It was a bit hard to hear anything going on outside of the United States last week due to the sheer amount of white noise coming out of the Trump–Russia scandal. People may have missed the Canadian senate hearings conducted last week on bill C-16.
Bill C-16 moves to add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. Its critics detect something more sinister under the surface of the bill. Perhaps most famous among those critics was clinical psychologist and Professor Dr. Jordan Peterson, who testified against the bill last Thursday. Much to the dismay of Peterson and his allies, the bill passed without amendment. Here are five things to know about Jordan Peterson and what the passing of bill C-16 entails.
1. The bill sets a precedent for compelled speech, posing a major threat to free speech.
This sparks Dr. Peterson’s main concern with the bill. Instead of legislating what can’t be said, the bill legislates what must be said. People must call particularly confused individuals by their preferred pronouns, lest they be met with the full force of the state. With ever-widening gender bending pronouns being promulgated, one can only imagine how easy it is to “misgender” someone by mistake. With the first law on the books for compelled speech, it only gets easier to make more laws modeled in the same fashion, representing a slippery slope to dangerous totalitarian politically-correct speech codes.
2. There is evidence the transgender community doesn’t even want the bill.
Dr. Peterson claims to have received roughly thirty letters from trans individuals, almost all supportive of him. Since that is a reasonable sample size of a very small proportion of the population, he believes the bill shines unwanted light on trans people when they really just want to be left alone. Most of the people pushing the law are seemingly the loud SJW types and the politicians who have no qualms in grabbing more political power.
3. The bill sets up a path to imprisonment.
The penalty for not using a tragically confused person’s preferred pronouns is a fine. If the fine is not paid to the Canadian government, they have the right to imprison the offender.
4. Jordan Peterson has stated he is willing to go to prison in defense of his position.
If Dr. Peterson were to ever be charged with a hate speech crime, which is highly likely considering the amount of SJW’s that follow him from college event to college event, he vows to not take it sitting down. He has said he will not pay the fine, and if they imprison him, he will go on a hunger strike.
5. Concomitant with Dr. Peterson’s fight against political correctness, he lost research funding for the first time.
Though the timing could be coincidental, Jordan has lost his federal research funding grant for the first time in his career. He has been conducting research regarding the relationship between proclivities toward politically correct behavior and personality traits.
Political activism aside, Dr. Peterson hosts many fascinating lectures on the subject of psychology as it relates to the human purpose and religion. Find the lectures on his Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos. To support him so he can continue his efforts, see here: https://www.patreon.com/jordanbpeterson.