New Tea With Alice Podcast: Helen Jenkins

I think Peterson tends to focus too heavily on his critique of the "social justice, radical types" and thus dismiss any valuable contribution they might have to a particular narrative argument. I guess the most vehement criticism he has received has come from that end of the political discourse so he probably has developed a hardness to that school of thought. I saw a debate recently where he was paired with Stephen Fry and they were debating two fairly left leaning intellectuals and they were dismissive towards him to the point of cruelty, so I guess I can understand that he has a sensitivity there. Still, you make a good point in his insistence on refutation in the other direction.

Dean

I’m never sure what to think of Peterson. I think he makes a lot of common sense arguments and a few very badly constructed ones - including quite broad brushstrokes characterisations of his intellectual opponents while insisting on precise refutation where they do the same to him. But that’s a fairly common trait in public intellectuals

I saw his Adelaide talk when he was in Australia and I can attest to the fact that the audience was roughly 50/50, with a mix of people from across the age groups. I would need to see those videos but that has not been my experience in watching and listening to his many hours of content over the past year. He has never once generalised any of those traits in women and, in fact, he has argued the opposite. So far as men are concerned, his narratives about individual responsibility, respect for women and relationship improvement have featured prominently throughout his public works. What he does abhor is victim narratives regardless of biology and that is something I cannot argue with. He is most definitely benign.

Dean

I usually don't comment on patreon comments, but Dean, ITS VERY FEW WOMEN, and the only women who enjoy him usually have deep seated internalized misogyny issues. He has a number of videos that are specifically about how dumb, emotional and duplicitous he thinks women are. He encourages white men who feel put upon by the needed shifts in the way our society works to feel even more "persecuted". He is not benign.

I don't agree that Jordan Peterson is an alt-right gateway drug, nor is he the dumb person's intellectual. Through listening to Jordan Peterson, I have opened myself up the works of Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy, CS Lewis among others. He has challenged me to think deeper and approach subjects that I previously wouldn't have gelled with and he has also challenged me to reassess my world view regarding free speech (ie. that we should be very wary of curbing it). While I don't regard myself as overly intellectual, I do think I'm astute enough to know where the line is between Peterson's intellectual boundary and other, more extreme identities, like Ben Shapiro, Stefan Molyneux or Tucker Carlson. I think a lot of Peterson's audience - which include women as well as men - are equally astute. Peterson is benign.

Dean