Jordan Peterson debate on the gender pay gap, campus protests and postmodernism

Juden peterson you've said that men need to quote grow the hell up tell me why well because there's nothing uglier than an old infant there's nothing good about it it people who don't grow up don't find the sort of meaning in their life that sustains them through difficult times and they are certain to encounter difficult times and they're left bitter and resentful and without purpose and adrift and hostile and resentful and vengeful and arrogant and deceitful and and of no use to themselves and of no use to anyone else and no partner for a woman and there's nothing in it that's good so you said I mean that sounds pretty bad yes Isis of masculinity I mean what do you do about it you tell you help people understand why it's necessary and important for them to grow up and adopt responsibilities why that isn't a shake your finger and get your act together sort of thing why it's more like but why it's more like a delineation of the kind of destiny that makes life worth living I've been telling young men but it's not I wasn't specifically aiming this message at young men to begin with it just kind of turned out that way and it's mostly you admit it's mostly men listening I mean it is your audience is well it's about 80 percent on on YouTube which is a YouTube is a male domain primarily so it's hard to tell how much of it is because YouTube is male and how how much of it is because of what I'm saying but you you what I've been telling young men is that there's an actual reason why they need to grow up which is that they have something to offer you know that that that people have within them this capacity to set the world straight and that's necessary to manifest in the world and that also doing so is where you find the meaning that sustains you in life so what's gone wrong then oh god all sorts of things have gone wrong I think that I don't think that young men are here words of encouragement some some of them never in their entire lives as far as I can tell that's what they tell me and the fact that the words that I've been that I've been speaking the YouTube lectures that I've done and put online for example have had such a dramatic impact is indication that young men are starving for this sort of message because like why in the world would they have to derive it from a lecture on YouTube now they're not being taught that they that it's important to develop yourself because it doesn't bother you that your audience is predominantly male does that isn't isn't that a bit divisive no I don't think so I mean it's no more divisive than the fact that YouTube is primarily male and tumblr is primarily my female resident tumblr is primarily female all right you're just saying that's the way it is oh it's I'm not saying anything it's just an observation that that's the way it is there's plenty of women that are watching my lectures and coming to my talks and buy my books it's just that the majority of them happen to be men uh it's what's in it for the women though well what sort of partner do you want you want an overgrown child or do you want someone to contend with that's going to help you your eye on women have some sort of duty to sort of help fix the crisis masculinity it depends on what they want no I mean it's exactly exactly how I laid it out like women want deeply want men who are competent and powerful and and I don't mean power in in the in in the in that they can exert tyrannical control over others that's not power that's just corruption power is competence and why in the world would you not want a competent partner well I know why actually you can't dominate a competent partner so if you want more you should dominate is that what you're saying no I'd say women who have had their relationships impaired with impaired their relationships with men impaired and who are afraid of such relationships will settle for a weak partner because they can dominate them but it's a suboptimal solution do you know when they were doing I think there's a substantial minority of women who do that and I think it's very bad for them they're very unhappy it's very bad for their partners although the partners get the advantage of not having to take any responsibility what gives you the right to say that I mean maybe that's how women want their relationships those women I mean you're making these vast generalizations I'm a clinical psychologist right so you've you're saying you've done your research and women are unhappy dominating men I didn't say they were unhappy dominating then I said it was a bad long-term solution okay you said it was making them Israel yes yes and it depends on the time frame I mean there can be there's intense pleasure in momentary domination that's why people do it all the time but its nose formula for a long-term successful long-term relationship that's reciprocal right any long-term relationship is reciprocal firstly by definition so let me put it quite to you from the bank well you say there are whole disciplines in universities forthrightly hostile towards men these are the areas of study dominated by the postmodern stroke neo-marxist claim the Western culture in particular is an oppressive structure created by white men to dominate and exclude women but then I want to put minorities - okay but I want to put to you that here in the UK for example let's say that as an example the gender pay gap stands at just over 9% you've got women at the BBC recently saying that the broadcaster is illegally paying them less than men to do the same job you've got only seven women running the top footsie 100 companies hum so it seems to a lot of women that they still being dominated and excluded to quote your words back to you it does seem that way but multivariate analysis of the pay gap indicate that it doesn't exist nine percent cap ager that's a gap between median hourly earnings between men and women yeah but there's multiple reasons for that one of them is gender but it's not the only reason like if you're a social scientist worth worth your salt you