Remember a few weeks ago when Jordan Peterson said he was leaving Twitter after getting negative feedback from his unwarranted critique of a woman’s body? Well, other than continuing to tweet almost daily, he also has not let that moment go. In a recent podcast with his daughter Mikhaila Peterson, best known for dubious diet fads like the Lion Diet, the senior Peterson very heatedly relived that moment, to the point where he got himself worked up. Just normal family stuff, I guess.
Here, he continues to equate finding model Yumi Nu unattractive to a big conspiracy and a trend of companies lying to people. Companies have often lied to people by failing to show models within the full range of humanity, talent, and beauty, so that makes zero sense. But there’s something about this video that feels like he is actually attracted to her or jealous of her, and is taking out his confused feelings on Sports Illustrated. He could just simply keep his opinions about her appearance to himself, like I am struggling to do for him as I write this.
While I know he takes issue with this for a very different reason, I don’t want to entirely dismiss his claim that SI and others aren’t doing this for progressive points. Girlboss feminism, rainbow washing, and the co-opting of the Black Lives Matter movement show that oftentimes these are surface-level concessions from corporations. Representation inherently won’t fix structural issues, but it still matters. That’s where most people not drinking the Peterson Kool-Aid or Mikhaila-branded supplements differ.
Beyond the clip, he continues to link this to the denigration of society and a bunch of other stuff he said on Twitter to SI choosing a full-figured model. I’m sure someone out there is “dunking” on every part of the podcast because it’s an Olympic sport, but Peterson is low-hanging fruit, and I’m just here to laugh.
More gender discussion from Canada’s most famous transphobe
While it’s funny in a sad way, that isn’t the worst clip making the rounds. In another part of the podcast, he notes, “the most politically correct disciplines are those who are simultaneously most dominated by females and that have the least bright students.”
As they go on a short tangent talking about how these disciplines made themselves matter, Mikhaila continues, “they created these entire ecosystems so that your humanities degree matters.” Before I could get a laugh out, Peterson pushed against that. He quickly clarified by saying “yeah, your womens studies degrees.” His daughter even apologized.
The reason he did this is that his two fields of interest, philosophy and psychology, are traditionally housed in human sciences and humanities. Sociology, anthropology, social work, history, literature, political science, different cultural studies, etc. are all housed alongside womens & gender studies and his interests. If he were to concede too broadly, he would make fun of himself… again.
(image: Marvel Comics)
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