Skip to content

My word isn’t this dreadful behaviour?

But as mainstream journalists across the globe reached out to him for interviews this week, Damore largely ignored the queries and instead selected two rightwing YouTube personalities to make his first, expansive comments on the international firestorm he has ignited.

Damore – who argued in his memo that “biological” differences between men and women contribute to the gender gap in the tech industry – gave lengthy video interviews to Stefan Molyneux and Jordan B Peterson, who both have large followings on YouTube and have espoused anti-feminist views.

Imagine, not talking to the Guardian and yet talking to people who have said anti-feminist things! The Horror!

Peterson, also a University of Toronto psychology professor, has faced backlash for discriminatory remarks against transgender students, saying he would refuse to use gender-neutral pronouns for trans and non-binary students who don’t identify as male or female.

Such a cad, eh?

24 thoughts on “My word isn’t this dreadful behaviour?”

  1. The Guardian has purposefully mischaracterized the memo in a number of ‘articles’. including one by their star boy reporter, Owen Jones.

    Why would Mr Damore talk to people who either can’t or won’t read what he has written, pr if they have read it, have simply lied about it?

  2. When I was a boy the singular gender-neutral pronouns were he, him, his. The notion that the referent of he, him, his must be male is a modern fallacy, originally American of course.

  3. Google takes the view that men and women are identical.

    However, most technical employees are men.(80%).

    Logically, therefore, those doing the hiring should have been fired before Damore was.

  4. “…saying he would refuse to use gender-neutral pronouns for trans and non-binary students who don’t identify as male or female.”

    If my eyes roll any harder they’ll fall out of my head.

  5. A total mischaracterisation of what Jordan Peterson is saying.

    The left are lying, simplfying and engaging in ad hominem attack. Par for the course.

    He is refusing to allow the government to dictate how he should speak to people.

    This has come about through the transgender thing, but it could have been something else.

    He has received a lot of support from transgender people.

    But hey don’t let accuracy get in the way of a good lynching of a classical liberal.

  6. I have conducted my own research by watching the Men’s 100m final on Saturday. Not a white face, woman or disabled athlete to be seen. End this outrage now!

    In other news, very few people under 5’6″ play professional basketball. So much virtue signalling – so little time …

  7. So, the ‘liberal’ code on free speech he’s days is:
    i) you may NOT say the thing’s we good-thinking proscring but
    ii) you MUST say the things we demand and to whom we demand.
    This second requirement is a recent evolution (if ‘evolution’ isn’t a discrimnatory concept; more on this at a future date) so study it hard.

  8. Ha ha. Yeah, fuck you MSM. People don’t HAVE to deal with you any longer. Piss people off, they can just post something on YouTube or Medium.

    And thanks to the Guardian, I have 2 more YouTube channels to bookmark and check out later (I now watch more YouTube than the BBC).

  9. @dearieme,

    I’ve made exactly the same point about German to Germans and French to French. Men don’t have their own pronouns, certainly in the plural.

  10. The author just follows the same template: Scare word 1 scare word 2 followed by person’s name. This is why you should be worried or outraged. Not actually trying to explain to the readership the course of events.

  11. Peterson doesn’t object to the pronoun nonsense per se, so much as the attempts to have such mandated ; in the nutjob world refusing to use zheing or whatever drivel they’ve concocted they want to make the same as calling someone a n—–r.

    Does anyone other than me view the attempts to use drugs on children who think they might be the wrong sex as child abuse ? Rather like the religious sects who refuse medical care ? Teens being worried about gender/sexuality is common and best dealt with by reassurance not chemically lopping bits off

  12. @Paul

    “Does anyone other than me view the attempts to use drugs on children who think they might be the wrong sex as child abuse?”

    I do, for one. And let’s not even mention the horror of irreversible surgery.

    Peterson’s lonely stand is quite remarkable. He is up against the Canadian government, yet sticks to his principles, which, if you listen to him, are neither left-wing nor right-wing but deeply based in decency and morality.

    In my opinion he is not only a very intelligent and learned man, but a great one. The fact that he is howled down by the SJWs shows you just how shallow, nasty and tribal they are.

