But who is he, what does he believe in - and what's with the lobsters?

A quick bio

Born in Alberta in 1962, Peterson earned a PhD in clinical psychology before going on to work as an associate professor at Harvard. He moved back to Canada in 1998 to become a professor at the University of Toronto, where he enjoyed a respected but fairly conventional career until 2016.

His 'big break' came when he posted a series of YouTube videos about how he'd refuse to use the preferred pronouns of some of his students and fellow faculty members. Those videos went viral, propelling Dr Peterson to internet stardom.

Thoughts on women

Dr Peterson has received a lot of criticism for his thoughts and theories about women. In an interview with Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, he said he said the idea that women were oppressed by men throughout history is an "absolutely reprehensible rewrite of history".



He believes in "traditional" gender roles because he thinks men might simply be more competent than women, and he's suggested women wear makeup to work to be "sexually provocative".

When a member of the 'incel' community drove a van into a crowd in Toronto and killed 10 people, Dr Peterson proposed a system of 'enforced monogamy', which many interpreted to mean women are given to men as sexual partners in order to prevent such acts of violence.

*Clarification: Dr Peterson later wrote in a blog that "enforced monogamy" actually means "socially-promoted, culturally-inculcated monogamy" not "government-enforced monogamy". However scientific papers that use the term "enforced monogamy" use it to describe the process where sexual selection has been taken away, which would contradict Dr Peterson's definition of the term.The papers that Dr Peterson linked to to support his argument also did not make any mention of the term "enforced monogamy".

Yet one of the central themes of his wildly successful 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos is that order is masculine and chaos is feminine - which would seem to contradict his view of male violence as an inevitable result of their sexual frustration.

Thoughts on race

Dr Peterson has called white privilege a "Marxist lie".