Jordan Peterson and the #MeToo Movement
It’s been almost three years since Jordan Peterson rose to fame following his outrage over Canada’s Bill C-16, which added gender identity and expression to the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination. Without going into too much detail, Peterson’s main argument about the Bill was that by mandating the use of preferred gender pronouns, the Canadian government was violating his right to free speech. All the Bill proposed to do was essentially add gender identity and expression to the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination, and classify violence against transgender people as a hate crime; at no point did it say anything about pronouns. Peterson published a few controversial youtube videos on the topic, which attracted enough negative attention that his employer, the University of Toronto, was forced to address his comments and asked him to stop, as well as to use the preferred pronouns of his students when asked. This unfortunately only escalated Peterson’s outrage, and basically confirmed his claims that his speech was being censored. The Bill ended up passing in June of 2017, and by then Peterson had cultivated an enormous and highly lucrative online following of mostly young white men who hang off his every word.
A few years later, when the Me Too movement became prominent in mainstream media, people seemed to be clamoring to hear what these prominent, controversial figures like Peterson had to say. From what I can tell, his arguments on this issue are essentially as follows: only a very small proportion of men actually are rapists or sexual assailants, so it is unfair and inaccurate to conflate the actions of these few with those of all men everywhere; there are no clear ‘rules’ to define the difference between harmless flirting and sexual harassment; when these invisible lines get crossed then the intent of the perpetrator becomes irrelevant when determining guilt, so long as the consequence of his behavior is that the victim is made to feel uncomfortable; sexual assaults are difficult to adjudicate due to lack of witnesses, and the approach/response of ‘just believing the victim’ is dangerous because this contradicts the principle of our legal system which states that individuals must be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
So let’s look at this first point, which is essentially what’s become known as the ‘not all men’ response. At its worst, this response is potentially a silencing tactic which seeks to de-legitimize the movement by countering that since most or even a vast majority of men are not creeps who go around routinely assaulting women, then society should continue simply handling these incidents on an individual, case by case basis and leave the rest of men out of it. Such a dismissal of course allows proponents to ignore the larger social and cultural backdrop which implicitly and explicitly condones sexual assault and harassment, and it misses the overall point of women fighting back against the stigma of being sexually assaulted by speaking out. Survivors of sexual assault are burdened by an incredibly complex mix of trauma, shame, fear, isolation, and other such difficult emotions, and although yes, not all men were involved in inflicting this trauma, obviously minimizing it will have an adverse effect on any healing or progress yet to take place.
We’ve seen similar deflections in movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, with responses like #AllLivesMatter. The follow up assertions are not untrue, but they undeniably seek to shut down a conversation being put forward about a very real social problem. Another insidious consequence of a ‘not all men’ response is that it does more to reassure men that they are free to ignore the problem since it has nothing to do with them, than it does to help women or alleviate the pain of their experiences and prevent such pain in the future for others. Not only that, but #MeToo never really claimed that all men everywhere are inherently evil sexual predators, anymore than #BlackLivesMatter claimed that only black lives matter. There may very well be female sexual assault survivors that feel as though all men are sexual predators, just as there are extreme opinions on any issue, but this does not reflect the general consensus or message of the movement and arguing otherwise is really nothing more than a straw man fallacy.
It’s obvious to most rational people that there are a good number of men who respect women’s bodily autonomy and are able to consciously conduct themselves in a way that makes those around them comfortable. This fact directly contradicts Peterson’s next point which is that it’s impossible for the average man to know what is or is not acceptable behavior around women anymore. He claims that there is no way for a man to know whether or not a sexual invitation could be construed as harassment, and that “we need to know exactly what the rules are, and we don’t”, implying that existing social norms and expectations are too inadequate and ambiguous for men to avoid harassing women, which is of course untrue.
He also doesn’t seem to offer any suggestions for what these rules could be, or even a potential starting point to be able to figure them out. One gets the sense that even if someone responded with such things as “don’t offer sexual invitations to women who work for you” or “don’t get angry at women who politely reject an invitation,” Peterson still wouldn’t be satisfied with such common sense ‘rules’ and would still insist that norms like these are too complex for men to be able to follow. Even more concerning, is that when discussing sexuality and sexual assault in more general terms, he says “what we’ve done in the past is leave it private, well those days are gone” in a lamenting tone. “Keeping things private” is hardly a solution if that’s what he’s proposing, but it does seem very much in line with this subtext present in his dialogue which implies that any attempts at cultivating a social solution to widespread sexual harassment is futile.
