Peterson and Bill C-16 – Why It Was Never Actually About "Free Speech" (1. Introduction)
Not a hater but … despite all that was said at the time, and despite what has become a consensus online ever since, I really don’t think it was.
IN THE WESTERN WORLD AT LEAST, I doubt whether there is anyone left who is not yet aware of Professor Jordan B. Peterson to some extent or other. Even before his best-selling book 12 Rules for Life, the man had already been given a considerable amount of media coverage. This was following his public outcry against the now notorious Bill C-16 in the autumn of 2016, from which he then amassed a cult following online after the resulting media circus brought thousands to his YouTube channel. Here Peterson would broadcast a weekly, blow-by-blow account of his continuous struggle against this supposedly insidious bill – content which, for many, then developed a sort of “soap opera” appeal. One could follow each thrilling development in the Bill C-16 saga as it broke.
Whichever way you look at it, the Bill C-16 affair was responsible for putting Peterson in the spotlight. Much has already been written about how his public opposition to the proposed legislation (to add “gender identity” and “gender expression” as protected grounds and protected groups to the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code) was instrumental in making him a relevant figure online. And although I believe that Peterson’s involvement in gender politics can only serve as a partial explanation for why the professor has managed to stay relevant to this day, I can’t deny that, had C-16 not been a thing, almost no one would currently know or care about Jordan Peterson.
We all know the figures. In August 2016 – one month before the start of the Bill C-16 affair – Professor Peterson’s YouTube channel had only several hundred subscribers to speak of [i]. One week after he uploaded his first video protesting Bill C-16 [ii], however, he now boasted around 9,800 [iii]. By the end of October, this had risen dramatically to over 24,000; by mid-November, it had risen more dramatically still to over 57,000 [iv]. By this time, the video itself had received 1.5 million views [v], Peterson’s followers on Twitter had also received a huge boost [vi], and others online were starting to provide the Professor with rather generous financial support as well. By 5th December, Peterson was receiving roughly $8,000 a month from supporters on Patreon – an increase of over 500% from what he had been previously earning from his patrons. [vii]
Clearly then his message resonated. Especially within certain political spaces online. Almost every major figure in the online counter-progressive sphere at that time pledged themselves to Peterson’s cause in the weeks following his video series. [viii] Carl Benjamin of the YouTube channel Sargon of Akkad – by October 2016 one of the most popular independent political commentary channels on the platform, with a subscriber count of over 420,000 [ix] - left his audience in no doubt as to whether he accepted Peterson’s theory on the true motives of those behind the C-16 legislation. Nor did he hesitate in underlining Peterson’s framing of his opposition to the bill (and continued refusal to use the words that it aimed to enforce) as something for which he could soon be incarcerated:
“… [H]e is absolutely right. The question is: will the minority dictate what the majority has to do? … And the answer is, of course, ‘no’ – because that’s a f*cking aristocracy! … I’m really having trouble in seeing him as something other than a hero of free speech … to be faced with a fine that, if he doesn’t pay, will result in jail time which he is then intending on going on a hunger strike to protest about … He’s saying that he is prepared to ruin his life, his career, his finances, his reputation, his criminal record – presumably – to make sure these people don’t have control over him.” [x]
Joe Rogan of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast - at this time a wildly popular alternative to the political commentary mainstream, which had already achieved an average monthly download rate of 16 million [xi] - gave Peterson much of the same credit when he interviewed the Professor around one month later. As with Benjamin, throughout this interview Rogan was nothing but sympathetic to Peterson’s campaign, greatly admiring the bravery of his public stand: “You are one of the very few academics who have fought against some of these ideas that are not just being promoted but are being enforced.” [xii]
So it went on. Below are a few more examples to illustrate how Peterson was revered at the time within these online communities:
A contemporary of Sargon, the Irish YouTube-tech-reviewer-turned-conservative-commentator Dave Cullen, likewise described Peterson as “officially my new Free Speech Hero” at the time of the controversy. [xiii]
