Approaching Sodom > Bizarre Ruling from Ontario Court against Jordan Peterson; Utter Madness in Mexico; Trans Women banned from Women's Chess

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It's just my opinion, but it seems like ordering one of the most successful social media persons in the history of social media to undergo social media training, is somewhat akin to Chinese reorientation courses. 

Ontario court rules against Jordan Peterson, upholds

social media training order

CBC News · Posted: Aug 23, 2023 2:00 AM PDT | 

Jordan Peterson, who has gained international fame for his bestselling self-help books and lectures, has refused to pay to undergo a media training course ordered by the College of Psychologists of Ontario.

(Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)

An Ontario court ruled against psychologist and media personality Jordan Peterson Wednesday, and upheld a regulatory body's order that he take social media training in the wake of complaints about his controversial online posts and statements.

Last November, Peterson, a professor emeritus with the University of Toronto psychology department who is also an author and media commentator, was ordered by the College of Psychologists of Ontario to undergo a coaching program on professionalism in public statements.

That followed numerous complaints to the governing body of Ontario psychologists, of which Peterson is a member, regarding his online commentary directed at politicians, a plus-sized model, and transgender actor Elliot Page, (formerly the adorable Ellen Page) among other issues. You can read more about those social media posts here.

The college's complaints committee concluded his controversial public statements could amount to professional misconduct and ordered Peterson to pay for a media coaching program — noting failure to comply could mean the loss of his licence to practice psychology in the province.

Peterson filed for a judicial review, arguing his political commentary is not under the college's purview.

Peterson says he stands behind statements

Three Ontario Divisional Court judges unanimously dismissed Peterson's application, ruling that the college's decision falls within its mandate to regulate the profession in the public interest and does not affect his freedom of expression.

Now that is astonishing on both counts. 

"The order is not disciplinary and does not prevent Dr. Peterson from expressing himself on controversial topics; it has a minimal impact on his right to freedom of expression," the decision written by Justice Paul Schabas reads, in part. You can read the entire decision here.

Peterson had said his statements were not made in his capacity as a clinical psychologist, but instead were "off-duty opinions" — an argument the court rejected.

Again, astonishing!

"Dr. Peterson sees himself functioning as a clinical psychologist 'in the broad public space' where he claims to be helping 'millions of people,"' Schabas wrote.

"Peterson cannot have it both ways: he cannot speak as a member of a regulated profession without taking responsibility for the risk of harm that flows from him speaking in that trusted capacity."

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, before the decision was released, Peterson said that he stands by what he has said, and wished the college luck in its "continued prosecution.

"They're going to need it," he wrote.

Peterson told CBC News in January that he had no intention of giving up his fight with the regulatory body, accusing the college of attempting to stymie his speech and discipline him for his political opinions.

He added he no longer treats patients and his career is instead focused on social and political commentary. Similarly, he doesn't regularly lecture at U of T. 

However, Peterson has said he wants to retain his licence.

"I deserve it. I earned it. I haven't done anything to justify suspending it, and I don't want to give the hyenas their bones," he said earlier this year.

The college, in a statement released after the decision was issued, said it is committed to carrying out its mandate of protecting the public interest by regulating the practice of psychology. 

Does the "Practice of Psychology" include comments on Twitter? The College is way overstepping its jurisdiction.

"The College will review today's decision and undertake next steps in accordance with our mandate and any appropriate legal processes," the statement reads.

Peterson, seen here speaking to a crowd in Sherwood Park, Alta., in 2018, has said he wants to retain his licence, though his career is now largely focused on social and political commentary. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)

Peterson's case was watched closely by free speech advocates and regulators in other professions. It featured interveners including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, and LGBTQ+ advocacy group Egale Canada, which said in a statement from Executive Director Helen Kennedy that communities her organization represents often face discrimination and barriers when accessing healthcare.

What does that have to do with someone commenting on Twitter?

"Today's ruling that as a professional regulatory body, the College of Psychologists of Ontario has the mandate to regulate degrading and demeaning speech by its members, is a step in the right direction in ensuring that 2SLGBTQI (yes, that's Canadian, were all inclusive) individuals can access healthcare safely and without discrimination," Kennedy wrote.

Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) Executive Director Noa Mendelsoh Aviv, meanwhile, said in a statement that the CCLA doesn't endorse Peterson's views, but still argued in court that professional regulatory bodies shouldn't be policing speech that is not directly connected to professional practice.

"Freedom of expression is a right that no individual gives up just because they join a regulated profession," she said.

Peterson rose to prominence through his polarizing YouTube videos critiquing liberal culture and his successful self-help book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

Pro-Life Leader Convicted of Misgendering Drag Queen

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D. | August 17, 2023

NEW YORK, August 18 (C-Fam) A Mexican tribunal found former congressman Rodrigo Iván Cortés guilty of gender-based political violence for referring to transgender congressman Salma Luévano as a “man who self-identifies as a woman.”

Which is true, but, apparently, illegal to say so.

Shouldn't she be sued for impersonating a bishop, or mocking the church?

Luévano appeared in the Mexican Congress last year in mock bishop’s clothing to present a bill to punish “hate speech” by churches. In a video statement, Rodrigo Iván Cortés said the trans-identifying politician was “a man who describes himself as a woman, who demands respect, but it is exactly what he does not give, he asks for what he does not give, with tremendous disrespect.”

Luévano, who obtained a seat in Congress thanks to quotas requiring LGBTQI legislators, sued Cortés for political gender-based violence against him in Mexico’s electoral tribunal and won the initial lawsuit earlier this year.

The court said that Cortés’ statement “caused digital violence, symbolic violence, psychological violence, and sexual violence” against the trans legislator. Among the factors weighing against Cortés the court cited the “asymmetric relation” between the two, because Cortés “is a privileged white man, with more economic means, and a Catholic.” The court also said the sentence was reached by applying a “gender-perspective” and an “intersectional focus” with a view to “transform social reality.”

OMG! Telling the truth about someone is violent in ways we never even heard of before. Now you must avoid the truth if you want to stay out of court in Mexico. Here, if Cortes was a brown atheist he would have been OK, but being a white Catholic makes him guilty.

'Transform social reality' - It seems to me that transforming reality results in unreality. 

Cortés, who is the President of the Frente Nacional por la Familia, Mexico’s best known pro-life and pro-family organization, challenged this ruling as unfounded and illegal. The electoral tribunal, an administrative tribunal of sorts with jurisdiction over political disputes, should not have had entertained the lawsuit because he was a “civilian” and not a politician, he said in interviews online.

On final appeal, last week, the Mexican electoral tribunal upheld the initial sentence against Cortés and condemned the well-known pro-life and pro-family leader to publish a court-authored apology every day for a month and to pay over $1200 in fines. The tribunal banned his tweets from social media platforms and ordered that he be subject to training on gender-based violence.

Cortés will also be listed as an offender for violence against women on a registry that would prevent him from physically entering the Mexican House of Representatives. A bill currently pending in the Mexican congress would also prohibit anyone on this gender offender registry from running for office.

“The real purpose of this conviction is to silence me from saying what every concerned citizen needs to hear—that these actions and proposed laws are driving forward a radical agenda in Mexico, which poses a very serious threat to the wellbeing of our society, especially our children,” Cortés said.

“I remain committed to the peaceful expression of truth, the defense of our fundamental freedoms, and the protection of our children,” he emphasized.

“I reject violence on all grounds,” he emphasized, against the accusations that his statements were a form of gender-based violence. “One need only watch the videos of unrest in our Congress to see clearly that it is not me and my organization that is bringing chaos and disorder into Mexico’s political institutions.”

After having exhausted all domestic remedies, Cortés plans to appeal the ruling of the electoral tribunal to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights.

The Mexican court that condemned Cortes is not isolated. The Biden administration and other Western governments are at the forefront of promoting censorship and control of speech around the world through policies to address technology-facilitated gender-based violence.

Canada's far-left government is working in this direction also.

Cortés is being represented by the American-based nonprofit law firm, Alliance Defending Freedom.

Now this is a surprise and it's not surprising that it is raising some criticism. Most sports where trans women are being banned from women's events are athletics. But chess is not athletic, it's a mental game. The attempt to ban trans women here is suggesting that men may be smarter than women. It will be interesting to get the results of their analysis.

