Speaker A
Jordan Peterson, you've said that men need to "grow the hell up." Tell me why.
Jordan Peterson discusses masculinity, the gender pay gap, campus protests, and postmodernism in a Channel 4 News debate.
Key Takeaways
- Men need to take responsibility and mature to lead meaningful lives.
- The gender pay gap is complex and influenced by multiple factors beyond gender alone.
- Postmodern and neo-Marxist academic perspectives are seen as antagonistic to traditional masculinity.
- Competence, not dominance, defines true power in relationships.
- Young men are underserved by society in terms of encouragement and guidance.
What the video covers
- Jordan Peterson argues men need to 'grow up' to find meaning and responsibility in life.
- He discusses a crisis of masculinity, emphasizing competence and responsibility over dominance.
- Peterson addresses why his audience is predominantly male and the role of women in relationships.
- He critiques postmodern and neo-Marxist ideologies in universities as hostile to men.
- Peterson challenges the common interpretation of the gender pay gap, citing multivariate analyses.
- He explains that factors like personality traits (e.g., agreeableness) affect pay disparities.
- Peterson argues that the gender pay gap is not solely due to discrimination based on sex.
- He discusses the importance of reciprocal, competent partnerships between men and women.
- The debate touches on freedom of speech, identity politics, and cultural hierarchies.
- Peterson highlights the impact of his lectures on young men seeking encouragement and guidance.
Chapters
- 00:00Men need to grow up and take responsibility
- 01:38The meaning of maturity and destiny
- 03:09Challenges facing young men today
- 04:46Audience demographics and gender
- 06:25Relationships and power dynamics
- 08:06Research on relationships and dominance
- 09:41Critique of postmodernism and neo-Marxism
- 11:12The gender pay gap and multivariate analysis
- 12:49Personality traits and pay disparities
- 15:54Freedom of speech and identity politics
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Well, because there's nothing uglier than an old infant. There's nothing good about it. People who don't grow up don't find the sort of meaning in their life that sustains them through difficult times, and they are certain to encounter difficult times.
Speaker A
And they're left bitter and resentful and without purpose, adrift and hostile and resentful and vengeful and arrogant and deceitful and of no use to themselves and of no use to anyone else and no partner for a woman.
Speaker A
And there's nothing in it that's good.
Speaker A
So you said—I mean, that sounds pretty bad.
Speaker A
Yes, it's a crisis of masculinity. I mean, what do you do about it?
Speaker A
You help people understand why it's necessary and important for them to grow up and adopt responsibilities. Why that isn't a "shake your finger and get your act together" sort of thing. Why it's more like—
Speaker A
But why it's more like a delineation of the kind of destiny that makes life worth living. I've been telling young men—
Speaker A
But it's not—I wasn't specifically aiming this message at young men to begin with. It just kind of turned out that way, and
Speaker A
it's mostly—you admit it's mostly men listening.
Speaker A
I mean, it is. Your audience is—well, it's about 80 percent on YouTube, which is a YouTube is a male domain primarily, so it's hard to tell how much of it is because YouTube is male and how
Speaker A
much of it is because of what I'm saying. But what I've been telling young men is that there's an actual reason why they need to grow up, which is that they have something to offer. You know that people
Speaker A
have within them this capacity to set the world straight, and that's necessary to manifest in the world, and that also doing so is where you find the meaning that sustains you in life.
Speaker A
So what's gone wrong then?
Speaker A
Oh God, all sorts of things have gone wrong. I think that—I don't think that young men hear words of encouragement, some of them never in their entire lives as far as I can tell. That's what they tell me, and the fact
Speaker A
that the words that I've been speaking, the YouTube lectures that I've done and put online, for example, have had such a dramatic impact is an indication that young men are starving for this sort of message because, like,
Speaker A
why in the world would they have to derive it from a lecture on YouTube? Now, they're not being taught that they that it's important to develop yourself.
Speaker A
Because it doesn't bother you that your audience is predominantly male?
Speaker A
Does that—isn't that a bit divisive?
Speaker A
No, I don't think so. I mean, it's no more divisive than the fact that YouTube is primarily male and Tumblr is primarily female. Resident Tumblr is primarily female.
