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Where there are masters, there must be servants. University of Toronto psychology Prof. Jordan Peterson, who considers the theory of gender as independent from biological sex to be “a politically motivated and ill-informed opinion,” refuses to serve, and has said so, forcefully and very publicly in a series of YouTube talks that went viral, and in this paper.

As he points out, there’s a political chasm between prohibiting offensive old words and enforcing the use of new ones. “Ms.” took hold organically because it filled an objective, commonly perceived social gap. Most important, nobody was forced to use it. Being compelled to validate someone else’s unsupported hypothesis by using what he believes are meaningless words, offends Peterson intellectually (and is sure to offend many religious people: “male and female He created them”).

As a result, Peterson has been admonished by his university and mobbed — not just on social media, but literally when he tried to defend his position at a campus rally as (ironically) a freedom of speech issue — by trans activists and their supporters.

Peterson is also prepared for an eventual trial in front of a human rights tribunal. Such a show trial would be a perfect object lesson in “velvet totalitarianism,” a trope coined decades ago by recently deceased University of Toronto psychology professor emeritus John Furedy. According to Furedy, velvet totalitarianism features four main characteristics: the presence of uninterpretable laws, where a charge is laid on the basis of giving offence; the presence of unqualified pseudo-experts, such as campus equity officers, commissar-like figures with power, but no expertise in the alleged crimes they adjudicate; status-defined ethics, such as automatic victimhood for blacks, natives and LGBT people, and automatic suspicion or demonization of those with “white privilege,” like Peterson; and a generalized fear of engaging in public discussions of controversial issues. All four elements are present in this case.

American pundit Norman Podhoretz insightfully wrote: “these culture wars do arouse the passions of all those people who, in their wish to be left alone, are frustrated by forces and ideas that are repugnant to them and from which they cannot seal themselves off.” Jordan Peterson wants merely “to be left alone” by the state. Shouldn’t we all?

National Post

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