Two years ago in Canada, bill C-16 was passed making it illegal to refuse service, employment or any other benefits based on gender or sexuality (which makes sense). The bill also, however, makes it illegal for a professor to use a gender pronoun that is different from which a student identifies with. (For more information, visit https://openparliament.ca/bills/42-1/C-16/) On paper this makes sense as a good moral code that people should be following. This did not sit well with Dr. Jordan Peterson however who gives many reasons as to why this would be a bad law. Peterson explains that people should not expect to meet new people with a sense of mutual respect, but instead a display of “mutual alert neutrality”. This essentially means that in human nature, one earns respect after multiple fruitful interactions rather than right away. It doesn’t make sense to give somebody respect before getting to know a little bit about who they are because they could be undeserving of respect. It is encoded in our evolution to be somewhat weary of somebody before you know who they are. Introducing a bill that contradicts human social nature is far from predictable. People would likely find ways around the rule or some other variable would come in to play that we would have no way of knowing about before hand.
The other principle reason that Peterson gives is that the law infringes on free speech. If a transgender person and an Evangelical Christian were to meet, there would likely be a contradiction of beliefs. The transgender person would want to be called by the pronoun that they identify with while the Christian would want to call the transgender by their original pronoun (keeping true to his Christian faith. Both would be right in this situation, however with the new bill in place, the Christian would be on grounds of breaking the law. This is not the only problem that is encompassed by the free speech point. Throughout history, many dictatorships have risen. The first indicator of a rising dictatorship tends to be infringement on free speech. One a government begins to control the spread of ideas, they tend to picking away until there is little free speech left. Human kind is full of examples like these. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist Russia, Communist China, North Korea, ect. have all been great examples of this. We have learned enough times already that free speech is not something to mess with because things get out of control fast.
As for my own opinion on this topic, I regretfully agree with Jordan Peterson. I would love to help advocate love and harmony between all humans. As a history major however, I cannot foresee anything good coming from limiting what people can and cannot say. It suppresses the rights of people to express themselves how they see fit. If this law was passed in America, it would likely be rendered unconstitutional as it would violate the First Amendment. Right or not, this controversy skyrocketed Peterson from being an every day college professor to being a household name in many peoples lives. This also opened the door for Peterson to teach people about his psychological knowledge on growing up, depression, raising children and much more which will be posted on this blog starting next week.
Have a wonderful day, and keep thinking
Understanding Jordan Peterson 