Int'l Chess Federation bans transgender women from competing

in competitions for women

By Adam Schrader

The International Chess Federation, the governing body for the game, has updated its rules to

temporarily ban transgender women from competing in women’s events pending further analysis.

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 17 (UPI) -- The International Chess Federation, the governing body for the game, has updated its rules to temporarily ban transgender women from competing in women's events pending further analysis.

The organization, known by its French acronym FIDE, quietly updated its handbook this week to state that a player who has changed their gender from male to female "has no right to participate in official FIDE events for women until further FIDE's decision is made."

"Such decision should be based on further analysis and shall be taken by the FIDE Council at the earliest possible time, but not longer than within two years period. There are no restrictions to play in the open section for a person who has changed gender," the handbook reads.

The handbook also notes that a player who holds any women's titles but whose gender has been changed to a man would lose those titles, which will be renewed if the person changes back their gender. Players who changed their gender from male to female can retain their titles.

FIDE further said it has the right to "inform the organizers and other relevant parties" about a player's gender change to prevent players "from possible illegitimate enrollments in tournaments."

"FIDE recognizes that this is an evolving issue for chess and that besides technical regulations on transgender regulations further policy may need to be evolved in the future in line with research evidence," the handbook reads.

The ban is raising questions about why competitions are separated by gender at all.

The Center for Trans Equality said in a statement posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter that the new policy "relies on ignorant anti-trans ideas" and is "insulting to cis women, to trans women and to the game itself."

"It suggests that males are somehow strategically better," Richard Pringle, a sociology professor at Monash University in Australia told The Washington Post. "It's not just transphobic, it's anti-feminist too."

Pringle added that the ban was "likely a political decision rather than an issue of fairness."

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Approaching Sodom > Civilizational Collapse - Gender Dysphoria - Peterson; Snapchat addiction suicide; University cautions reading 1984; Conversion therapy; San Fransicko;

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Jordan Peterson discusses Civilizational Collapse and

Causes of Gender Dysphoria

Throughout his appearance on a Joe Rogan podcast, Peterson spoke about what he saw as the decline of Western civilization. He specifically pointed to the obsession with gender as a sign of civilizational collapse, which caught the ire of the far-left progressive activist group Media Matters, which frequently demands that advertisers boycott conservative news commentators

The conversation about gender began when Rogan brought up remarks by Douglas Murray, associate editor of The Spectator and author of The Madness of Crowds, who also contends that civilization is collapsing. Rogan noted that in a previous episode of his show, Murray observed that when societies start collapsing, “they become obsessed with gender.”

“He was saying that you could trace it back to the ancient Romans, the Greeks,” Rogan continued.

Or, to Sodom and Gomorrah, for that matter.

Peterson expanded on that assertion, contending that “It’s not so much an obsession with gender, it’s a disintegration of categories as a precursor ... like so it’s a marker for — if categories just dissolve, especially fundamental ones, the culture is dissolving.” From there, he and Rogan began to engage in the conversation about the Bible.

At another point in the podcast, Rogan asked Peterson: “What do you think it means when someone is so attracted to the idea that they were born in the wrong body … that they’re willing to go through surgery?”

Peterson responded by saying, “A lot of the people who are manifesting serious issues with gender identity are on the autistic spectrum.” He further likened the widespread phenomenon of people identifying as transgender to the “satanic ritual abuse allegations that emerged in daycares in the 1980s.” Peterson attributed the aforementioned hysteria to “women going into the workforce en masse, leaving their children with strangers and starting to have pathological fantasies about it, especially if they were borderline schizophrenic.”

“Those fantasies propagated into the population,” he recalled. He suggested that something similar was happening with the widespread adoption of transgender identities, telling Rogan that a relationship exists between “creativity” and gender dysphoria.”

“They’re not stable in their identity” because “they’re creative,” Peterson insisted, adding that “creative people by definition aren’t stable in their identities, that’s what makes them creative.” 

Later, Rogan sought to clarify that the motivating factor between “people who want to change their gender identity is creativity.” Peterson replied, declaring: “I don’t think so, I know so.” 

Peterson’s latest appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” comes about a year after he began to speak openly about his faith journey. Peterson grew up Protestant and had spent much of his time as a public figure as a religious skeptic but appears to have embraced his faith following health problems.