In an interview with Dr Peterson around the same time, the Canadian civic nationalist YouTuber Lauren Chen argued that the term ‘hero’ was “fitting” in Peterson’s case, given his being “the first person we’ve seen in a while – especially from academia – coming out [and] confronting these issues; and talking about freedom of speech and individual rights...” [xiv]
When introducing Peterson for a speech at the North York Civil Centre on 22nd January 2017, Ms. Faith Goldy - then a reporter for Ezra Levant’s Conservative online news outlet Rebel Media - talked of Peterson having become a “cultural icon for liberty-lovers” for his “vivid dissent over language politics and the political agenda behind it” and his “public views on how political correctness violates freedom of speech and academic freedom in the West.” [xv]
And, as arguably the most enthusiastic (and frankly overly-dramatic) member of the online “Sceptic” community, John Canales of the YouTube channel Mouthy Buddha was not to be outdone: “Free Speech is Universal. Defending Jordan Peterson is Defending Free Speech. If SJW’s want war, then He’s my Captain!” [xvi]
You have noticed by this point a recurring theme, haven’t you? Practically everyone in the online counter-progressive sphere who pledged themselves to Peterson’s campaign at the time took it as a matter of course that the Professor’s concern with the C-16 legislation was primarily (for some, even exclusively) to do with the threat it posed to the individual right to freedom of speech. Why? Because this was the way of framing the case against C-16 that Peterson himself favoured more than any other. And it remains his most favoured way of framing his case against Bill C-16 to this day.
Before long it appeared that every online counter-progressive was convinced that Peterson’s diagnosis of the bill as a direct attack on the principle of freedom of speech was an entirely accurate one. [xvii] A great number had also been sold on his characterisation of the legislation as an attempt to use Canadian state and federal legislation to make refusal to use “made-up” gender pronouns [xviii] a form of hate speech. [xix] Likewise, his claim that the legislation was emanating from a “small coterie” of people behind the Ontario Human Rights Commission [xx] – that is, a “cabal of radical left-wingers” [xxi] whose ideological outlook was antithetical to that of everyday, hard-working and liberty-loving Canadians - also found much agreement. A great many more found themselves appalled that this respectable scholar would now be at risk of being sent to jail for refusing to use the new pronoun jargon laid down by this radical, fringe minority. [xxii]
Think back to when you were first introduced to Jordan Peterson. Chances are this will have been during the time of the Bill C-16 controversy. Chances are you will have first become familiar with the professor’s stance against C-16 via encountering third-party coverage on this event from one or other of the above-mentioned personalities within the online counter-progressive community (Sargon, Rogan, Rebel Media, etc). Chances are you will have been shown the viral footage of Dr Peterson facing down the hostile crowds of student protestors who showed up to disrupt his talk at the University of Toronto ‘Rally for Free Speech’ of 11th October 2016 [xxiii]. And if you were anything like I was back then, it may have taken nothing more than seeing the kinds of individuals identifying as “trans” who showed up to protest that event – aggressive, foul-mouthed, androgynously dressed, fluorescent-dyed hair, gauged ears, etc. – for you to conclude that Peterson was entirely in the right when it came to Bill C-16. Nevertheless, if you happened to come away from this encounter agreeing with Peterson’s stance, I’m willing to bet that you did not at the time consider yourself anywhere close to a transphobe. Most likely you still don’t.
Why would you? If you found yourself rallying to Peterson’s crusade against the Ontario Human Rights commission, you will – along with almost every big name in the counter-progressive sphere - probably have done so out of a desire to combat ‘radical leftists’, ‘SJWs’ and ‘ideologues’, not trans people in general. Surely the issue here was not the creation of new gender pronouns in-and-of-itself, but rather the attempt of federal government to enforce that everyone in society use them - with threat of punitive action for refusing to do so. The authoritarianism implicit in the attempt of big government to dictate the speech of each and every individual citizen. Worse than censorship, here Canadians were being compelled to actively affirm certain language – the first time that this had ever been attempted in the history of English common law. Clearly then this was not a conflict between trans and cis, but between authoritarian collectivists and defiant individualists - those who wished to subjugate and control and those who wished to defend and uphold individual human liberty.
