains many scientific inaccuracies. And he equates biological with immutable. Yet modern neuroscience research, for example, emphasizes neural plasticity.”

Men and women are more similar than we think, said Hyde.

“The average differences between the sexes are small compared to variations within a gender,” she said. “Damore cherry-picked one small wing of science.”

• Do All Or Most Women Innately Prefer Non-Tech Careers? Re: James Damore Google Memo (part 1)

Do All Or Most Women Innately Prefer Non-Tech Careers? Re: James Damore Google Memo (part 1) | (Part 2)

Related:

Are Schools or Pedagogical Systems Designed to Favor Girls Over Boys? No, Not By and Large

(Summary of blog post: Due to gender stereotypes and unconscious bias by teachers, many girls are discouraged from entering STEM fields, taking more math and science courses)

And:

You Say You’re Against Victimhood Culture Yet You Depict All Men As Victims

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The following two blog posts provide links to material by others refuting and criticizing the notion that most to all women biologically prefer not to enter tech, science, or computer- related career fields.

I also, here in Part 1, mention some of my own ideas about this issue.

But before I turn to that subject or to the links, I want to explain why I am bothering to construct these posts (I feel these posts are unnecessary, actually, as my previous Damore posts already repudiated this idea that all women prefer non-tech jobs).