  13. Peterson, also a University of Toronto psychology professor, has faced backlash for discriminatory remarks against transgender students, saying he would refuse to use gender-neutral pronouns for trans and non-binary students who don’t identify as male or female.

    So, not discriminating is now discrimination.

    These people are mentally ill.

  14. gunker,

    There’s an amusing detail in there about his/her experience of female hormones:

    “The puberty blockers and hormones made me moody and angry, I was all over the place.”

    Sounds like they worked perfectly…

  15. Philip Scott Thomas

    Anyone else loving the delicious irony in this? Guy sacked by Google and guy whose YouTube account was closed by Google do interview about Google on YouTube, owned by Google.

    That is master-level trolling

  16. “He is refusing to allow the government to dictate how he should speak to people. This has come about through the transgender thing, but it could have been something else.”

    Quite right. And I can persistently and repeatedly call him “Mrs Peterson” instead of “Professor” as he asks, just to make the point. It’s rude and childish, but it should be legal.

    “Does anyone other than me view the attempts to use drugs on children who think they might be the wrong sex as child abuse? Rather like the religious sects who refuse medical care?”

    No, you’re not alone in thinking the medical profession is wrong, and that you know better. And yes, that’s rather like the religious sects who refuse to allow their own children to be treated medically in ways contrary to their personal belief system – except you’re applying it to other people’s children.

    “Teens being worried about gender/sexuality is common and best dealt with by reassurance not chemically lopping bits off”

    How do you “reassure” someone with a male-pattern brain and a female-pattern body? Genuinely curious.

    The point of the puberty blockers is to prevent any permanent changes happening until the child is old enough to decide the matter for themselves. It’s puberty that’s irreversible.

  17. “I can persistently and repeatedly call him “Mrs Peterson” instead of “Professor” as he asks, just to make the point. It’s rude and childish, but it should be legal.”

    It is legal. However, refusing to use some absurdly confected and arbotrary gender-neutral pronoun is increasingly likely to lead to sanctions or prosecution for hate crime.

    “No, you’re not alone in thinking the medical profession is wrong, and that you know better.”

    The medical profession as a whole is not in favour of gender reassignment for young children: many doctors are sceptical. Also, medical professionals are often wrong, particularly when they have an interest – financial and/or professional – in promoting their specialism and particular treatments.

    “How do you “reassure” someone with a male-pattern brain and a female-pattern body? Genuinely curious.”

    By listening to and discussing their concerns, by encouraging them to develop wide interests, by gently discouraging gender obsession and by reminding them that gender is not the most important thing about a human being…

  18. ‘who both have large followings on YouTube and have espoused anti-feminist views.’

    I assume the bar for ‘anti-feminist views’ is too low to exclude anything.

  19. “However, refusing to use some absurdly confected and arbotrary gender-neutral pronoun is increasingly likely to lead to sanctions or prosecution for hate crime.”

    And I agree that nobody should be prosecuted for hate crimes for using the wrong pronouns, even maliciously.

    My point is that in the same way you have the right of free expression to make your political point by using the pronouns as you choose, everyone else has the same right of free expression to point out that you’re being an arse by doing so. And to do the same thing to you.

    So long as we’re all OK with that, that’s fine.

    “The medical profession as a whole is not in favour of gender reassignment for young children”

    And nor should they be – any more than we take children’s career ambitions as firm commitments.

    Gender isn’t a simple binary – there are numerous factors to personality some of which can be male and some female. How many and which ones can be relevant to the degree and type of discomfort felt. And the practical difficulties are a significant factor. Is it worse to stick as you are and put up with the pain of dysphoria, or to switch and put up with the bullying, harassment, discrimination, continual explanations to the ignorant, bureaucratic complexity, and continual medical issues? It’s not a choice a teenager is always equipped or experienced enough to deal with. (Although frankly, I find that having major problems like dysphoria tends to make kids grow up very quickly.)

    That’s why they advise using drugs only to postpone the decision until the child is old enough to be considered more of an adult, and to decide for themselves.