After all, the organisers of the UOT rally defending Peterson’s right to protest C-16 titled their event ‘rally for free speech’, not ‘rally for gender hetero-normativity’ - know what I’m saying? [xxiv] What did it matter to you if an adult male wished to sexually transition to being an adult female, or vice versa? And most trans individuals that you had heard of - transsexuals at least - did identify as either one or the other. But those “made up” gender pronouns – “zie and zir” - this was another story. Even then, a bunch of lunatics making up their own fairy-tale identities wouldn’t really be a problem save for the fact it would now be legally mandated that the rest of reasonable society use them as well – thereby violating the individual’s right to hold, and express, their own opinion on the matter by compelling them to affirm and use certain language.
And this alone is where Peterson drew the line; he was no transphobe. Indeed, in the first couple of months following the release of his video, he had received around 20 letters from various transsexual individuals in which they had given him their unequivocal support. Letters in which they strongly disavowed the pathological Human Rights Commission as any kind of official representative for their interests as members of the public who wished to identify as the opposite sex to which they were born. Not for no reason had this happened. As Peterson explained in his interview with Lauren Chen:
“The transgender activists who claim to be speaking on behalf of the transgender population actually have no legal or ethical right to be speaking for them … [T]he transgender community as a whole doesn’t have any problem with gendered pronouns … So let’s say the canonical transgender person is someone who experienced gender dysphoria in childhood, and that was sufficiently persistent so they decided to go the route of biological transformation, partial or fully. Those people … they have no problem with ‘he’ and ‘she’. What they have a problem with is the ‘he’ or the ‘she’ that they originated with … So perhaps 95% of the tiny minority of people who are transsexuals aren’t in this argument in the way the transgender activists say they are at all … They claim to be speaking for the transsexual community and I see no evidence of that at all.” [xxv]
This clearly wasn’t an attack on the rights of trans people as a whole. Like the authors of those letters, 95% of trans folk would agree with Peterson’s stand against C-16. Because they too understood that he wasn’t here to disrespect their rights as trans people, wasn’t here to intentionally mis-gender for the sake of intentionally mis-gendering. They knew that, ultimately, Peterson was happy to live-and-let-live, so long as the federal government didn’t threaten his right to hold his own private opinions. They too realised that an ideology altogether more sinister than basic human equality was being advanced here. An ideology that threatened the most fundamental principles of the western world. They too understood that Peterson’s intention in going after C-16 was nothing more than to take a necessary stand on behalf of the civilized world in defence of free speech.
So then, if you found yourself supporting Jordan Peterson’s campaign against Bill C-16 at the time of the controversy, it is this view that I’m assuming you had at the time. Is it at all sound familiar?
To sum it all up, here is Peterson in his own words. First explaining to Steve Paikin his motivations for speaking out against C-16 in October 2016:
“[T]his issue is in some sense only peripherally about transsexual issues. It’s more centrally about gender issues and then on top of that - and I think it’s the biggest issue - is that it’s a free speech issue.” (italics mine) [xxvi]
And later on in the conversation:
“The issue with [C-16} is quite straightforward: the [Canadian] government is … requiring us to use certain language. That’s not the same as not using certain language. And it’s a line – and this is the fundamental issue, this is maybe the fundament issue – that’s a line we should not cross. We should not allow the government to decide which words we’re allowed to use. It’s a mistake. And it’s a mistake that strikes right at the heart of free speech.” (italics mine) [xxvii]
Lastly, to compliment this, from his interview with Lauren Chen from around the same time:
“[W]e should take the transgender issue apart a bit because there’s a lot to it and I mean, to me, it’s in some sense only a historical accident that this argument tended to centre on the rights of transgender people. I mean, the line that I drew in the sand, so to speak, could have been drawn in any number of other battles on similar issues.” (italics mine) [xxviii]
In this blog series, it is this argument in particular that I will challenge. Contrary to Professor Peterson’s most favoured way of framing his case against Bill C-16, I will argue that his case ultimately does not rest – and ultimately cannot rest – on a more abstract and theoretical appeal to the principle of freedom of speech. Rather, I will aim to prove that his figurative ‘centre-periphery’ model pie chart (his metaphor of choice in the first quote) is in actuality completely inverted: a contention with the authors of the C-16 legislation over the reality of the category biological sex [xxix] and of the reality of the category gender and of the reality of the relationship between the categories sex and gender makes up the core of Peterson’s uncompromising attitude towards the bill; the issue of free speech constitutes only its periphery.