Rogan, the former host of “Fear Factor,” continues to draw millions of listeners to his podcast despite receiving significant opposition for sharing what critics decry as coronavirus misinformation. When singer Neil Young threatened to remove his music from Spotify if it refused to cut ties with Rogan, the streaming platform elected to scrub Young’s songs from Spotify.

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Instagram, Snapchat sued over alleged role in girl’s suicide

The social media platforms are addictive to an extent that caused a kid

to kill herself, mother claims in lawsuit

© Philippe Turpin / Getty Images

Eleven-year-old Selena was apparently so addicted to Instagram and Snapchat that she suffered depression, eating disorders and sleep deprivation, before eventually killing herself, her mother Tammy Rodriguez claims. The woman, from Connecticut, sued the companies in San Francisco federal court this week.

According to the lawsuit, filed on Thursday against the platforms’ respective parent companies, Meta (formerly Facebook) and Snap, the photo-sharing and messaging apps lack parental control and “seek to exploit users’ susceptibility.” As an alleged result, the girl had “struggled for more than two years with an extreme addiction” and then took her own life in July last year.

While there are terms of service that warn that a person can only create an account from age 13 and older, the platforms lack strong age-verification checks, the lawsuit asserts. The absence of parental controls made it almost impossible for the mother to limit her child’s screen time on the social media, and apparently only caused further confrontations in the family.

“The only way for Tammy Rodriguez to effectively limit access to Defendants’ products would be to physically confiscate Selena’s internet-enabled devices,” the suit claims. To access her accounts through other means, the girl simply ran away from home.

A therapist to whom the girl had been taken evaluated the harm, saying that the practice has never before seen “a patient as addicted to social media.”

“There is a mental health epidemic among American teens,” attorney Matthew Bergman, founder of Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle, told Bloomberg. His company represents Tammy Rodriguez in the case. The attorney also filed a separate complaint this week, representing a mother in Oregon. “Numerous mental health conditions” of a 15-year-old are blamed on Snap and Meta.

Last year, anxiety over the wellbeing of young social-media users came under a spotlight and reached the US senate. Tech companies appeared in hearings, after product-manager-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen accused Mark Zuckerberg’s company of prioritizing money over children’s and teenagers’ safety. She called for more regulation, in particular of Instagram. Haugen also spoke before a European Parliament committee, discussing the social media companies’ negative impact on users.

University finds novel 1984 ‘offensive and upsetting’

Students are being warned of ‘explicit material’ awaiting them in a novel that,

ironically, describes the dangers of censorship

© Getty Images / tomazl

The University of Northampton has issued a harsh warning over potentially “offensive and upsetting” material contained in the famous dystopia by George Orwell, ‘1984.’

The novel, which describes the dangers of totalitarian rule and censorship, is now red-flagged, as it addresses “challenging issues related to violence, gender, sexuality, class, race, abuses, sexual abuse, political ideas and offensive language.”

The warning, issued to students taking a module called ‘Identity Under Construction,’ became public following a Freedom of Information request by The Mail on Sunday.

The news raised eyebrows among social media users, with one saying that Orwell is “grave turning” and another reacting with an emotional “Get me off this planet. I can't deal.”

“There’s something very Big Brother about it,” Conservative MP Andre Bridgen commented on Twitter.

“If a trigger warning prevents even one student from reading 1984, the University of Northampton has utterly failed in its mission. This book, more than any, should be read widely at the moment,” an Australian professor Andrew Timming noted.

However, Orwell’s classic novel is not the only one students at Northampton should beware of, according to the university’s management. Samuel Beckett’s play ‘Endgame,’ the graphic novel ‘V For Vendetta’ by Alan Moore and David Lloyd and Jeanette Winterson’s ‘Sexing The Cherry’ have also been listed by the university as “offensive and upsetting.”

Apparently, there are also some problems with books taught in other modules of Northampton’s English degree course as well. Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel ‘The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time,’ for example, might be upsetting for readers, as it includes the “death of an animal, ableism and disability and offensive language”, the warning explains.

The educational institution, currently ranked 108 out of 132 UK universities in the 2022 edition of The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, has issued a statement to defend its warnings. As quoted by The Daily Mail, Northampton says that “while it is not university policy, we may warn students of content in relation to violence, sexual violence, domestic abuse and suicide” because “some texts might be challenging for some students.” 

