Brothers in arms Jordan Peterson, the go-to guru for young men today
With his outspoken views on masculinity, Jordan Peterson has become an unlikely hit with a new generation, says Ralph Jones
Last night, controversial academic Jordan Peterson was due to take to the stage at London’s Eventim Apollo on his 12 Rules for Life tour, named after his bestselling book. Yet a last-minute cancellation left thousands of would-be attendees disappointed to miss a glimpse of the man who has become the voice of the young male masses: “Was so looking forward to listening to you,” wrote one fan on Twitter; “You will be missed,” added another.
Indeed, at his book signing in October last year, I asked the young men in the queue outside why they had gathered en masse. Matthew Odell, a 19-year-old student, became visibly nervous as we inched towards the door. He was agitated. He couldn’t look at me, let alone talk. As he approached Peterson, his face became redder and redder; stuttering, and struggling to articulate his thoughts. His eyes looked as though they were filling with tears.
Peterson’s book had helped Odell during a family illness, he said; he now spends an hour and a half a day watching Peterson’s videos, which include Taking Responsibility for Your Life and Take Aim, Even Badly.
Michael Rae, another student in the queue, praised Peterson even more effusively, describing him as “just a breath of fresh air”, while speaking of the “masculinity crisis” threatening his peers. Both he and Odell talked suspiciously – and naively – about feminism’s encroaching dominance. “I can’t buy the idea that men are oppressing women,” Rae said.
The pair are a small part of a juggernaut of support Peterson, 56, has
accrued worldwide. The professor of psychology at the University of Toronto has been described as a “secular prophet”; millions subscribe to his Youtube channel, while his book – billed as a guide to modern living – has topped charts in countries from his native Canada to Korea. He has become a self-help saviour: a much-vaunted paragon for young men who never before believed they needed any.
Many are “dying, literally, for a word of encouragement” he has said of his supporters. “I’m that word of encouragement.”
Self-help books saw record sales last year, rising 20 per cent from 2017; the appetite is now larger than ever. The gender of their author is significant, too: long ago, those in the publishing industry cottoned on to the fact that men are more likely to read books by men, and women are more likely to read books by women. Other self-help books by men boast titles like Hell Week and Unf--- Yourself; those written by women include Tiny Beautiful Things and The Life-changing Magic of Tidying, invoking their readers to “find joy in every day” and “stand in the sun”. But is Peterson’s brand of self-help really making men better?
Publicity around his book, which includes advice such as “stand up straight with your shoulders back”, “be precise in your speech” and “pet a cat when you encounter one on the street”, has caused a storm. In March, Peterson’s Cambridge fellowship was withdrawn after he was pictured with a fan in an anti-islam T-shirt – which the psychologist remonstrated was one of 30,000 photos taken with fans at events over the past year; a Channel 4 interview with Cathy Newman, in which the pair argued over the patriarchy and pay gap, has been viewed more than 15million times on Youtube. Since 12 Rules for Life was published in 2018, he has been on the receiving end of “absolutely non-stop scandal and press” – when I observed him posing for photos at his signing, he politely refused to wear a Make
‘He’s a breath of fresh air. I can’t buy the idea that men are oppressing women’
America Great Again hat, explaining: “I’m in enough trouble.”
The phrase “self-help” originates with a Victorian government reformer called Samuel Smiles, who filled his 1859 book Self-help with tales of men who conquered adversity. Though the genre has tended to be more popular with women, Kiera O’brien, data editor at the The Bookseller magazine, said authors like Mark Manson (who wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F---) have successfully wooed a younger, angstridden male audience. “It’s almost like male readers are looking for guidance or reassurance on how to be a man in a post-metoo world,” O’brien explained. “It’s a noticeable skew which has never really happened before.”
The world of motivational speakers is male-dominated, too, says Paul Mcgee, author of How to Have a Great Life. In the US, the biggest player in the industry is Tony Robbins, a 6ft 6in “life and business strategist” born in Hollywood – and worth an estimated $480million. His Netflix documentary Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru, filmed over six days at one of his Date With Destiny events in Florida (billed as a seminar but with all the trappings of the initiation ceremony into a cult, where tickets cost $4,995), depicts a man capable of being both extremely compassionate and extraordinarily manipulative. At a similar event the year prior, Robbins made headlines by saying that Metoo survivors were inadvisedly trying to make themselves feel good by achieving significance.
Like Peterson, he often uses his platform to side with men. David D Burns, whose Feeling Good books helped popularise cognitive behavioural therapy in the Eighties, is dismissive of the men who proffer pseudoscientific self-improvement. “It’s a lot of baloney,” he says. “There’s an awful lot of people out there who want to see themselves as therapists and they’re kind of narcissistic, co-dependent individuals that want to rescue people.” He has known a number of “gurus” personally, he says. “And every one turned out to be a fraud.”
Peterson has been roundly criticised for his ideological distortion of scientific evidence. “Jordan Peterson is not a truth-seeker,” says geneticist Adam Rutherford. “I think that he is an ideologue.”
Peterson chooses to believe that humans should emulate the patriarchal hierarchy of the lobster; one can pluck any animal behaviour out of the ether and use it to propose that humans follow suit, Rutherford explains. But would this redeemer of young men command such a fierce audience if he started promoting the notion of their copying ants, who act as sex slaves serving a single queen? For many of his impressionable followers, ideas become fact when Prof Jordan B Peterson tells them so.
Today’s young men often find
‘In the post-metoo era, figures like Peterson are the final bulwarks’
themselves emotionally stranded: 2.5million describe themselves as having no close friends – equivalent to one in eight – while friendlessness trebles between their early 20s and middle age. While there are increased conversations around openness and mental health, “it’s not seen as macho to look for help”, explains Paul Mcgee. For those unable to unload their emotional burden, then, Peterson – who appears to have all the answers – is a source of comfort.
“I think that the content that I’m producing is attractive to people who would like to be characterised by courage and the development of their character,” Peterson tells me over the phone. “And perhaps that’s a message that’s particularly necessary for young men now, because they’re often criticised for doing such things.”
In the post-metoo culture, in which men have been encouraged to demonstrate more empathy with the female experience, figures like Peterson flourish because they are one of the final bulwarks. “Toughen up,” they tell their acolytes. “Stand up and be a man.” This rhetoric can be alluring because of its invocations of a comfortable, traditional era for men. But what it actually means to be a man is changing all the time, and Peterson – and his followers – would do well to accept it.