    “Also, medical professionals are often wrong”

    So are random blog commenters on the internet.
    😉

    “By listening to and discussing their concerns, by encouraging them to develop wide interests, by gently discouraging gender obsession and by reminding them that gender is not the most important thing about a human being”

    So if it’s not important, why is everyone making such a fuss about them acting like a boy? (Or for a boy, about them acting like a girl?) Or to put it another way – why doesn’t society discourage the “gender obsession” of a boy who acts like a stereotypical boy, or a girl who acts like a stereotypical girl?

    A boy who enjoys playing with dolls and wearing pretty pink dresses (behaviour you’d not comment on or describe as an “obsession” if a girl did it) can object that society’s own “gender obsession” isn’t healthy all they like, they’ll still face public ridicule (or get a kicking) if they’re caught doing it. Society doesn’t tolerate non-conformity :- judging by it’s response if you violate them, it regards gender stereotypes as very important indeed.

    If it was truly “not important”, then kids would be able to switch roles as they choose, and nobody would make a fuss. That’s precisely what they’re asking for. And that’s precisely what you’re trying to prevent.

    So this basically comes down to “You can do whatever you want, so long as it’s what *we* say you can do.” and “Your desires and ambitions regarding any sort of gendered behaviour, your pain at being forced into a gender role you hate are what’s not important, go do something less controversial instead.”

    Transgender kids don’t find that reassuring. They regard that as having their viewpoint rejected.

    Reassurance generally is some statement to the effect that everything is going to be alright and the problems are going to be resolved. What solution to their problems (dysphoria vs bullying) does your proposal offer?

  20. “My point is that in the same way you have the right of free expression to make your political point by using the pronouns as you choose, everyone else has the same right of free expression to point out that you’re being an arse by doing so. And to do the same thing to you.”

    The people who demand an arbitrary and unpredictable deviation from the status quo are ones who are being arses. The status quo has value that their eccentric demands simply don’t have, because it facilitates communication. Simples.

    “And nor should they be”

    Agreed. But you were using an argument from authority – of the medical profession – earlier.

    “So are random blog commenters on the internet.

    Utterly irrelevant, and straight from whataboutery central. We are discussingthe well known tendency of doctors to over-diagnose and to offer treatments because they can, particularly when they have an interest – financial and/or professional – in promoting their specialism.

    “So if it’s not important, why is everyone making such a fuss about them acting like a boy”

    I didn’t say it’s not important: I said that gender confusion is not the most important thing about a child.

    Also, normal folk aren’t obsessed by gender. The gender obsessives are the activists and the specialists in gender dysphoria. Your attempt to establish an equivalence between the status quo and the activists is risible.

  21. “The status quo has value that their eccentric demands simply don’t have, because it facilitates communication.”

    The reason it got changed was that it got in the way of communication – it forced people to tell lies. It meant that people in complicated situations had to continually explain all the caveats and exclusions so that people’s conventional assumptions about what pronouns implied didn’t lead them astray. In every area of life, when humans are faced with a situation where the existing language doesn’t convey the complexities correctly without extensive and time-consuming circumlocutions, they invent new jargon.

    It’s like the word “number”. Back in the good old days, everyone knew what a “number” was. But then the mathematicians started investigating all the exceptions and borderline cases, and started inventing new ones. It starts with zero, and proceeds quickly to negative numbers (what do you get if you start with three sheep and take five away?) There was a major argument over things like the square root of two, which turned out not to be a fraction as people had formerly believed all numbers to be. Then people got the idea and started asking whether the square root of minus one was “a number”? How about infinity? How about negative infinity? What about the quaternions? How about vectors and matrices? Tensors and spinors and twistors? Today mathematicians count hundreds of different entities as “numbers”.

    And yes, it can cause a certain degree of confusion in the old folk still living in the 20th century… BC. But as far as the mathematicians are concerned, the jargon is used so they can communicate more precisely and accurately. The idea is to stop people making all the wrong assumptions they inevitably make when you just talk about “numbers”.

    “Agreed. But you were using an argument from authority – of the medical profession – earlier.”

    I was responding to the analogy used in the previous comment: “Rather like the religious sects who refuse medical care?” The argument in their case is generally that they disagree with the medical profession for religious reasons, and I simply re-applied it.

