Actually, I have a confession to make; I’ve been a bit deceptive. I wasn’t referring to Andrew Tate at all, but instead to Jordan B Peterson. You might be confused: Peterson is a well-respected Canadian professor, psychologist and author of self-help books, whilst Tate is a hateful and sexist TikTok personality accused of raping and abusing women, right? Well, right, but if you think these two figures as being worlds apart, you couldn’t be more wrong.
Where, how, why and in what world can these odious views go accepted and unchallenged?
In terms of political opinions and beliefs, Peterson is the worst kind of transphobe. Everything I said in the first paragraph is true: he really does refuse to refer to his students by their chosen gender pronouns, and has even claimed that being transgender is a “contagion” similar to “ritual satanic abuse”. The worst thing to come from him (though there’s a lot of competition) is probably that social acceptance of the trans community was a sign of “civilisations collapsing”. He also vehemently opposed a Canadian bill that proposed to ban discrimination against gender expression. He’s misogynist, too: feminists have “an unconscious wish for brutal male domination”, apparently.
Maybe there’s a lack of empathy on my part, but I really struggle to see how anybody can think of the trans community in that way. Where, how, why and in what world can these odious views go accepted and unchallenged? The answer is, unfortunately, in academia. Peterson is a published author and scholar and has been cited many times, giving him the kind of legitimacy Tate could never have. Don’t be fooled though: behind the PhDs and accreditations lurks the same hatred that attracts young, incel-minded white men.
Peterson claims to be a defender of free speech. From this writer's point of view, a person’s right to be safe and unharmed trumps another person’s right to express an opinion. To apply this to the transgender case, deliberately misgendering a trans person obviously causes them harm – and you do not have immunity from this harm you are causing in the name of free speech. Free speech only goes so far.
Peterson and Tate both hold odious views that are harmful to society. If you’re not on the wrong side of TikTok, you can easily avoid Tate’s, but Peterson dresses his up in respected academic language that reaches a wider audience. Though make no mistake: they’re just as bad as each other.