And, Oh God, we wouldn't want to challenge our students, would we?

EU country bans gay ‘conversion therapy’

The new French law, which authorizes jail time and fines for practitioners,

was unanimously passed

Lawmakers in France’s National Assembly have given their unanimous backing to a new law which prohibits so-called ‘gay conversion therapy’, voting 142-0.

The new law, passed on Tuesday, prohibits attempts to “convert” LGBTQ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender roles. It also grants authorities the right to seek criminal charges against practitioners of conversion therapy. 

Sustained efforts to “aim to modify or reprimand sexual orientation or gender identity,” which negatively influence the physical or mental health of victims, will be punishable by up to two years imprisonment and €30,000 ($34,000) in fines.

Penalties can be increased to three years imprisonment and fines of €45,000 ($50,000) when the victim is a minor or another vulnerable member of society. 

Under the new legislation, campaigners will now be able file civil suits on behalf of victims of conversion therapy. The measure was hailed in parliament as a vital move to safeguard those who hesitate or are unable to alert police themselves.

Lawmaker Laurence Vanceunebrock-Mialon, who played a key role in the law’s passage, claimed it would target “all those who equated an identity or a sexual orientation with sickness.” 

“There is nothing to cure,” she added, speaking to fellow lawmakers. 

The law will come into effect in the next two weeks, with President Emmanuel Macron’s consent. The French leader hailed the bill’s passage, tweeting: “Because being oneself is not a crime.”

The practice is not widely prohibited across Europe. It is illegal in Albania and is prohibited for minors in Malta and Germany. The EU has urged nation states to ban conversion therapy. In October, the UK Government launched a consultation on banning conversion therapy in England and Wales.

Yet, those who convince children to become transgendered are easily the worst criminals in all this. More than half of all girls who transition to boys will attempt suicide. If that is not mental illness, then what is it? 

Stossel: How Progressives Made San Francisco a Sick City

John Stossel

January 26, 2022

San Francisco’s liberal mayor declared a “state of emergency” to try to deal with the city’s “nasty streets.” How did it get so bad?

Journalist Michael Shellenberger’s new book, “San Fransicko,” argues that it happened because of progressive ideas. ”The town I love is sick,” says Shellenberger in my new video.

He came to San Francisco when he was in his 20s to support social justice causes. He still supports those ideas, but “it just went too far.” In 2014, California politicians decided to end mass incarceration. It’s a noble goal. America locks up a higher percentage of its people than any other country. Jails are overcrowded. People in jail are more likely to learn to be better criminals than to be rehabilitated.

So California converted many nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors. People who steal less than $950 worth of items are no longer jailed. Proponents said this would divert money from prisons that could go to mental health and drug treatment programs.

But not jailing people who break laws had nasty unintended consequences.

Shoplifters steal right in front of security guards. Police look the other way. They know if they make an arrest, they’ll face hours of paperwork and the person arrested will just return to the street. Cars are broken into 74 times a day.

“None of us want mass incarceration,” says Shellenberger, who voted for the law to stop jailing people. “But that was a recipe for disaster.”

Because no one is arrested for camping on the street, San Francisco is now filled with tent cities that supposedly house the “homeless.” But most campers are the mentally ill and drug users who choose life on the street. They shoot up or light up in public, confident no one will interfere.

In my video, one crack addict said she stays in San Francisco because it is “more lenient.” In other cities, she said, she’d be in jail. Other cities, like Miami, do treat the homeless differently. “They don’t let people use drugs in public, and they built sufficient homeless shelters,” says Shellenberger.

In San Francisco, new homeless shelters are blocked by progressive activists who argue that everyone deserves an apartment. Yet it costs $700,000 to build one apartment in San Francisco.

A few years ago, I made a video suggesting that the high cost of apartments was a major reason for San Francisco’s tent cities. California’s excessive regulation discourages new construction, so there’s a housing shortage. That keeps rental prices high and leads people to live on the street.

“It’s not true,” says Shellenberger. “If it were true that expensive places made for homelessness, why don’t we see large open-air drug scenes in Carmel? Why don’t we see large open drug scenes in many fancy neighborhoods? Homelessness is just a function of whether or not you allow people to camp in public or not.”