Before I go any further, please note that I will not here be ignoring the other grounds largely unrelated to free speech on which Peterson has challenged Bill C-16. In point of fact, Dr Peterson has not always relegated to the background of his critique of C-16 his own opinions on the ontology of sex and gender. Many times he has more explicitly contested the truth of the claims embedded within the C-16 legislation and the surrounding guidelines of the Ontario Human Rights Commission on the independence and variability of the categories sex, gender identity and gender expression. And several times he has strongly hinted at dismissing the bill as illegitimate on this basis alone, without then necessarily needing to invoke the principle of freedom of speech. That is, dismissing the bill as illegitimate because, at bottom, it is based on incorrect propositions on the relationship between the categories sex and gender. [xxx] It would therefore be dishonest for me to claim that Peterson has until now completely shirked away from engaging head-on with the broader trans debate within contemporary society whenever speaking on his reasons for opposing C-16. [xxxi]
But what I will be taking issue with in this series is the following: whenever Peterson is pushed by his critics to specifically defend his critique of Bill C-16 on the basis of his claim that the propositions within the legislation on the relationship between sex and gender are factually incorrect – that is, whenever he is challenged by his critics to actually prove that these propositions on the relationship between sex and gender within the legislation are indeed factually incorrect – he has a tendency to then back-off from this initial claim in favour of falling back on his favoured argument for opposing the C-16 legislation on the basis of the threat it poses to freedom of speech.
I will give one more quote which I think epitomizes this tendency of Peterson’s. Here is how the Professor responded when probed by the journalist Jo Coburn on his reasons for opposing Bill C-16 on the BBC’s political commentary programme Daily Politics in May 2018. (For context, Peterson had just reluctantly responded to Coburn’s pointed question “Do you think a trans woman is a real woman?” with the answer “No … because I think women are capable – generally speaking – of having babies. And they have female genitalia, and they have an XX chromosome, and I think the biological markers are relevant …”):
Jo Coburn: ‘You don’t think that a trans woman is a woman. And do you think that that is what is behind – or explains – your opposition to this idea of a law mandating you to use a preferred pronoun. [It] is because you don’t actually believe that that’s the truth: that a trans woman is a woman. And, therefore, you can’t use that pronoun.
Jordan Peterson: ‘No. That’s not my argument at all.’
J C: ‘Really?’
J B: ‘Yeah, really. My argument is that the government should not compel voluntary speech.’
J C: … ‘But the motivation behind it – ‘
J B: ‘ – There’s no motivation behind it … There aren’t hidden motivations that have to do with some arbitrary prejudice against trans people. It’s pure and simply this: there’s never been a time in English common law history where the government compelled speech. And the Canadian government dared to do that. And that was unacceptable …’ [xxxii] (italics mine)
MY interest in this series, then, is to show that Jordan Peterson’s most favoured and fail-safe way of framing his case against Bill C-16 – this argument for opposing the legislation on the basis of the threat it poses to freedom of speech – is in reality far from being “pure and simply” contained within a defence of the principle of free speech. To show that there are in fact some kind of “hidden motivations” informing his argument which directly concern his pre-existing views on trans people. To be sure, it is not “arbitrary prejudice” underlying his argument. But it is a certain understanding on the true nature of the categories sex and gender which run contrary to that of the authors of the C-16 legislation.
