From gender to climate change, Jordan Peterson’s most controversial ideas

Once a little-known Canadian psychologist, Jordan Peterson has risen in recent years to become one of the most influential public intellectuals in the Western world with best-selling books, massive tours and 7.5 million followers on Youtube. But his crusade against left-wing ideas has ruffled more than a few feathers. Here are some of his most controversial ideas. What do you think?

That’s what he said on the Painkiller Already podcast. In another tweet, he made a similar point, asking whether feminists avoid criticizing Islam because they “unconsciously long for masculine dominance.” In a reply to himself, he added: “Perhaps the "white men" are their enemies because they are not providing them with the opportunity to have families while young.”

In an op-ed in The Times, Peterson argued that the man/woman dichotomy is biological and makes for physical and mental differences. He argues that identity is not subjective, adding it's also defined by society, and that trans people are delusional. He does not mention the biological reality of intersex people, born with both sets of anatomy.

Image: kylewilliamurban/Unsplash

In 2023, Peterson confirmed that he had eaten almost nothing but beef for five years and the health effects are incredible. He said his inflammatory conditions, including gum disease, disappeared, and his weight has gone to a perfect level. Like his daughter, he’s on the lion diet, which consists of meat, water and salt only.

Image: The Lion Diet/Youtube

In the same op-ed, he argued that by denying science, the medical profession is committing some of the worst moral crimes in modern times when they offer hormone treatments or surgical interventions to children aiming to change gender. “This has to stop, and the perpetrators held responsible,” he says.

That’s how the New York Times summarized the ideas in his book ‘12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.’ “You know you can say, ‘Well isn’t it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine’ — well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn’t matter because that is how it’s represented,” he told the paper.

When Sports Illustrated put plus-sized model Yumi Nu on the cover in 2022, Peterson chimed in with this much-maligned tweet: “Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.”

According to the New York Times, the cure for violent attacks by young men like Incels is enforced monogamy because otherwise, women will only go for high-status men. “Polygamous societies tend to become hyper-violent,” he said on Joe Rogan, clarifying that this monogamy is ‘enforced’ by society.

Image: Joe Rogan Experience #1139/ Youtube

After the Oct. 7, Peterson tweeted for Netanyahu to ‘give ‘em h e l l.’ Later, in a Pierce Morgan interview, he said the Gazan civilian population is not entirely innocent. “If you don’t [stand up to tyranny], you pay for that and so do your children and then so do your grandchildren, so do you great-grandchildren,” he said, speaking of Palestinians. “What responsibility do people who live under the thumb of totalitarianism have for the fact that they are living under the thumbs of totalitarians? And the answer isn’t none.”

As described in The Times, when playing at the massive O2 arena in London in 2023, Peterson warned about “top-down, power-mongering, fear-wielding global utopians” who are using climate change to manipulate people. However, even his audience was a little confused when a member of the same talk said that humans can deal with sea level rise because “Amsterdam airport is seven meters below sea level.”

Image: Jordan Peterson at the O2, JOE/Youtube

On a Joe Rogan podcast, Peterson claimed that models used to forecast the future state of the climate cannot be relied on. After three weeks, he said, mistakes begin to compound. Experts told the Guardian that “he seems to think we model the future climate the same way we do the weather. He sounds intelligent, but he’s completely wrong.”

Speaking in 2023, he advised against cohabitation before marriage because statistics show that marriages are more likely to end if you don’t live together first… although he acknowledged that people who live together might be more likely to divorce (for religious regions etc), he insisted: “What the facts reveal… is that if the goal is that your marriage will be better and last, it doesn’t work,” he said.

Image: Jordan B Peterson Clips/Youtube

“Men are evaluated on the basis of their potential for economic reciprocity and generosity… They let males compete it out on the economic front and then woman select from the top down,” he says in a YouTube video, adding that male economic success is “correlated insanely highly” to mating success – way more than being kind or intelligent, he said.

Peterson that, on the contrary, females with money become less attractive. Instead, he says, women are successful on that front depending on their beauty, reproductive capacity and attractiveness. Further, men evaluate women’s status by “their ability to say no.” So he said instead of competing with men, the most desirable women say “no.”

Peterson argues that white privilege doesn’t exist. Instead, he says majority privilege is natural in countries around the world. Since the US is majority white, it is built for white people. But since China is majority Chinese, it is built for the Chinese. However, he doesn’t point out that democracy is built on everyone having equal opportunity, as suggested in Big Think.

While climate change may be an overblown threat (and impossible to know), according to Peterson, he warned in an interview with The Telegraph that “the left is guild-tripping the West into oblivion.” He called members of the left “psychopathic narcissists” who have “figured out how to cloak themselves in the guise of compassion.”

Image: The Telegraph/ Youtube