Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has agreed to attend social-media training as mandated by the College of Psychologists of Ontario, the governing body for the profession in that province. In 2022, the college determined that Peterson, who has gained international fame for his refusal to bow down to transgender ideology and other left-wing causes of the moment, must attend such training or lose his license.
“Degrading” Social-media Posts
The college determined that Peterson’s posts on social media, particularly those concerning transgenderism, could be viewed as “degrading.” They noted a post directed against a former city councilor in which Peterson declared that person’s use of they/them pronouns as an “appalling, self-righteous, moralizing thing.” The person was not a patient of Peterson’s, and Peterson claims that no patient of his has complained.
Peterson has been fighting the allegations since they became public. His attorney in the matter, Howard Levitt, referred to the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the matter as “a tragic day for Canada.” Levitt said in an email to the Canadian Broadcasting Company:
It seems ironic, even tragic, that he, one of the most adept persons in social media in this country and beyond, is going to attend “re-education” from people inherently less skilled and knowledgeable than he is himself. The decision is a tragedy for freedom of speech in this country.
Egale Canada, an LGBT activist group, celebrated the decision. Bennett Jensen, the group’s legal director, said in a statement:
2SLGBTQI communities often face discrimination and barriers in accessing healthcare. This is why a clinical psychologist making transphobic, discriminatory, and false claims is particularly harmful and directly interferes with trans people’s safety and autonomy. Psychologists belong to the group of professions that act as gatekeepers to gender-affirming healthcare, and they must be held accountable to specific standards of professionalism.
The Outspoken Psychologist
Peterson has not been in practice since 2017. It was then he made a name for himself by publicly denigrating Canada’s Bill C-16, which he claimed “compelled” certain speech and forced people to use pronouns (real or invented) of a person’s choice.
He is also under fire for comments made on the Joe Rogan podcast about the climate hoax. There he mused, among other things, about the “religious” fervor of climate alarmists. He also said that the “quickest way out of” the alleged climate crisis was “to make everyone who’s poor rich as fast as you can.”
“Such seemingly-comic nihilism would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous,” said Michael Mann. Mann is the genius behind the much maligned “hockey stick graph” featured so prominently in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
Why Would He Submit to “Training”?
Peterson addressed the “training” with his daughter Mikhaila on Friday:
I’ll be sitting down with an expert, whatever that means. And they’re going to do whatever it is they think they can do to make me into an entirely different sort of creature than I am. And so, I’m sort of morbidly curious about that….
I’ve been very vociferous in my objection to the butchery of children and their sterilization, which I regard as a crime against humanity, by the way, and which my fellow colleagues on the psychological, psychiatric and medical front prove themselves none too courageous in imposing….
And I’m perfectly happy with what I’ve said on all those fronts because I regard what’s happening with regards to so-called gender affirming care as the worst professional scandal … since World War Two.
“Everything about it is a lie and a scam,” the psychologist concluded.
Peterson also had harsh words for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom he called “an incompetent narcissist who’s made Canada a much worse place.”
Why would Peterson subject himself to the reeducation efforts of the College of Psychologists of Ontario? He doesn’t practice anymore, and he’s apparently disgusted with the political ideology of the group.
“Some of it’s just pure stubbornness,” Peterson said:
I’m not going to let a pack of half-witted ideological jackanapes steal something from me under the guise of moral intervention.
He also had words of warning for whoever was set to go about “reeducating” him.
“I guess I could … put forward a warning to whoever wants to do that. Don’t do it! Your life will never be the same.”