never do a univariate analysis like you say well women in aggregate are paid less than men okay well then we break it down by age we break it down by occupation we break it down by interest we break it down by personality but you're saying basically it doesn't matter if women aren't getting to the top because that's what's skewing that gender pay gap isn't it you're saying well that's just a fact not so you know it's not going to get to the top no I'm not saying it doesn't matter either you're saying remindful reasons for it even though why should women put up with those reasons why shouldn't women because he should put up with it I'm saying that the claim that the wage gap between men and women is only due to sex is wrong and it is wrong there's no doubt about that the multivariate analysis have been done mighty very I'm saying that nine percent pay gap exists that's a gap between men and women I'm not saying why it exists but it exists now you're a woman wack seems pretty unfair you have to say why it exists but do you agree that it's unfair if you're a woman not necessary and on average you're getting paid nine percent less than a man that's not fair is it it depends on why it's happening I can give you an example okay there's a personality trait known as agreeableness agreeable people are compassionate and polite and agreeable people get paid less than just didn't less agreeable people for the same job women are more agreeable than men again a vast generalizations agreeable ears that's true but that's right and some women get paid more than men so you were saying that by and large women are too agreeable to get the pay raises I see so I'm saying that that's one component of a multivariate equation that predicts celery it accounts for maybe five percent of the variance something like that I should be neat about the other twenty you need about another eighteen factors one of which is gender and there is prejudice there's no doubt about that but it accounts for a much smaller proportion of the variance in the pay gap then the radical feminists claim okay so rather than denying the pay gap exists which is what you did at the beginning of this conversation shouldn't you say to women rather than being agreeable and not asking for a pay rise go and ask for a pay raise make yourself disagreeable with your book oh definitely there's that but I also didn't deny it existed I denied it existed because of gender okay because I'm very very very careful with my words so the pay gap exists you accept that but you're saying I mean the pay gap between men and women exists you're saying it's not because of gender it's because women are too agreeable to ask for pay rises certainly one of the reasons okay one of the reason so why not get them to ask for a pay rise I've done that many many times in my career and they just don't sort oh they do it all the time you can see so one of the things that you do as a clinical psychologist is um assertiveness training so you might say often you treat people for anxiety you treat them for depression and you and maybe the next most common category after that would be assertiveness training and so I've had many many women extraordinarily competent women in my clinical and consulting practice and we put together strategies for their career development that involved continual pushing competing for higher wages and often tripled their wages within a five-year period of course so do you do you agree that you would be happy if that pay gap was eliminated completely because that's all the radical feminists are saying it would depend on how it was eradicated and how the how how the disappearance of it was measured and you're saying of men that's a problem oh there's all sorts of things that it could be at the cost of it could even be at the cost of women's own interests so because they might not be happy if they could equal pay no because it might interfere with other things that are causing the pay gap that women are choosing tonight having children well or choosing careers that actually happen to be paid less which women do a lot of but why shouldn't women have the right to choose not to have children or the right to choose those demanding because they can yeah that's fine but you're saying that makes them unhappy I and large I'm saying that that no I'm not saying that I'm I and I actually haven't said that so far you're saying it makes them miserable no I said what was making them miserable was having part was having weak partners that makes them miserable right I would say that many women around the age of I would say between 28 and 32 have a career family crisis that they have to deal with and I think that's partly because of the for short and timeframe that women have to contend with like women have to get the major pieces of their life put together faster than men which is also partly why men aren't under so much pressure to grow up so because for the typical woman she has to have her career and family in order pretty much by the time she's 35 because otherwise the options start to run out and so that puts a tremendous amount of stress on women especially at the end of their 20s I think I take issue the idea of the typical woman because you know all women are different and I want to just put another quote to you from the book last day in some ways and the same in others okay you say women become more vulnerable when they have children no and you talked to one of your youtube interviews about crazy harpy sisters so a simple question is gender equality a myth in your view is that something that's just never gonna happen it depends on what you mean by equality no if you mean a lien and we're getting the same opportunities fairly people we could get to a point where people were treated fairly or more fairly I mean people are treated pretty fairly in Western culture already but we can look them really not though are they I mean otherwise why would there only be seven women running footsie 100 companies in the UK why why would there still be a pay gap which we've all got satellite sees why are women at the BBC