"Homelessness is just a function of whether or not you allow people

to camp in public or not.”

But if people are homeless, should the government arrest them? The Constitution gives us the right to peaceably assemble. “People have a right to be outdoors,” I tell Shellenberger. “We don’t have a right to force them off the street if they aren’t directly threatening anybody.”

“We should defend those rights because that’s part of our freedom,” he replies, “but you don’t have a right to shoot heroin at the public park.”

There need to be “consequences for people’s behaviors.” After researching his city’s problems, Shellenberger decided he could no longer identify as progressive. “Progressivism has become the abdication of personal responsibility.”

“Progressivism has become the abdication of personal responsibility.”

I think it has always meant that. But now parts of San Francisco have become such a sewer that even liberal politicians have changed their positions. The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, recently declared it’s time to end the “reign of criminals who are destroying our city!”

Not long ago, when protesters shouted, “Defund the police,” Breed cut San Francisco’s policing budget by $120 million. Now she says her town will be “more aggressive with law enforcement … and less tolerant of all the bulls—t that has destroyed our city.”

Progressive ideas almost always end badly.

As I have mentioned many times on this blog - sin is progressive!

John Stossel is creator of Stossel TV and author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.” For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.

Jordan Peterson: Gender Politics has No Place in the Classroom

A six-year-old girl became confused about her identity after an Ottawa teacher taught her class that 'girls are not real and boys are not real'

National Post
Jordan Peterson

Back in September of 2016, I released three videos, expressing my concern about Bill C-16, which was then under consideration by the federal government, following the passage of similar legislation in a number of provinces. C-16 purported to merely add “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. However, it was embedded in a web of policy, much of it created by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which indicated that the bill comprised the tip of a very large iceberg. I was particularly upset with the insistence that failure to use the “preferred pronouns” chosen by individuals whose gender-related identity did not fit neatly, according to their personal judgement, into the standard categories of boy and girl or man and woman would now become an offence punishable by law.

Worse is the insistence characteristic of the bill, the policies associated with it, and the tenth-rate academic dogmas driving the entire charade, that “identity” is something solely determined by the individual in question (whatever that identity might be). Even sociologists (neither the older, classical, occasionally useful type, nor the modern, appalling, and positively counterproductive type) don’t believe this. They understand that identity is a social role, which means that it is by necessity socially negotiated. And there’s a reason for this. An identity — a role — is not merely what you think you are, moment to moment, or year by year, but, as the Encyclopedia Britannica has it (specifically within its sociology section), “a comprehensive pattern of behavior that is socially recognized, providing a means of identifying and placing an individual in society,” also serving “as a strategy for coping with recurrent situations and dealing with the roles of others (e.g., parent-child roles).”

Your identity is not the clothes you wear, or the fashionable sexual preference or behaviour you adopt and flaunt, or the causes driving your activism, or your moral outrage at ideas that differ from yours: properly understood, it’s a set of complex compromises between the individual and society as to how the former and the latter might mutually support one another in a sustainable, long-term manner. It’s nothing to alter lightly, as such compromise is very difficult to attain, constituting as it does the essence of civilization itself, which took eons to establish, and understanding, as we should, that the alternative to the adoption of socially-acceptable roles is conflict — plain, simple and continual, as well as simultaneously psychological and social.

To the degree that identity is not biological (and much, but not all of it is), then it’s a drama enacted in the world of other people. An identity provides rules for social interactions that everyone understands; it provides generic but vitally necessary direction and purpose in life. If you’re a child, and you’re playing a pretend game with your friends, you negotiate your identity, so the game can be properly played. You do the same in the real world, whether you are a child, an adolescent, or an adult. To refuse to engage in the social aspect of identity negotiation — to insist that what you say you are is what everyone must accept — is simply to confuse yourself and everyone else (as no one at all understands the rules of your game, not least because they have not yet been formulated).

