Joe Rogan interviews Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and tenured professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He is currently embroiled in a battle with his university and the progressives over the use of “preferred prounouns”.

That term refers to some transgender people wanting to use something other than “he” or “she”. Some of them are content with using “they”, which is grammatically incorrect but at least a real word. Others prefer an ever increasing list of new words, each more absurd than the previous. Not only do they wish to use these new pronouns, they also expect everyone else to use them. Anyone refusing to do so is violating the person’s identity.

Of course, since this is happening in Canada it comes with an additional penalty: refusing to use a person’s preferred pronoun is a crime punishable by fine. Should one refuse to pay the fine, one risks jail time.

That is right. It is possible to go to jail for calling someone “he” when they prefer “zir”.

Cult Behaviour: An Analysis

I hate to post another video, however, the subject is one I have meant to write about for some time. Several years ago I read the book The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. The book breaks down the myriad of ways in which mass movements prey on people and result in the “true believer”, a type of person who will defend the movement not because they believe in it but because it is necessary for their own sense of self.

The book is not about a specific group, although it frequently mentions Communists, fascists, and the religious. As I read the book I thought of the far left and feminists. Yet the notions could easily apply to groups like the Tea Party or Black Lives Matter.

The video, another one by Sargon of Akkad, analyzes another book that covers the same material from a different angle. Sargon gives an overview of Dr. Arthur Deikman’s book The Wrong Way Home, which focuses on cult behavior. Sargon mentioned in other videos that he was somewhat hesitant to post the video out of concern that his viewers might simply use it to label other people “cultists”.

When women sexually abuse

Originally posted on April 11, 2013

Several years ago I read a book called Female Sexual Abuse of Children. Michele Elliot edited the book. As I recall, the book gave two different views of the issue: one professional, the other from the victims.

The book relied on a handful of testimonials — I believe four women and one man — to describe the ways women sexually abuse children. However, what they shared painted a picture far different from what people expect. These abusive women were not angels. The abuse was not pretty and harmless. These women were not victims of controlling men forcing them to act. These women were just as vicious, violent, and predatory as many male child rapists.

For obvious reasons, Elliott’s book prompted a great deal of backlash. Here is a dedicated sexual abuse researcher and a feminist writing about women committing child rape. Elliott recounts the responses people had to her findings in an interview.

The last human rights taboo?

Originally posted on July 2, 2013

The Guardian published an article titled Male rape: the last human rights taboo. Rich McEachran questions why NGOs pay so little attention to sexual violence against men and boys despite growing concern for the problem:

There is a disconcerting disparity between how various aid organisations and NGOs are dealing, or are failing to deal, with the issue. On a macro-level, organisations may not be aware of what they’re looking for and may not see how male rape fits into the bigger picture. It may come as a surprise that the UN only changed its own definition of rape to cover male victims, in 2011; this followed the publication of an article in The Observer.

NGOs at a micro-level, some of whom are already working with male survivors – the Refugee Law Project for instance – face major obstacles, such as acquiring funding and carrying out field work or accessing survivors in remote areas. The author of the aforementioned article spoke to Chris Dolan, the director of RLP, who claimed that one of the project’s donors refused to provide future funding if 70% of the client base wasn’t female.

Despite the fear of losing funding, the pervasiveness of the problem (academic Lara Stemple writes that male sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war from Chile to Iran, Kuwait to Uganda) means that the humanitarian community needs to challenge perceptions of rape, improve understanding and create awareness.

Yet that may be difficult to do given the gendered focus on sexual violence. As McEachran notes in the article, many NGOs use gendered language to refer to victims of sexual violence. Even in instances in which NGOs acknowledge the existence of abused men and boys, little of their literature mentions those experiences.

Shocking finding: Working dads want to spend more time with their kids

Originally posted on April 6, 2013

How pathetic that someone even researched something as painfully obvious as this:

“Modern Parenthood: Roles of Moms and Dads Converge as They Balance Work and Family,” is based on a survey of more than 2,500 American adults and an analysis of the American Time Use Survey, which measures the amount of time Americans spend doing various activities.

Almost half the dads surveyed, 46 per cent, reported feeling like they didn’t spend enough time with their kids, compared to 23 per cent of moms who thought the same thing.

In the past, work-life balance was seen as a women’s issue, said Wendy Wang, a research associate with the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. But she pointed to the fact that half of working fathers reported finding it very or somewhat difficult to balance work and family.

“Dads are doing more at home, and then they still do a lot at paid work,” she said. “They’re facing the same issues that mom used to face.”

And the study found that half the dads would prefer to stay home, but had to work because they needed the income.

A Dose of Stupid v93

It happens every day. In fact, it is pretty hard to avoid it. There are some things that can only be understood with a slap on the forehead. Things so mind-boggling that one wonders how humans managed to evolve thumbs while being this mentally inept. Case in point:

Richard Dawkins Defends ‘Mild’ Pedophilia, Again and Again

The word defend means:

1. a: to drive danger or attack away from
   b: (1) to maintain or support in the face of argument or hostile criticism (2) : to prove (as a doctoral thesis) valid by answering questions in an oral exam
   c: to attempt to prevent an opponent from scoring at
2. archaic : prevent, forbid
3. to act as attorney for
4. to deny or oppose the right of a plaintiff in regard to (a suit or a wrong charged) : contest
5. to retain or seek to retain (as a title or position) against a challenge in a contest

None of those definitions fits Abby Ohlheiser’s accusation against Dawkins. Ohlheiser states in her article:

Richard Dawkins defended “mild pedophilia” in an interview this weekend. And while the quote itself is quite jarring, especially to those who look to Dawkins for his influential writings on atheism (but haven’t noticed some of his other strange stances), it’s far from the first time that the scientist has launched a defense of the behavior — or talked about his own abuse at the hands of boarding school teachers.

She quotes from The Times magazine interview with Dawkins to prove her point:

I Can Solve This In Two Words: Don’t Stare

I do love my 13-year-old godson. He is not only intelligent, kind, and wickedly funny, but also incisive. He saw me reading an article the Good Men Project titled Seeing a Woman: A Conversation Between a Father and a Son. Author Nate Pyle wrote what he plans to tell his son once the boy is older and “catch[es] his eye doing what male eyes do well – following an object of lust.”

Pyle states, “I saw you look at her. I’m not judging you or shaming you. I know why you did. I get it. But we have to talk about it because how you look at a woman matters.”

Yet what follows is nothing less than shaming:

A lot of people will try and tell you that a woman should watch how she dresses so she doesn’t tempt you to look at her wrongly. Here is what I will tell you. It is a woman’s responsibility to dress herself in the morning.  It is your responsibility to look at her like a human being regardless of what she is wearing.  You will feel the temptation to blame her for your wandering eyes because of what she is wearing – or not wearing. But don’t.Don’t play the victim.  You are not a helpless victim when it comes to your eyes.  You have full control over them. Exercise that control. Train them to look her in the eyes. Discipline yourself to see her, not her clothes or her body.  The moment you play the victim you fall into the lie that you are simply embodied reaction to external stimuli unable to determine right from wrong, human from flesh.

As my godson walked by, I called him over to read the article. The note is intended for someone my godson’s age, so I wanted to hear his opinion. He read for a few seconds and said, “I can solve this in two words: don’t stare.”