Speaker A
All right, you're just saying that's the way it is.
Speaker A
Oh, I'm not saying anything. It's just an observation that that's the way it is. There's plenty of women that are watching my lectures and coming to my talks and buying my books. It's just that
Speaker A
the majority of them happen to be men.
Speaker A
What's in it for the women though?
Speaker A
Well, what sort of partner do you want? You want an overgrown child or do you want someone to contend with that's going to help you? Your eye on women have
Speaker A
some sort of duty to sort of help fix the crisis of masculinity?
Speaker A
It depends on what they want. No, I mean, it's exactly how I laid it out. Like, women want, deeply want, men who are competent and powerful, and I don't mean power
Speaker A
in the—in the—in that they can exert tyrannical control over others. That's not power. That's just corruption. Power is competence. And why in the world would you not want a competent partner?
Speaker A
Well, I know why actually. You can't dominate a competent partner. So if you want more, you should dominate. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker A
No, I'd say women who have had their relationships impaired, with impaired their relationships with men, impaired, and who are afraid of such
Speaker A
relationships will settle for a weak partner because they can dominate them, but it's a suboptimal solution. Do you know when they were doing—I think there's a substantial minority of women who do that, and I think it's very bad
Speaker A
for them. They're very unhappy. It's very bad for their partners, although the partners get the advantage of not having to take any responsibility.
Speaker A
What gives you the right to say that? I mean, maybe that's how women want their
Speaker A
relationships. Those women—I mean, you're making these vast generalizations.
Speaker A
I'm a clinical psychologist.
Speaker A
Right, so you're saying you've done your research and women are unhappy dominating men?
Speaker A
I didn't say they were unhappy dominating them. I said it was a
Speaker A
bad long-term solution.
Speaker A
Okay, you said it was making them miserable.
Speaker A
Yes, yes, and it depends on the time frame. I mean, there can be—there's intense pleasure in momentary domination. That's why people do it all the time, but it's no formula
Speaker A
for a long-term successful, long-term relationship that's reciprocal, right? Any long-term relationship is reciprocal, firstly by definition. So let me put it quite to you from the bank.
Speaker A
Well, you say there are whole disciplines in universities forthrightly hostile towards men. These are the areas of study
Speaker A
dominated by the postmodern stroke neo-Marxist claim the Western culture in particular is an oppressive structure created by white men to dominate and exclude women. But then I want to put minorities—
Speaker A
Okay, but I want to put to
Speaker A
you that here in the UK, for example, let's say that as an example the gender pay gap stands at just over 9%. You've got women at the BBC recently saying that the broadcaster is illegally paying them less than men to do the same job.
Speaker A
You've got only seven women running the top FTSE 100 companies.
Speaker A
Hmm. So it seems to a lot of women that they are still being dominated and excluded, to quote your words back to you.
Speaker A
It does seem that way, but multivariate analysis of the pay
Speaker A
gap indicates that it doesn't exist. Nine percent pay gap, that's a gap between median hourly earnings between men and women.
Speaker A
Yeah, but there's multiple reasons for that. One of them is gender, but it's not the only reason. Like, if you're a social scientist worth
Speaker A
your salt, you never do a univariate analysis like you say, "Well, women in aggregate are paid less than men." Okay, well then we break it down by age, we break it down by occupation, we break it down by interest, we break it
Speaker A
down by personality.
Speaker A
But you're saying basically it doesn't matter if women aren't getting to the top because that's what's skewing that gender pay gap, isn't it?
Speaker A
You're saying, "Well, that's just a fact. Not so. You know, it's not going to get to the top."
Speaker A
No, I'm not saying it doesn't matter either.
Speaker A
You're saying mindful reasons for it. Even though why should women put up with those reasons? Why shouldn't women? Because they should put up with it. I'm saying that the claim that
Speaker A
the wage gap between men and women is only due to sex is wrong, and it is wrong. There's no doubt about that. The multivariate analyses have been done mightily. Very—I'm saying that nine percent pay gap exists. That's a gap between men
Speaker A
and women. I'm not saying why it exists, but it exists.
Speaker A
Now, you're a woman. That seems pretty unfair. You have to say why it exists. But do you agree that it's unfair if you're a woman?