In part two of this series, I will first formulate as accurately as I can Peterson’s own stated argument for opposing Bill C-16 on the basis of the threat it poses to free speech – citing, at every opportunity, his own words on the matter.
In part three, I will then explore two popular counter-arguments that have been put forward over the past few years to challenge Peterson’s argument. I will show how, if it is to overcome the challenges presented by these counter-arguments, Peterson’s argument A1. ultimately cannot rest on a more abstract, theoretical appeal to freedom of speech.
I will then in the fourth part in this series shed some light on what I believe to be the implicit assumptions about the reality of the categories sex and gender, and the relationship they have to one another, which make sense of a number of the premises of this argument. I will contend that these implicit assumptions have been present within this particular case against Bill C-16 all along, even if – knowingly or unknowingly – Peterson has not felt a need to fully delineate them.
Finally, in the fifth part in this series, I will reconstruct Peterson’s argument to establish these assumptions as the true first premises of his case against C-16 on the basis of free speech. I will demonstrate how Peterson’s case against Bill C-16, thus reconstructed, is able to overcome the challenges presented by the counter-arguments described in part three of this series. Thereafter, I will shift focus in the debate over the legitimacy of the C-16 legislation from a discussion on the inviolability of freedom of speech to a broader exploration of our ever-polarising ideas in contemporary society on the true nature of sex and gender.
[i] Chiose, S., ‘Jordan Peterson and the trolls in the ivory tower’, The Globe and Mail, 2.6.17, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/jordan-peterson-university-of-toronto-free-speech-crowdfunding/article35174379/
[ii] Peterson uploaded three videos to his YouTube channel throughout the autumn of 2016 in a series he titled ‘Professor against Political Correctness’. Part 1 – ‘Fear and the Law’ - was uploaded on 27th September and deals with the proposed Bill C-16 legislation. Part 2 concerns changes that had been made at the time to the University of Toronto’s human resources department – including a push to make “anti-racism” and “anti-bias” training mandatory for the staff. In part 3, Peterson gives suggestions for those who wish to push back against politically correct policies more generally. Only the first video in the series directly addressed Bill C-16.
[iii] Cited in Glaveski, S., ’12 rules for entrepreneurs from Jordan Peterson’, Innovation, 15.2.19, https://medium.com/steveglaveski/12-rules-for-entrepreneurs-from-jordan-petersons-meteoric-rise-to-fame-ab8aa71b757c
[iv] Clarke, I., ‘Jordan Peterson Against Political Correctness Story, Atlas of Public Management, 5.2.17, http://www.atlas101.ca/pm/cases/jordan-peterson-against-political-correctness-story/
[v] Statistic cited by Steve Paikin in The Agenda with Steve Paikin, ‘Genders, Rights and Freedom of Speech’, YouTube, 27.10.16,
02:41.
[vi] ‘Jordan Peterson Against Political Correctness Story’, 5.2.17.
[vii] Moon, J. ‘Jordan Peterson receives patron boost following political correctness videos’, The Varsity, 5.12.16, https://thevarsity.ca/2016/12/05/jordan-peterson-receives-patron-boost-following-political-correctness-videos/.
[viii] I’ll clarify what I mean when I talk of the online “counter-progressive” sphere. In 2018, Rebecca Lewis of the Data and Society Research Institute carried out an experimental content analysis of what she termed as YouTube’s ‘Alternative Influence Network’ (AIN). Lewis defined the AIN in the following way:
“[A]n assortment of scholars, media pundits, and internet celebrities are using YouTube to promote a range of political positions, from mainstream versions of libertarianism and conservatism, all the way to overt white nationalism. While many of their views differ significantly, they all share a fundamental contempt for progressive politics - specifically for contemporary social justice movements. For this reason, I consider their collective position “reactionary,” as it is defined by its opposition to visions of social progress.”
