I will start by saying I am very open minded and really don’t agree with a lot of what Peterson says. I’m also pro LGBT and leaving people be who they are and love the life that makes them happy… But he’s right that we shouldn’t be forced to use someone’s pronouns. At the time there was discussion about making this a law. If someone wants to be a prick let them. Better to know who they are.
No one is being forced.
For fuck’s sake.
Peterson just lied about the bill.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qbnamx/no-the-trans-rights-bill-doesnt-criminalize-free-speech
No one is stopping him or anyone else from being a bigoted asshole. Asking people to stop doing it and telling them why is not forcing them.
Sorry I got mad, I’m just so angry that people believe that lie because it’s turned into so much hate against trans people.
Wow this sounds really reasonable, wtf kinda drugs is Peterson on if he thinks it restricts free speech…
TLDR: bill C-16 adds gender identity and expression to the list of discrimination protections, a list which already includes gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. So yeah right now you can’t fire someone for being black, under C-16 this will also apply to trans people. Ontario already has this in their provincial laws, so Peterson is already living under such a “regime”.
Wow this sounds really reasonable, wtf kinda drugs is Peterson on if he thinks it restricts free speech…
If I recall, Peterson’s entire idea on that was that it would result in misgendering being considered hate speech, though it’s been a while so I might be misremembering.
No one is being forced
I think you misunderstood his hyperbole as a literal thing
Of course people aren’t putting a gun to your head. But there are often consequences for not doing it.
Such as what? Can you demonstrate someone suffering any legitimate consequences?
lots of people are being harassed and intimidated into it though. lots of people take an absolutist stance on pronouns, and if you misgender someone or don’t ask them what their pronoun is, you are considered a ‘bad person’.
labeling and harassing people into social conformity is being forced to do something.
What people? I have never seen anyone get angry about being accidentally misgendered.
No one is being “harassed” or “intimidated” into calling people what they want to be called. You’re just an asshole if you don’t do it because you’re not giving them a very basic amount of respect: the acknowledgement of the right to be who they are.
It was made a law, it’s also a law in many parts of the US. It’s not about preventing random people from being pricks, it’s about discouraging harassment from employers, school administrations, and government officials. They’re prohibited from persistently misgendering you in the same way they’re prohibited from calling you slurs. I struggle to imagine a scenario where life would be improved by removing those sensible guard rails on civil society.
Nobody is “forced to use pronouns” at present but this stance misses the point. It looks at the harms of misgendering as a situation that doesn’t cause other inequities and harms.
For the average social interaction where you are on equal terms but can walk away being misgendered is something a lot of us hate but live with like any small annoyance. It is like stubbing your toe. Not fun but whatever it’s fine that’s just “someone being a prick”. But if deliberate misgendering is allowed to happen over a long period in a workplace setting it is not something we get to walk away from. If we have to regularly interact with that person or lose our ability to feed and house ourselves then we are forced to have mental health problems because someone essentially doesn’t like being told what to do. Having to deal with panic attacks at work because you had to be locked in a room with someone hitting every trauma trigger you have exposed to the world or else you have to find a new and maybe worse job is a barrier to participation in society.
If it’s in a medical setting where we have to balance our health outcomes knowing that if we don’t comply with the misgendering our care is impacted because a doctor holds our lives or the relief from pain in their hands. A lot of trans people become shy and don’t seek help early and often because they equate doctors visits with a sense of powerlessness and shame knowing that they can’t stand up for themselves. In that instance it’s not just “someone being a dick” you are placing someone’s complete physical wellbeing before someone’s egotistical need to be “right” about you.
If a trans person in a social club and misgendering isn’t checked by a majority it can mean that they might not have a choice on whether or not to go. The world becomes a smaller place when you have gender related trauma.
Deliberate misgendering in a professional setting isn’t just “someone showing you they are a prick” the burden always falls upon trans people disproportionately because our participation in society often forces us to compromise directly on our health and there are real traumas and weaknesses that underlie our transness. If someone was openly making rape jokes around someone you knew had sexual assault trauma you’d step in right? Why not the same for someone with gender related traumas?
What Peterson is railing against is protections for participation in regular society through professional setting misgendering cases.