Speaker A
Not necessarily. And on
Speaker A
average, you're getting paid nine percent less than a man. That's not fair, is it?
Speaker A
It depends on why it's happening. I can give you an example.
Speaker A
Okay, there's a personality trait known as agreeableness. Agreeable people are compassionate and polite, and agreeable people get paid less than just less agreeable people for the same job. Women are more agreeable than men.
Speaker A
Again, a vast generalization. Agreeableness?
Speaker A
That's true. But that's right, and some women get paid more than men.
Speaker A
So you were saying that by and large women are too agreeable to get the pay raises?
Speaker A
I see. So I'm saying that that's one component of a multivariate equation that predicts salary. It accounts for maybe five percent of the variance, something like
Speaker A
that. I should be neat about the other twenty. You need about another eighteen factors, one of which is gender, and there is prejudice.
Speaker A
equal terms equal outcomes is what how you defined it no I I would go I might as well just go and play with my Cindy dolls give us a ride at school because I'm not going to get the top job
Speaker A
I want because there's someone sitting there saying it's not possible that's what they said it's a it's a bad social role I didn't say that women shouldn't be striving for the top or anything like that because I don't believe that for a
Speaker A
second striving for the top but you're gonna put all those hurdles in their way as has been in their way for centuries so that's fine you're saying that's fine no no I think I read the paper silly I do I think that's silly I really
Speaker A
do I mean look look at your situation you're hardly unsuccessful yeah Maya how do you beg hard to get exactly good that's ok battling is good this is inevitable but you talk about man [ __ ] let me just put another thing to you for
Speaker A
now you're saying you have to be idle for a high-quality position well I notice in your book you talk about real conversations between men containing quote an underlying threat of physicality oh there's no doubt about that what about real conversation
Speaker A
between women is that something or are we sort of too amenable and reasonable no it's just that the domain of physical conflict is sort of off-limits for you we just to get where I've got yeah but what does that make me I don't know man
Speaker A
I don't imagine that you've yeah to some degree I suspect you're not very agreeable so that's the thing successful women I'm not very agreeable right actually in this conversation at least I'm sure I served your career well successful women though hmm
Speaker A
basically have to wear the trousers in your view they have to sort of become men to succeed is what you're saying well if the guys had to fight to succeed better Canadians men certainly masculine traits are going to be helpful I mean
Speaker A
one of the things I do in my counseling practice for example when I'm consulting with women who are trying to advance their careers is to teach them how to negotiate and to and to be able to say no and to not be easily pushed around
Speaker A
and to be formidable and you need to if you're gonna be successful you need to be smart conscientious and tough well here's a radical idea why don't the bosses adopt some male bosses shall we say adopt some female traits so the
Speaker A
women don't have to fight and get their sharp elbows out for the pay rises it's just accepted if they're doing the same job they get the same pay well I would say partly because it's not so easy to
Speaker A
determine what cost due to the same job an almost because arguably yeah there are still men dominating our industries our society and therefore they've dictated the terms for so long but women have to battle to know like them it's not true it's not
Speaker A
true so for example well I can give you an example very quickly so I worked with women who worked in high-powered law firms in Canada for about 15 years and they were as competent and put together as anybody you would ever meet and we
Speaker A
were trying to figure out how to further their careers and there was a huge debate in Canadian society at that point that was basically ran along the same lines as your argument is that if the law firms didn't use these masculine
Speaker A
criteria then perhaps women would do better but the market sets the damn game it's like and the market is dominated by men no it's not the market is dominated by women they make 80 percent of the consumer decisions that's not the case
Speaker A
at all you take people who stay at home looking after children by and large they are still women so they're going out doing the shopping but that is chained they make all decisions okay so the market is driven by women not men right
Speaker A
ok and if you're a lawyer you still pay more for the same sort of goods that's been proven that men for the you buy a blue bicycle helmet it's gonna cost less than a pink one anyway we'll come on to
Speaker A
that partly because men are less agreeable right so this so they won't put up with it I want to ask you is it not desirable to have some of those female traits you're talking about I'd say that's a generalization but
Speaker A
you've used the words female traits is it not desirable to have some of them at the top of business I mean maybe they wouldn't they don't predict they don't predict success in the workplace the things that predict success in the
