Every man I know has an opinion on Jordan Peterson. There’s the guy who thinks he’s a fraud. There’s the guy who thinks he’s a self-help guru masquerading as an intellectual. There’s the guy who thinks the smug left is dismissing him too quickly. The YouTube star and bestselling author is nothing if not attention-grabbing. So when GQ called and asked if I wanted to fly to America and interview Peterson, I hesitated for at least three seconds before saying yes. The pause was to allow two thoughts to percolate through my brain: first, will his supporters destroy my Twitter mentions and email inbox for days after the piece is published? Second, will he win?

Peterson sells himself as Professor Logic, and his fans love to see him “own” and “destroy” his ideological opponents. He is undoubtedly smart, eloquent and well-read in his favoured subjects. His bestselling book, 12 Rules For Life, is peppered with references to Jung, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. It is also – how do I put this delicately – very, very weird. It mixes homespun life advice with denunciations of Soviet communism.

Here’s why I wanted to talk to him. A century after the first women got the vote in Britain, feminism is praised everywhere from T-shirts to glossy business summits. But Peterson is a heretic. He believes that there is no such thing as the patriarchy. But, at the same time, he’s not some standard issue boorish Alpha Male. (He cries more than I do, and dresses better, too.) Nor is he a lazy, unthinking bar-room sexist. (He doesn’t use crude or demeaning language.) As he sees it, his arguments about innate differences between men and women’s interests and aptitudes are supported by science.

Going into the interview, in a hotel suite in Baltimore, I resolved never to argue that his views were offensive. After all, he thrives on suggesting that feminists, and the left generally, are addicted to grievance politics. Instead, I would argue, he’s simply wrong. He makes his points with such ease and authority that it suppresses the bit of your brain which should go, “wait, that’s not quite-“ until long after he’s moved onto something else.

I told him beforehand that I thought we’d disagree a lot, but I hoped it would be an interesting discussion.

Peterson has talked before about dealing with anxiety, and he certainly didn’t burst into the room like some people I’ve interviewed, demanding to be the centre of attention, reeling off anecdotes and trying to charm me. He was quiet, self-contained and courteous, doing everything the photographer asked with zero fuss or complaint. I told him beforehand that I thought we’d disagree a lot, but I hoped it would be an interesting discussion. He asked my surname.

Once the camera was on, we spent 90 minutes in what felt like hand-to-hand combat, pausing only to allow the photographer to change the memory card in his video camera. Peterson stumped me a few times, and I did the same back to him. He (or his team) seemed not to have Googled me before we started, which led him onto a landmine or two. At times, I felt as though I had annoyed him (he didn’t appreciate me telling him that his theories about lobster neuroscience were “bollocks”). Occasionally we agreed (for instance, that Twitter is bad for online debates).

In person, he can seem intimidating, because he is so sure of his arguments and he makes his points so forcefully. Once the interview finished, there wasn’t much to say to each other – it was a tiring hour and a half, and I had caught him in the middle of a long speaking tour. But he stuck around in case we needed to pick up any shots, until the photographer said he could go. He might seem angry, but he’s disciplined. He’s a professional.

I think Peterson has chosen a hard road – his whole appeal is based on intellectual superiority and confrontation, and it doesn’t leave much space for humility and humour. He seems genuinely to love his family, though, and he lit up when he talked about working with kids in a nursery. I don’t think he seems very happy – life on tour is hard (just ask any number of bands who were destroyed by it) even if you’re not on all-beef diet. Still, that diet is doing wonders for his figure, if not his arteries: in the flesh, he looks enviably lean.

There was never going to be a moment when we settled our disagreements. Our worldviews are simply too different. Who won? I can’t say. I hope that, whichever of us the audience finds most persuasive, they will appreciate that GQ has given a platform to such a long, in-depth discussion. Jordan Peterson’s ideas are vital to understanding the online conversation about what it means to be a man today. And with politicians from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin to Brazil’s new leader Jair Bolsonaro all pushing “traditional” ideas of gender roles, his worldview cannot be ignored.

Read the interview in our new issue, and watch the video here:

Now read:

Rarely has there been a more confusing time to be a man

Jordan Peterson: “There was plenty of motivation to take me out. It just didn't work."

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© Gavin Bond

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From November 2018 see a month's worth of content on what it means to be a man, on GQ.co.uk, written by a variety of columnists each day.