Your identity is not the clothes you wear, or the fashionable sexual preference or behaviour you adopt and flaunt, or the causes driving your activism, or your moral outrage at ideas that differ from yours

   

The continually expanded plethora of “identities” recently constructed and provided with legal status thus consist of empty terms which (1) do not provide those who claim them with any real social role or direction; (2) confuse all who must deal with the narcissism of the claimant, as the only rule that can exist in the absence of painstakingly, voluntarily and mutually negotiated social role is “it’s morally wrong to say or do anything that hurts my feelings”; (3) risks generating psychological chaos among the vast majority of individuals exposed to the doctrines that insist that identity is essentially fluid and self-generating (and here I’m primarily concerned about children and adolescents whose standard or normative identity has now merely become one personal choice among a near-infinite array of ideologically and legally defined modes of being), and (4) poses a further and unacceptably dangerous threat to the stability of the nuclear family, which consists, at minimum, of a dyad, male and female, coming together primarily for the purposes of raising children in what appears to be the minimal viable social unit (given the vast and incontrovertible body of evidence that fatherlessness, in particular, is associated with heightened risk for criminality, substance abuse, and poorly regulated sexual behaviour among children, adolescents and the adults that they eventually become).

So why bring all this up again? This week, journalist Barbara Kay released a story on The Post Millennial website about an application filed before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario by the parents of a six year girl, “N,” who was made subject to the new tenets of gender identity theory by her hypothetically well-meaning elementary school teacher at Devonshire Community Public School (Ottawa-Carleton District School Board). According to Kay’s account, the teacher insisted to the children that “there is no such thing as girls and boys,” and “girls are not real and boys are not real.” In consequence, “N” began to manifest substantial confusion about her identity. She asked her parents why her existence as a girl was not real. She asked to see a doctor for an opinion. She became unsettled about the reality of her biological existence. Her concern persisted over a three-month period — a long time in the life of a young person.

Consider this: At the tender age of six, “N” was being required, first, to question an identity she had spent continual and effortful time developing since (at minimum) the age of two — learning the rules she understood to be generically appropriate for her role, so that she knew how to fit in, play her part, get along, refrain from violating the expectations of her peers and the adults she interacted with, and planning, as best as she could, her course through life as a female. Second, she was being required to question what constitutes “real” — because if you are six, and you’re a girl, and you know it (and so does everyone else), and you are now being told that none of that is “real,” then the whole idea of reality becomes shaky and unstable. The seriousness of the philosophical and psychological confusion that such demands are capable of generating should not be underestimated.

The seriousness of the philosophical and psychological confusion that such demands are capable of generating should not be underestimated

   

I can barely envision a pedagogical strategy less conducive to stable early childhood development, particularly for a thoughtful child, which is exactly what “N” seems to be — much to her detriment, in this situation. Trusting her teacher, as she apparently did, “N” listened to her lessons and tried to think through what the complicated and internally contradictory mess of information she was presented with might actually signify — and failing, as was inevitable, because there is nothing that it signifies that is reasonable, logical, practical, or true. No matter: “gender fluidity” is school board policy, even for six-year olds, and the distress of a perfectly normal child at the lessons is a price well worth paying to ensure that ideological purity, no matter how counterproductive and absurd, is stringently maintained. Better the child suffers than the teacher thinks. Better the entire educational system reformulates itself around the new dogma (and to hell with the possibility that the experiment might go wrong) than the ideologues governing its structure question their absurd and fundamentally resentful presumptions.

Despite discussing their concerns with the school principal, the superintendent of the school board, and the curriculum superintendent, the parents allege that all these authorities refused to agree to “communicate with parents when sensitive discussions took place” (remember, these are six year olds) and would not issue any directive or take any corrective action “to ensure that children of female gender identity were positively affirmed.” “N’s” parents have since moved their child to another school where the same absolutely inexcusable foolishness has not yet repeated itself. And now we’re going to find out — courtesy of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal (an organization in which I could hardly have less faith and which should be abolished as soon as possible) — whether little girls have the right to maintain their normative, common, practical and realistic world-view and opinion of their own bodies, or whether that is trumped administratively and legally by the existence of the incoherent set of rights inexcusably and forcibly granted to the tiny minority of people who insist that their “identities” are entirely self-generated and absolutely inviolate socially and legally. I would place a strong bet on the latter, and I think the fact that it’s come to that is to our great collective shame and danger.