    So yes, it’s an application of argument from authority, but my point wasn’t to say the doctors’ position was therefore valid (I’ve presented objective evidence often enough here for you all to know that’s not my argument), but simply to point out that by classifying giving medicines to children as “child abuse”, you were putting yourselves in the position of those religious zealots. Which might lead you either to be a little more sympathetic to said zealots, or to maybe reconsider your position and how society perceives it. Are you happy being seen as akin to religious zealots refusing life-saving medical treatment for their children? As child abusers? If so, what point was the original commenter trying to make?

    “We are discussingthe well known tendency of doctors to over-diagnose and to offer treatments because they can, particularly when they have an interest – financial and/or professional – in promoting their specialism.”

    We’re discussing how doctors are trying to prevent 40% of a certain category of kids committing suicide, and the rest living in constant misery and distress.

    I agree that doctors can be wrong, and can put their own interests and beliefs ahead of the patients, but so can everyone else. That’s why it’s not enough to simply point out that doctor’s are fallible, you also have to present **evidence** for why your version is right and theirs is wrong.

    “I didn’t say it’s not important: I said that gender confusion is not the most important thing about a child.”

    I don’t understand this. What distinction are you trying to make?

    “Also, normal folk aren’t obsessed by gender.”

    Of course they are!

    Walk down a public street or across a crowded pub displaying non-conforming gender characteristics and complete strangers will feel the need to come up to you and comment about it. Or throw you out of the place, or beat you up. At the very best, you’ll get lots of people obsessively staring at you.

    The self-appointed gender police enforce the gender rules, and they’re all ordinary people. I’ve got friends who won’t go out in public alone, because they’re scared of what other people might do. There are a lot of gender-obsessed people – they only appear non-obsessed when everyone around them is following their rules.

    This is my point. There are libertarians, who say people can do what they like so long as they’re not hurting anyone else without their informed consent, and there are authoritarians who believe it is their right and duty to impose their own beliefs and way of life on everyone else, by force if necessary.

    Gender rules have always been a big part of that imposed way of life. Men are men and women are women, and men get with women. Anything else is wickedness, obscenity, and perversion. I grew up with people like Mary Whitehouse policing what we were allowed to see on TV, or read in magazines. Pornography had to be hidden. Homosexuals had for centuries been persecuted and prosecuted, and even then were only barely tolerated. It was an obsession.

    Then the tide turned, society recognised that it was being too authoritarian about sex and gender expression, and got rid of most of those rules – officially at least. It’s a great victory for liberty. But the authoritarians didn’t give up. The rules have changed so that homosexuality is now “in” and homophobia is now “out”? Great! Now we can persecute the homophobes, and force them to conform to society’s new rules the same way we previously did with the homosexuals! Authoritarian gender policing lives on!

    The people with dysphoria themselves are mostly not the problem – there aren’t enough of them to threaten anyone. All they want is to be let alone to live their lives they way they want to, the best way they can, and for medical science to be allowed to do what it can for them. They just want to be able to go out and work without feeling constantly threatened. The problem is with all the other non-dysphoric authoritarians in society who see an opportunity to get away with some bullying. Society no longer has much sympathy for the homophobes and the rest of the old-style gender police; they’re not going to put themselves in harms way to defend the likes of you. But if they don’t, we’re just going to end up right back where we started.

    The only way authoritarians learn the error of their ways is when society turns against their particular brand of authoritarianism, or they see in what happens to other people how it can. Libertarianism makes none of them very happy – the argument for it is that you have to tolerate other people doing things you don’t like so that they’ll tolerate you doing things they don’t like. But it’s better than being the persecuted minority in a society with authoritarians in charge.

    Trangender kids are not the problem (you already lost the war on that one), and neither are the doctors treating them. The problem is the people policing society to persecute and exclude harmless social deviants. The argument is that *everyone* does *some* things other people don’t like, and if we want to be left unpersecuted then to be consistent we have to oppose all social persecution of harmless dissentients generally.

  22. Pingback: More on Gendered Pronouns | White Sun of the Desert

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *