U of T professor takes on political correctness in YouTube lecture.
• As part of an hour- long YouTube lecture on political correctness, University of Toronto professor and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson is objecting to the Trudeau government’s Bill C-16, which proposes to outlaw harassment and discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression under the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code.
Peterson, a white male in his mid 50s, also decries what he claims are attempts by the university to transform its human resources department into “a politically correct institution.”
The news was first reported by the University of Toronto student newspaper, The Varsity.
Gender identity is defined by the Ontario Human Rights Commission as “each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum.” The commission defines gender expression as “how a person publicly presents their gender,” which can include behaviour and outward appearance such as dress, hair, makeup, body language and voice, as well as a person’s name and the pronouns they use.
Peterson is critical of these terms and their definitions as outlined by the commission, and compares the changes Bill C-16 would bring about to the policing of expression in “totalitarian and authoritarian political states.”
He also argues against the existence of non- binary gender identities, or those that are not exclusively masculine or feminine, saying “I don’t think there’s any evidence for it.”
Peterson said that if a student asked him to be referred to by a non-binary pronoun, he would not recognize their request: “I don’t recognize another person’s right to determine what pronouns I use to address them. I won’t do it.”
However, a legal expert says the proposed legislation will advance human rights from a practical and symbolic standpoint. “Bill C-16 is important and plays a practical role because it will allow trans people a means with which to seek redress under the law,” said Kyle Kirkup, a professor at the University of Ottawa.
University of Toronto spokeswoman Althea Blackburn-Evans told the National Post that the school is looking into Pearson’s video. Peterson did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
In his video, the professor blames the legislation on the overrepresentation of “social justice warrior-type activists” in government, and “because our current Premier ( Kathleen Wynne) is lesbian in her sexual preference.” He goes on to claim the LGBTI community “has become extraordinarily good at organizing themselves and has a fairly pronounced and very, very sophisticated radical fringe.”
Peterson, who is an expert on personality and the psychology of religion, joined the University of Toronto in 1998. Prior to that he taught at Harvard University.