Speaker A
workplace are intelligence and conscientiousness agreeableness negatively predicts success in the workplace negative emotion saying that women aren't intelligent enough to run these talk no I didn't say that I said that female traits don't predict success but I didn't say that intelligence it
Speaker A
wasn't I didn't say that intelligence and conscientious when you were saying it's just by implication or not female traits oh no I mean that's sorry no dressed her not saying that at all a women is intelligent than men no no they're not
Speaker A
no they did that on that's pretty cool the average IQ for a woman and the average IQ for a man is identical there is some debate about the flatness of the distribution which is something that James d'amour pointed out for example in
Speaker A
his memo but there's no difference at all in general cognitive ability there's no difference to speak of in conscientiousness women are a bit more orderly than men and men are a little bit more industrious than women the difference isn't big I don't know about
Speaker A
averages into con men who aren't necessarily why are they not feminine traits why are they not desirable at the top of feminine traits why they not desirable it's hard to say I'm just laying out the empirical evidence like
Speaker A
we know that we know the traits that predict success but we also know because companies by and large have not been dominated by women over the centuries we have nothing to compare it to it's an experiment true and it could be
Speaker A
the case that if companies modified their behavior and became more feminine they would be successful there's no evidence for it I'm not neither doubtful nor non doubtful there's no evidence why not give it a go as the radically evidence suggests well
Speaker A
it's fine like if someone wants to start a company and make it more feminine and compassionate let's say and caring in its overall orientation towards its workers and towards the marketplace and that's a perfectly reasonable experiment to run my point is that there is no
Speaker A
evidence that those traits predict success in the workplace and there's evidence right well that's not that's not really the case women have been in the workplace for at least ever since I've been around the representation of women in the workplace has been about 50
Speaker A
percent so we've run the experiment for a fairly reasonable period of time but not you know certainly not for centuries let me move on to another debate that's been very controversial for you and this is you got in trouble for refusing to
Speaker A
call trans men and women by their preferred personal pronouns no it's not actually true I got in trouble because I said I would not follow that compelled speech dictates of the federal and provincial government I actually never got in trouble for not calling anyone
Speaker A
anything I wouldn't follow the change of law which was does not once I was law screaming hell no that's all they said it was designed to do okay you cited freedom of speech in that why should your right to freedom of speech Trump
Speaker A
a trans persons right not to be offended because in order to be able to think you have to risk being offensive I mean look at the conversation we're having right now you know like you're certainly willing to risk offending me in the
Speaker A
pursuit of truth why should you have the right to do that it's being rather uncomfortable well I'm I'm very glad I put you well I'm you get my point as like you're you're doing what you should do which is digging a bit to see what
Speaker A
the hell's going on and that is what you should do but you're exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me and that's fine I think more power to as far as I'm concerned so you haven't sat there and I'm just
Speaker A
right I've just trying to work that out I mean ha gotcha you have got me you have caught me I'm trying to wake up turn my head yeah I took a while it did yeah well you have voluntary cut you have voluntarily come
Speaker A
into the studio and agreed to be questioned hmm a trans person in your class has come to your class and said they want to be called that's never happened and I would call them she so you would so you've kind of changed your
Speaker A
Chi no no no I said that right from the beginning what I said at the beginning was that I was not going to cede the linguistic territory to radical leftists regardless of whether or not it was put in law that's what I said even then the
Speaker A
people who came after me said oh you must be transphobic and you'd mistreat a student in your class it's like I never mistreated a student in my class I'm not transphobic and that isn't what I said well it said you've also called trans
Speaker A
campaigners authoritarian how many I mean isn't that only in the broader context of my claims that radical leftist ideologue czar authoritarian which they always say someone who's trying to work out their gender identity who may well have struggled with that
Speaker A
though I'm a drug use you're comparing them with you know Chairman Mao who know just you know the deaths of millions of people just even if the activists you know they're trans people too they have a right to say
Speaker A
these things yeah but they don't have a brain inside their whole community heaven too Chairman Mao you know I could finish a all cost a penny sure I mean you know this is grossly insensitive and I didn't compare them to finish it well
