Jordan Peterson regurgitates discredited male chauvinism of the 1970s

Jordan Peterson has instantly become an enemy of the left.

Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and social philosopher whose YouTube performances have made him a cause celebre among some conservatives, tends to measure his words. But not always carefully enough.

Peterson, who arrives in Australia next month, refuses to use gender-neutral pronouns — faux words such as “ze’’ in place of he and she — and other politically correct jargon imposed by bureaucracies, striking a blow for free speech and common sense. He has struck a chord with young men and deserves credit for encouraging them to take responsibility and not to grow up into “old infants’’ or “man-children”. A backlash against extreme gender theory was inevitable. But as the pendulum swings, it must not be allowed to create a new set of social tensions and economic problems.

Peterson’s advice to young women is a potential example. He’s entitled to say what he thinks, of course. So are women in their 50s and older, who recognise that much of what he says on the subject of girls and careers is as ­discouraging and repressive as what girls copped in the 1970s and earlier.

His video “The Lie Behind Getting a ‘Career’ ”, directed specifically at young women, sets out to dispel the “lies’’ he claims they are being taught. “The first lie is that you are going to have a career,’’ Peterson opines. “No, a tiny fraction of people have careers, maybe 2 per cent.’’ Two per cent? Hardly, especially among graduates of good schools that expect students to aim high and work hard.

The same ideas recur in some of Peterson’s other videos. Young women entering law, he claims, will find it “very, very demanding, very, very difficult, very, very stressful and very, very competitive. And you’re not going to find the fulfilment of your desire for intimate, close interpersonal relationships’’. How patronising.

Be a doctor, Peterson tells young women, and “you’re going to be looking at 60-hour weeks’’. What about male doctors? Careers, are “exceptionally demanding, you’re never done”.

A valid criticism of leftist social engineering programs, such as ­Respectful Relationships, is that they stereotype women as victims. In exaggerating the problems that women can expect to face in demanding careers, Peterson casts doubt on their capabilities, like the programs he rightly deplores.

Such attitudes are familiar. In the 70s, the same spurious lines were trotted out by adults with limited visions to douse the dreams of girls who were labelled “women’s libbers’’ and mocked for being “too ambitious’’ for their own good. Girls were not going to be “breadwinners’’. They weren’t “strong enough’’ to be vets, accountancy was too “dry’’, journalism too “competitive’’ and engineering and maths too “hard’’.

Peering into a microscope as a scientist had “no future’’ and academics belonged in “ivory towers’’. Shorthand typists, on the other hand, now an anachronism, were “always in demand’’. So were domestic science teachers — boys knew they could cook and sew.

It sapped girls’ confidence and damaged the lives of those who were “agreeable’’ — a term Peterson likes to apply to women. Too many “agreeable’’ girls allowed themselves to be steered, reluctantly, into “sensible’’ jobs as clerks, shop assistants, teachers or nurses, often without the qualities the latter professions deserved.

Peterson’s other extraordinary contention is that jobs, which are what 98 per cent of working people have as opposed to careers, are not meaningful or desirable. Jobs, he says, are difficult, unpleasant and require responsibility and difficult decisions, which is why people are paid to do them. Presumably he was trying, and failing, to be funny.

Why would he, in doling out such advice to 19-year-old girls, who he says “know nothing’’, make both careers and jobs sound so damn unattractive? One answer, again straight out of the 70s, is that he plays the childless, lonely old maid card: “By the time you’re 40, if you don’t have a family and children you are one lost soul.’’

Turning the screws, he says “if you are not situated with a family in the latter half of your life you are an isolated, lonesome, miserable creature’’. That grim prospect implies that women building careers are risking their long-term happiness. Family life and big careers, however, are not mutually exclusive, as women know. Empty nesters who persevered in their careers through their years of bringing up children are usually glad they did. That’s when middle-aged and older workers enjoy kicking their careers up a gear — a recent theme in popular literature.

Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman during an controversial interview with Jordan Peterson last month.

Nor does Peterson mention that too many older women — single, married, divorced or widowed — are financially vulnerable because nobody told them at 19 that a man is not a financial plan.

There is no harm in reminding young people, as he does, that their children will be the most important people in their lives. After pouring iced water on female aspirations, Peterson, at the end of the video, becomes more constructive. Contradicting his initial rants, he says older women should tell 19-year-old girls (presuming they can’t figure it out for themselves) that they should pursue careers, that society needs them. Older women should also tell them, he says, to “look the hell out’’ because women have complicated lives.

Waking up at 35, desperate to have a child, is not a good realisation, as Peterson says. That reasonable point prompted the young man hosting the video to chip in with a charmless insight — that the anxieties of mid-30s women keen to be mothers are known as “baby rabies’’ among “plenty of communities of young men ... in the dating scene’’. There is no lack of work for psychologists. But young women are not the ones who most need help.