saying that they're getting paid illegally less the men to do the same job that's not fair sort of the first question their brothers are complicated questions seven seven women repeat that one there's seven women running the top footsie 100 companies in the UK well the first it might be um why would you want to do that why would a minute man want to do it I don't know a number of men although not that many who are perfectly willing to sacrifice virtually all of their life to the pursuit of a high-end career so they'll work these are men that are very intelligent they're usually very very conscientious they're very driven they're very high-energy they're very healthy and they're willing to work 70 or 80 hours a week non-stop specialised at one thing to get to the top so you think women are just more sensible they don't want that because it's not a nice level I'm saying that's part of it definitely and so I worry you you don't think there are barriers in their way that prevent them getting to the top there's some barriers yeah like other like men for example I mean to get to the top of any organisation is an incredibly competitive enterprise and the men that you're competing with are simply not going to roll over and say please take the position absolutely all-out warfare is gender equality a myth I don't know what you mean by the question men and women aren't the same and they won't be this that doesn't mean they can't be treated fairly is gender equality desirable if it means equality of outcome then almost certainly it's undesirable that's already been demonstrated in Scandinavia because in Scandinavia equality of outcome is undesirable what men and women won't sort themselves into the same categories if you leave them alone to do it off their own accord I've already seen that in Scandinavia it's 20 to 1 female nurses to male something like that it might not be quite that extreme and approximately the same male engineers to female engineers and that's a consequence of the free choice of men and women in the societies that have gone farther than any other societies to make gender equality the purpose of the law those are in eradicable differences you can eradicate them with tremendous social pressure and tyranny but if you leave men and women to make their own choices you will not get equal outcome right so you're saying that anyone who believes in equality whether you call them feminists call them whatever you want to call them should basically give up because it ain't gonna happen only if they're aiming at equality of outcome so you're saying give people equality of opportunity that's fine not only fine it's eminently desirable for everyone for individuals and for society but still women aren't gonna make it that's what you're really it depends on your measurement techniques they're doing just fine in medicine in fact there are far more female physicians than there are male physicians or there are lots of lots of disciplines that are absolutely dominated by women many many disciplines and they're doing great so let me put something else to you from the book you say the introduction of the equal pay for equal work argument immediately complicates even salary comparison beyond practicality for one simple reason who decides what work is equal it's not possible so the simple question is do you believe in equal pay well I made the argument there it's like it depends and say you don't because a lot of people listening to you will just say I mean are we going back to the Dutch because we're actually not listening I'm just projecting I'm hearing you basically saying women need to just accept they're never gonna make it on equal terms equal outcomes is what how you defined it no I I would go I might as well just go and play with my Cindy dolls give us a ride at school because I'm not going to get the top job I want because there's someone sitting there saying it's not possible that's what they said it's a it's a bad social role I didn't say that women shouldn't be striving for the top or anything like that because I don't believe that for a second striving for the top but you're gonna put all those hurdles in their way as has been in their way for centuries so that's fine you're saying that's fine no no I think I read the paper silly I do I think that's silly I really do I mean look look at your situation you're hardly unsuccessful yeah Maya how do you beg hard to get exactly good that's ok battling is good this is inevitable but you talk about man let me just put another thing to you for now you're saying you have to be idle for a high-quality position well I notice in your book you talk about real conversations between men containing quote an underlying threat of physicality oh there's no doubt about that what about real conversation between women is that something or are we sort of too amenable and reasonable no it's just that the domain of physical conflict is sort of off-limits for you we just to get where I've got yeah but what does that make me I don't know man I don't imagine that you've yeah to some degree I suspect you're not very agreeable so that's the thing successful women I'm not very agreeable right actually in this conversation at least I'm sure I served your career well successful women though hmm basically have to wear the trousers in your view they have to sort of become men to succeed is what you're saying well if the guys had to fight to succeed better Canadians men certainly masculine traits are going to be helpful I mean one of the things I do in my counseling practice for example when I'm consulting with women who are trying to advance their careers is to teach them how to negotiate and to and to be able to say no and to not be easily pushed around and to be formidable and you need to if you're gonna be successful you need to be smart conscientious and tough well here's a radical idea why don't the bosses adopt some male bosses shall we say adopt some female traits so the women don't have to fight and get their sharp elbows out for the pay rises it's just accepted if they're doing the same job they get the