David Brooks writes in The New York Times that Jordan Peterson, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, is having a moment, and that he may be the "most influential public intellectual" alive. The man that Brooks, a writer known for missing the mark on cultural criticism, calls "the perfect antidote to the cocktail of coddling and accusation in which" young men are raised today has revealed himself over the last year to harbor a bevy of regressive ideas on sex and gender that turn out to be grounded in his own psychological theories.

A little over a week ago, Peterson, who is known for his psychology lectures on YouTube, released his book 12 Rules for Life. The book, which offers "12 practical and profound rules for life" is a logical milestone in Peterson's trajectory from a YouTube academic known for his lectures that fused a diverse array of topics (psychology, philosophy, history and religion) to a vocal cultural critic and self-help figure whose controversial ideas are grounded in essentialist takes on humanity.

Peterson's philosophies spilled into the world of policy when he began to fight against human rights legislation in Canada aimed at protecting people from discrimination based on gender identity or expression in September 2016. In a video that's gained over 200,000 views since September, Peterson argues that boiler-plate hate crime and anti-discrimination laws could create a slippery slope to prosecutions based simply on misgendering someone — despite there being no concrete examples of this ever happening, and frequent examples of the use of hate crime laws to bring violent offenders to justice.

As of late, Peterson has become a darling in alt-right circles, and frequently delivers lectures to right-wing student groups, one of which was recently titled "Identity politics and the Marxist lie of white privilege." Peterson's ideas have particularly spoken to white disaffected men who feel left behind, ignored and pushed aside by progressive movements like #MeToo, which are meant to lift up women and other minorities.

CBC interview yesterday offers stunning proof of my appalling character (having failed to watch The Metaphysics of Pepe: https://t.co/udlyBEnRED) pic.twitter.com/012Bft8Q6i — Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 27, 2018

Aside from his unproven legal concerns, Peterson has made clear that he also disagrees with the premise of transgender identity — that biological sex and gender are independent, calling the assertion "wrong" at a Harvard lecture. In testimony against efforts to provide legal protection trans people in Canada, Peterson called trans identities "social constructionism." In a Joe Rogan interview, Peterson attempted to undermine the legitimacy of transgender identity by suggesting that sex is causally related to gender. In his book, Peterson said "Male and female and parent and child are categories for us — natural categories, deeply embedded in our perceptual, emotional and motivational structures." It's clear how he views things that don't fall neatly into those categories.

In Peterson's book and recent press tour, it's become apparent that Peterson's resistance to trans protections and "PC culture" aren't isolated from his academic philosophies. Peterson's ideas are grounded in the notion that men and women contain essential, separate and immutable personality characteristics.

Recent studies have found that the idea of a consistent male personality and female personality is not grounded in reality. A 2005 analysis of 46 meta-analyses, backed by the American Psychological Association, found that men and women were alike in "personality, cognitive ability and leadership," and that "gender differences had either no or a very small effect on most of the psychological variables examined. Only a few main differences appeared: Compared with women, men could throw farther, were more physically aggressive, masturbated more, and held more positive attitudes about sex in uncommitted relationships."

But Peterson falls into a movement of predominantly male psychologists, such as Steven Pinker, who attempt to explain apparent psychological or behavioral difference with evolutionary theory.

The day of his book release, Peterson gave an interview to Channel 4 that went viral where he ended up debating host Cathy Newman. Peterson repeatedly expressed variants of the idea that men were from Mars and women were from Venus.

In one portion, Peterson explained away the gender pay gap by claiming that it is largely a result of preferences naturally found in men and women, pointing to the continued gender disparity in the number of nurses and engineers even in the most progressive Scandinavian countries (The Economist points to a Canadian study that found that women shied away from "masculine" sounding jobs because they feared they wouldn't belong, not because of the job itself, to explain the continued disparity).

While undermining the struggles of women based on psychological theory, Peterson plays up the struggles of men, writing in his book that discrimination against men has led to joblessness and lack of education: "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."

The criticism of the perceived phenomenon doesn't bear fruit in light of Peterson's willingness to brush aside the proposition of absolute gender equality on the next page: "any hierarchy creates winners and losers. The winners are, of course, more likely to justify the hierarchy and the losers more likely to criticize it." It seems like faced with the proposition of a less extreme hierarchy, Peterson has forgotten how this rule applies to himself.