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He’s a hurricane of fresh air, this university professor who baldly says that one of the many reasons he won’t adopt the faddish new non-binary gender pronouns is that “the people who made those words are possessed by ideology and not to be trusted anyway.”

In fact, Dr. Jordan Peterson, the man at the centre of a freedom-of-speech battle at the University of Toronto, isn’t even certain that the whole gender-identity/gender-expression issue isn’t really at heart a question of fashion.

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“Because the logic underlying the arguments is that … biological sex, gender identity and gender expression vary independently,” he says — noting quickly that that is “absolutely contradicted by the data,” which shows 98% of people have the same gender identity as their biological sex — “it has become unmoored from the underlying reality” and is “all interpretation.”

“Well, if it’s all interpretation it’s not distinguishable from fashion,” he says.

Peterson isn’t being mischievous or just idly stirring the pot.

Nor was he doing that when he posted three new videos to his YouTube channel late last month, thinking through on his feet, as he has done for years, the dangers of the looming federal Bill C-16 and how it will beautifully and terrifyingly meld with the policies already enshrined in the Ontario Human Rights Code.