same pay well I would say partly because it's not so easy to determine what cost due to the same job an almost because arguably yeah there are still men dominating our industries our society and therefore they've dictated the terms for so long but women have to battle to know like them it's not true it's not true so for example well I can give you an example very quickly so I worked with women who worked in high-powered law firms in Canada for about 15 years and they were as competent and put together as anybody you would ever meet and we were trying to figure out how to further their careers and there was a huge debate in Canadian society at that point that was basically ran along the same lines as your argument is that if the law firms didn't use these masculine criteria then perhaps women would do better but the market sets the damn game it's like and the market is dominated by men no it's not the market is dominated by women they make 80 percent of the consumer decisions that's not the case at all you take people who stay at home looking after children by and large they are still women so they're going out doing the shopping but that is chained they make all decisions okay so the market is driven by women not men right ok and if you're a lawyer you still pay more for the same sort of goods that's been proven that men for the you buy a blue bicycle helmet it's gonna cost less than a pink one anyway we'll come on to that partly because men are less agreeable right so this so they won't put up with it I want to ask you is it not desirable to have some of those female traits you're talking about I'd say that's a generalization but you've used the words female traits is it not desirable to have some of them at the top of business I mean maybe they wouldn't they don't predict they don't predict success in the workplace the things that predict success in the workplace are intelligence and conscientiousness agreeableness negatively predicts success in the workplace negative emotion saying that women aren't intelligent enough to run these talk no I didn't say that I said that female traits don't predict success but I didn't say that intelligence it wasn't I didn't say that intelligence and conscientious when you were saying it's just by implication or not female traits oh no I mean that's sorry no dressed her not saying that at all a women is intelligent than men no no they're not no they did that on that's pretty cool the average IQ for a woman and the average IQ for a man is identical there is some debate about the flatness of the distribution which is something that James d'amour pointed out for example in his memo but there's no difference at all in general cognitive ability there's no difference to speak of in conscientiousness women are a bit more orderly than men and men are a little bit more industrious than women the difference isn't big I don't know about averages into con men who aren't necessarily why are they not feminine traits why are they not desirable at the top of feminine traits why they not desirable it's hard to say I'm just laying out the empirical evidence like we know that we know the traits that predict success but we also know because companies by and large have not been dominated by women over the centuries we have nothing to compare it to it's an experiment true and it could be the case that if companies modified their behavior and became more feminine they would be successful there's no evidence for it I'm not neither doubtful nor non doubtful there's no evidence why not give it a go as the radically evidence suggests well it's fine like if someone wants to start a company and make it more feminine and compassionate let's say and caring in its overall orientation towards its workers and towards the marketplace and that's a perfectly reasonable experiment to run my point is that there is no evidence that those traits predict success in the workplace and there's evidence right well that's not that's not really the case women have been in the workplace for at least ever since I've been around the representation of women in the workplace has been about 50 percent so we've run the experiment for a fairly reasonable period of time but not you know certainly not for centuries let me move on to another debate that's been very controversial for you and this is you got in trouble for refusing to call trans men and women by their preferred personal pronouns no it's not actually true I got in trouble because I said I would not follow that compelled speech dictates of the federal and provincial government I actually never got in trouble for not calling anyone anything I wouldn't follow the change of law which was does not once I was law screaming hell no that's all they said it was designed to do okay you cited freedom of speech in that why should your right to freedom of speech Trump a trans persons right not to be offended because in order to be able to think you have to risk being offensive I mean look at the conversation we're having right now you know like you're certainly willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth why should you have the right to do that it's being rather uncomfortable well I'm I'm very glad I put you well I'm you get my point as like you're you're doing what you should do which is digging a bit to see what the hell's going on and that is what you should do but you're exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me and that's fine I think more power to as far as I'm concerned so you haven't sat there and I'm just right I've just trying to work that out I mean ha gotcha you have got me you have caught me I'm trying to wake up turn my head yeah I took a while it did yeah well you have voluntary cut you have voluntarily come into the studio and agreed to be questioned hmm a trans person in your class has come to your class and said they want to be called that's never happened and I would call them she so you would so you've kind of changed your Chi no no no I said that right from the beginning what I said at the beginning was that I was not going to cede the linguistic