Most people were able to see #MeToo as a way to both support victims or survivors and keep the men accountable for the pain they cause. Powerful men being held accountable does not mean going around rounding up men who smile at women and locking them behind bars, it means challenging the dynamics of power that allow men to abuse others and the systems that have historically allowed them to evade responsibility once challenged. On this point, Peterson agrees that certain men have in fact abused their power to victimize others, but he vehemently insists that we “abandon the presumption of innocence until proven guilty at our extreme peril.” Once again, Peterson seems to be attacking a straw man since nobody is suggesting that men accused of sexual assault be convicted without due process, but rather that we take women’s accusations seriously rather than dismissing or minimizing them as a default response.
Peterson argues that society is instead moving towards a “preponderance of evidence” model for determining guilt rather than “beyond reasonable doubt”, but what he doesn’t clarify is that one standard pertains to criminal court, and the other for civil. Demanding that a boss accused by multiple women of serious, persistent, and ongoing harassment be fired or removed from his position is very different from locking this same man up behind bars with a criminal record, and Peterson just causes confusion and false outrage by conflating the two.
In much the same way he artificially escalated the debate on Bill C-16 to encompass pronoun use, he also seems to think that “intent doesn’t matter anymore” when it comes to the criminal court systems. He seems to think that men can find themselves guilty of a harassment offence even if the intent of their behavior was innocent flirting, if the outcome of that behavior makes a woman uncomfortable. First of all, there are criminal offences that people can be prosecuted for even if their intent was not to cause harm — manslaughter is the most prominent that comes to mind, but this is really besides the point. The threshold most commonly used for determining if behavior constitutes sexual harassment is whether or not a ‘reasonable person’ would be able to recognize that the comments, advances, behaviors etc. are inappropriate or unwanted. While there is admittedly a certain level of subjectivity to this approach, we are a far cry away from automatically vilifying any man who flirts with or asks out a woman who happens to not be interested, as Peterson appears to be implying.
This fear that large numbers of men will find themselves unfairly involved in the criminal justice system seems to be gaining steam in general, despite clear evidence to the contrary. If we are to look at some of the most recently available conviction rates for sexual assaults in Canada, we see that only about 12% of sexual assault charges result in a criminal conviction, compared to 23% for physical assault. That 12% number also doesn’t count the sexual assaults that were reported, but later dismissed by police as “unfounded” meaning no charges were ever pursued. If a report is deemed unfounded, it does not mean that a sexual assault did not take place or that the accused was found innocent, but rather that police did not consider there to be grounds or enough evidence to proceed with a criminal charge. The Globe and Mail conducted an investigation on these unfounded rates, which vary widely from region to region, with a National average of 19% of all sexual assault cases reported. There doesn’t seem to be any danger of men being incarcerated en mass for trivial social transgressions like asking a woman out who isn’t interested.
Much like the Bill C-16 case, Peterson is wildly blowing the issue out of proportion and implying that if a man who inadvertently makes a woman uncomfortable he’ll immediately be classified as a sex offender without due process. However even in a civil matter, if multiple women come forward about a boss who they say is making inappropriate sexual advances, or other credible accusations come forward and are shown to have “a preponderance of evidence” to support them, then it is completely reasonable for that man to lose his job or face other appropriate discipline and/or social consequences. Innocent until proven guilty does not mean that men won’t need to be held responsible for their actions and face social consequences for what a reasonable person would consider inappropriate behavior.
Much of Peterson’s arguments come across as defensive of men and men’s behavior, which is perhaps part of why he’s become so popular. Since the vast majority of sexual assault victims tend to be female, and the perpetrators male, it’s easy to see this as a black and white, us vs them issue with one clear ‘winner’ and ‘loser’ on either side. Even though such a categorization is understandable, and maybe even inevitable, more needs to be done to encourage an understanding from all sides. If men find themselves continually categorized as the ‘enemy’, then of course they’re going to be defensive and of course they aren’t going to look to be part of the discussion and solution. One thing that #MeToo made very clear is that women are angry. They are angry for perfectly legitimate reasons, but at a certain point that anger will be the downfall of the movement if we aren’t able to move through the anger and find ways to invite men like Peterson and those who follow him to understand and negotiate with the problem, rather than just continually assert that they are the problem. If men are able to see themselves as part of the solution, then we might actually be able to nail down some rules and people on either side can stop being so defensive and angry.
Sources:
Full text of Bill C-16
http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-16/royal-assent
Jordan Peterson National Post interview
Jordan Peterson Toronto Sun interview
Jordan Peterson British GQ interview
Stats Canada
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/171026/dq171026b-eng.htm
Globe and Mail “unfounded” report