The silence of the majority on such issues — driven, I think, by fear of the purposeful and genuinely dangerous social alienation likely to be generated in the wake of any given individual’s objections (regardless of how representative of the majority those objections happen to be) — will, in my opinion, generate a state of affairs among our children and adolescents that we will come in the decades to follow to deeply and profoundly regret.

Jordan Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist and the author of the multi-million copy bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. His blog and podcasts can be found at jordanbpeterson.com.

Jordan Peterson Urges Parents to Fight Radical Sex Ed: It’s ‘a Form of Indoctrination’

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist, public intellectual, and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. His main areas of study are in abnormal, social, and personality psychology, with a particular interest in the psychology of religious and ideological belief, and the assessment and improvement of personality and performance.

In 2016, Peterson released a series of videos on his YouTube channel in which he criticized political correctness and the Canadian government's Bill C-16. He subsequently received significant media coverage. This has much to do with the veracity and sheer intelligence of his arguments.

Schools are pushing Ontario's sex ed curriculum on students in a “completely reprehensible” way, Dr. Jordan Peterson said in an interview with parental rights advocate Tanya Granic Allen, who is (was) running to be the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

If parents don’t approve of what their children are being taught at school, then “don’t send them to the classes,” Peterson said forcefully.

“Keep them at home,” he suggested. “And take the consequences.”

video 6:07

Peterson said so many parents oppose the graphic sex ed program that the small group behind it won’t be able to do much.

Parents who refuse to let their children be subjected to the program launched by Kathleen Wynne's Liberal government “may find that you have a lot more support than you think.”

“If you don’t stand your ground, then all that happens is people push you backwards,” he said. “If you wanna be pushed backwards, then go along with it.”

It’s not education, in my estimation.

It’s a form of indoctrination.”

Parents “have to decide what’s important” to them, he said. “The people who are pushing these sorts of agendas are actually quite the small minority. They’re very noisy and they’re very well-organized (and they have the media behind them). But if you don’t stand up and do something about it, especially when it affects your own family, then all that’s going to happen is that it’s going to continue to spread.”

“Kathleen Wynne and her band of radical left cronies think they have a handle on what constitutes human identity and also what should constitute human morality,” said Peterson. “And I think that that’s being pushed in a manner in schools that’s completely reprehensible. It’s not education, in my estimation. It’s a form of indoctrination.”

Peterson warned Wynne’s sex ed curriculum means children are being taught a “false doctrine” and that is essentially a “social constructionist view of identity.”

“That view is predicated on the idea that there is no true linkage between biological sex or perhaps even that there’s no such thing as biological sex and that that’s not linked – even if there is such a thing – it’s not linked in any necessary way to gender identity or gender expression or to sexual proclivity,” he explained. “And I believe that that’s a false doctrine.”

“I don’t like the underlying philosophy,” Peterson told Granic Allen and Queenie Yu. “I don’t like the fact that it’s being foisted on children far before they’re able to make any reasonable decisions about this sort of thing.”

“It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate,” said Peterson. “It’s been tried before and it’s a big mistake...all things considered, there’s nobody better for children than parents. The more power you take away from parents, the more damage you do [to] children.”

Granic Allen, 37, has quickly made a name for herself in the PC leadership race. She “stole the show” and “made her presence felt throughout” the first debate, Canadian media noted. During that debate, she slammed Wynne’s sex ed curriculum and an Ontario law that prevents parents from seeking therapy to help gender-confused kids.

Granic Allen is the President of Parents As First Educators (PAFE), which has campaigned against the Liberal government’s sex ed lessons that introduce homosexuality and gender identity to third graders and anal sex to seventh graders. PAFE represents over 85,000 Ontario parents.

Granic Allen promised that if elected PC leader and premier of Ontario, she will replace Wynne’s sex ed curriculum with “something that is age appropriate that doesn’t sexualize children and that parents are okay with.”

Unfortunately, Granic Allen won't get that chance, she failed in the leadership bid then was blacklisted by the winner, Doug Ford, whom she eventually supported. She will not be permitted to run as an MLA. This is an example of how far even the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party has been indoctrinated into the far-left sex-ed agenda, and how much they fear the far-left Canadian media.

As I wrote a couple weeks ago, there is no place in Canadian politics for Christianity anymore.