territory to radical leftists regardless of whether or not it was put in law that's what I said even then the people who came after me said oh you must be transphobic and you'd mistreat a student in your class it's like I never mistreated a student in my class I'm not transphobic and that isn't what I said well it said you've also called trans campaigners authoritarian how many I mean isn't that only in the broader context of my claims that radical leftist ideologue czar authoritarian which they always say someone who's trying to work out their gender identity who may well have struggled with that though I'm a drug use you're comparing them with you know Chairman Mao who know just you know the deaths of millions of people just even if the activists you know they're trans people too they have a right to say these things yeah but they don't have a brain inside their whole community heaven too Chairman Mao you know I could finish a all cost a penny sure I mean you know this is grossly insensitive and I didn't compare them to finish it well I did come here knowing he knows no authority he's a right-winger though I was comparing them to the left-wing totalitarians and I are left now at Aryans under Mao millions of people die right mean there's no comparison Mao and a trans activist is there why not because trans activist aren't killing millions of people the philosophy that's guiding their utterances is the same philosophy the consequences are yet you're saying that trans activists know it leads to the deaths of millions of people well no I'm saying that the philosophy that drives their utterances is the same philosophy that already has driven us to the deaths of millions okay tell us how that philosophy is in any way comparable sure that's no problem the first thing is is that their philosophy presumes that group identity is paramount that's the fundamental philosophy that drove the Soviet Union and Mao is China and it's the fundamental philosophy of the left-wing activists it's identity politics doesn't matter who you are as an individual it matters who you are in terms of your group identity you just say murder so to provoke on you I mean you are a provocateur never say a lightly they don't write that you hate to be compared to you want to stir things up I'm only a provocateur insofar as when I say what I believe to be true it's provocative I don't provoke maybe four heroes out now and then I'm not interested in provoking what about leading about you know fighting and the lobster tell us about the lobster ha well that's quite a segue well the first chapter I have in my book is called stand up straight with your shoulders back and it's an injunction to be combative not least to further your career let's say but also to adopt a stance of ready engagement with the world and to reflect that in your posture and the reason that I write about lobsters is because there's this idea that hierarchical structures are a sociological construct of the Western patriarchy and that is so untrue that it's almost unbelievable and I use the lobster as an example because the lobster we we divulged from lobsters in evolutionary history about 350 million years ago common ancestor and lobsters exist in hierarchies and have a nervous system attuned to the hierarchy and that nervous system runs on serotonin just like our nervous systems do and the nervous system of the lobster and the human being is so similar that antidepressants work on lobsters and it's part of my attempt to demonstrate that the idea of hierarchy has absolutely nothing to do with socio-cultural constructions which it doesn't let me just get it straight you're saying that we should organize our societies along the lines of the lobsters I'm saying that it's inevitable that there will be continuity in the way that animals and human beings organizing organize their structures it's it's absolutely inevitable and there is one third of a billion years of evolutionary history behind that right that's that's so long that a third of the billion years ago there weren't even trees it's a long time you have a mechanism in your brain that runs on serotonin that's similar to the lobster mechanism that tracks your status and the higher your status the better your emotions are regulated so as your serotonin levels increase you feel more positive the emotion and less negative emotion so you're saying like the lobsters we're hardwired as men and women to do certain things to sort of run along tram lines and there's nothing we can do about it no I'm not saying there's nothing we can do about it because it's like in a chess game all right there's lots of things that you can do although you can't break the rules of the chess game and continue to play chess and biological you're your biological nature is somewhat like that is it sets the rules of the game but within those rules you have a lot of leeway but the idea that but one thing we can't do is say that hierarchical organization is a consequence of the capitalist patriarchy it's like that's patently absurd it's wrong it's not a matter of opinion it's seriously wrong on you just whipping people up into a state of anger and not of all the divisions between men and women you're disturbing people up you know you have any critics of you online get absolutely lambasted by your followers young generally sorry your critics get lambasted by you I mean if there are not at all if an academic is gonna come to me and tell me that I'm not qualified and that I'm not I don't know what I'm talking about now quit the abuse quit the anger well we need some substantial examples of the abuse and the anger before I could detail that quest there 'he's a lot of alpha4 well let's take a more general perspective on that so I have had 25,000 letters since June something like that from people who told me that I've brought them back from the brink of destruction and so I'm perfectly willing to put that up against the rather vague accusations that my followers are making the lives of people that I've targeted miserable Jordan Peterson thank you my pleasure nice talking me you