Speaker A
I did come here knowing he knows no authority he's a right-winger though I was comparing them to the left-wing totalitarians and I are left now at Aryans under Mao millions of people die right mean there's no comparison Mao and
Speaker A
a trans activist is there why not because trans activist aren't killing millions of people the philosophy that's guiding their utterances is the same philosophy the consequences are yet you're saying that trans activists know it leads to the deaths of millions of
Speaker A
people well no I'm saying that the philosophy that drives their utterances is the same philosophy that already has driven us to the deaths of millions okay tell us how that philosophy is in any way comparable sure that's no problem
Speaker A
the first thing is is that their philosophy presumes that group identity is paramount that's the fundamental philosophy that drove the Soviet Union and Mao is China and it's the fundamental philosophy of the left-wing activists it's identity politics doesn't
Speaker A
matter who you are as an individual it matters who you are in terms of your group identity you just say murder so to provoke on you I mean you are a provocateur never say a lightly they don't write that you hate to be compared
Speaker A
to you want to stir things up I'm only a provocateur insofar as when I say what I believe to be true it's provocative I don't provoke maybe four heroes out now and then I'm not interested in provoking what about leading about you know
Speaker A
fighting and the lobster tell us about the lobster ha well that's quite a segue well the first chapter I have in my book is called stand up straight with your shoulders back and it's an injunction to be combative not least to further your
Speaker A
career let's say but also to adopt a stance of ready engagement with the world and to reflect that in your posture and the reason that I write about lobsters is because there's this idea that hierarchical structures are a
Speaker A
sociological construct of the Western patriarchy and that is so untrue that it's almost unbelievable and I use the lobster as an example because the lobster we we divulged from lobsters in evolutionary history about 350 million years ago common ancestor and
Speaker A
lobsters exist in hierarchies and have a nervous system attuned to the hierarchy and that nervous system runs on serotonin just like our nervous systems do and the nervous system of the lobster and the human being is so similar that
Speaker A
antidepressants work on lobsters and it's part of my attempt to demonstrate that the idea of hierarchy has absolutely nothing to do with socio-cultural constructions which it doesn't let me just get it straight you're saying that we should organize
Speaker A
our societies along the lines of the lobsters I'm saying that it's inevitable that there will be continuity in the way that animals and human beings organizing organize their structures it's it's absolutely inevitable and there is one third of a billion years of evolutionary
Speaker A
history behind that right that's that's so long that a third of the billion years ago there weren't even trees it's a long time you have a mechanism in your brain that runs on serotonin that's similar to the lobster mechanism that
Speaker A
tracks your status and the higher your status the better your emotions are regulated so as your serotonin levels increase you feel more positive the emotion and less negative emotion so you're saying like the lobsters we're hardwired as men and women to do certain
Speaker A
things to sort of run along tram lines and there's nothing we can do about it no I'm not saying there's nothing we can do about it because it's like in a chess game all right there's lots of things
Speaker A
that you can do although you can't break the rules of the chess game and continue to play chess and biological you're your biological nature is somewhat like that is it sets the rules of the game but within those rules you have a lot of
Speaker A
leeway but the idea that but one thing we can't do is say that hierarchical organization is a consequence of the capitalist patriarchy it's like that's patently absurd it's wrong it's not a matter of opinion it's seriously wrong on you just whipping people up into a
Speaker A
state of anger and not of all the divisions between men and women you're disturbing people up you know you have any critics of you online get absolutely lambasted by your followers young generally sorry your critics get lambasted by you I mean if there are not
Speaker A
at all if an academic is gonna come to me and tell me that I'm not qualified and that I'm not I don't know what I'm talking about now quit the abuse quit the anger well we need some substantial
Speaker A
examples of the abuse and the anger before I could detail that quest there 'he's a lot of alpha4 well let's take a more general perspective on that so I have had 25,000 letters since June something like that from people who told
Speaker A
me that I've brought them back from the brink of destruction and so I'm perfectly willing to put that up against the rather vague accusations that my followers are making the lives of people that I've targeted miserable Jordan Peterson thank you my pleasure nice
Speaker A
talking me you
Topics:Jordan Petersongender pay gapmasculinity crisispostmodernismcampus protestsChannel 4 Newsgender rolesidentity politicsfreedom of speechyoung men