Channel: Channel 4 News

Views: 17,169,335

Rating: 4.8696375 out of 5

Keywords: Jordan peterson, jordan peterson interview, Jordan peterson debate, Jordan peterson postmodernism, Jordan peterson alt right, jordan peterson on feminism, Jordan peterson gender, jordan b peterson debate, jordan b peterson personality, jordan b peterson interview, jordan peterson feminism, jordan peterson gender pronouns, jordan peterson men and women, jordan peterson tv debate, jordan peterson women, jordan peterson young men, jordan peterson young women, jordan b peterson

Id: aMcjxSThD54

Length: 29min 56sec (1796 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 16 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Offspring22]

She just wouldn't give up trying to twist his words to fit her narrative.... Dude handled it like a pro.

[u/TheLastRageComic]

Infuriating to watch, but hats off to the gentleman for staying cool in the face of that word soup.

[u/craic_d]

'I suspect that you're not very agreeable.'

PMSL - spoken like a true Canadian! And even she laughed at that...

[u/No-Ima-rapper]

It's extremely frustrating speaking with someone who clearly isn't listening or comprehending what you are expressing, then tries to sum up your point with a gross-oversimplification, "so what you are saying is_______."

[u/joemac5367]

"So what you're saying is women are stupid, women should stay in the kitchen, don't bother trying to get a better job. FUCK women, men rule, bitches drool?"

"That's not what I said"

"So what you're saying is......"

[u/CouldntBeMoreWhite]

I love that guy. Ever since I heard him on Joe Rogan's podcast, I've started following him. Smart, witty, and pretty intellectually consistent as far as I've seen.

[u/x777x777x]

Jesus Christ literally every sentence she says begins with "so you're saying...."

HOLY FUCK JUST LISTEN TO THE GODDAMN WORDS

[u/blubbahrubbah]

"Studies show that children enjoy eating ice cream." "So you're saying that children don't need teeth to eat and parents should yank them all out. You barbarian."

[u/baa_ram_ewe]

when he finally stumps her... a satisfying payoff!