(Lewis, R., Data and Society Research Institute, Oct 2018, pp.3-4)
What Lewis has called the AIN here I will refer to in this blog series as the “counter-progressive” sphere, as I personally find this to be a more accurate term for describing what it means to be against certain “visions of social progress”. To be sure, they make up a broad church. But what is key here is this “collective position” against progressive politics which unites these communities and which Lewis has identified.
[ix] Cited in ‘Sargon of Akkad’, trackanalytics.com, 8.11.21, https://www.trackalytics.com/youtube/user/sargonofakkad100/
[x] Quoted in Sargon of Akkad, ‘A Hero of #FreeSpeech’, YouTube, 28.10.16,
22:44
[xi] As of the end of 2015. See Eadicicco, L., ‘The 10 Most Popular Podcasts of 2015’, Time, 9.12.15, https://time.com/4141439/podcasts-most-popular-year-2015/.
[xii] Rogan quoted in Lewis, H., ‘What Happened to Jordan Peterson’, The Atlantic, April 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/what-happened-to-jordan-peterson/618082/
[xiii] Computing Forever, ‘#AllSpeechMattters: Jordan Peterson’, YouTube, 19.10.16 (archived https://altcensored.com/watch?v=1OsWXBjY9W4.)
[xiv] Lauren Chen, ‘Interview with Dr. Jordan B. Peterson | Free Speech and Social Justice’, YouTube, 2.11.16,
01:10.
[xv] This speech can be found at: Truthspeak, ‘Jordan Peterson: Freedom of Speech or Political Correctness? (Jan 22, 2017)’, YouTube, 23.11.20,
[xvi] Mouthy Buddha, ‘SJW’s Vs Free Speech’, YouTube, 1.11.16 (archived https://altcensored.com/watch?v=mN4Ci4vOxps): 05: 48.
[xvii] ‘I think that [Bill C-16] is an imposition on freedom of speech which is being implemented at a legislative level.’ Peterson quoted in CBC News, ‘Heated debate on gender pronouns and free speech in Toronto’, YouTube, 29.10.16,
03:54.
[xviii] ‘Those [gender pronouns] are the made-up words that people now describe as “gender neutral”. And so, to me, they’re an attempt to control language – and in a direction that isn’t happing organically, it’s not happening naturally. People aren’t picking up these words in the typical way that new words are picked up … And I don’t like these made-up words: ‘Zie’ and ‘Zir’ and that kind of thing.’
Peterson quoted in The Agenda with Steve Paikin, 27.10.16,
05:07.
[xix] ‘It’s not just a form of discrimination, it’s a form of hate speech. That’s why I made the video. I said that we were in danger of placing the refusal to use certain kinds of language [gender pronouns] into the same category as holocaust denial and suggested that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.’
Peterson quoted in Ibid: 24:42.
[xx] “I think a lot of this is emanating from a small coterie of people behind the Ontario Human Rights Commission – which is a particularly pathological organisation in my estimation and perhaps the biggest enemy of freedom currently extant in Canada – and I don’t say that lightly.” Quoted in Jordan B. Peterson, ‘Sept 27/16: 1. Fear and the Law’, YouTube, 27.9.16,
31:26. This video was the first of three in Dr Peterson’s ‘Professor against Political Correctness’ series.
[xxi] ‘It’s not a transsexual cabal by any stretch of the imagination. Is it a cabal of radical left wingers? Yes, it’s a cabal of radical left wingers. And they’ve been active behind and in front of the scenes increasingly over the last 30 years…’ Quoted in The Agenda with Steve Paikin, 27.10.16: 31:18.
[xxii] “I think that the Ontario Human Rights tribunal is probably obliged by their own tangled web to bring me in front of it. If they fine me, I won’t pay for it. If they put me in jail, I’ll go on hunger strike. I'm not doing this. That’s that. I’m not using words that other people require me to use, especially if they’re made up by radical left-wing ideologues.” Quoted in The Agenda with Steve Paikin, 27.10.16: 51:22.
[xxiii] This rally was organised by supporters of Peterson at the U of T in response to a community-led student “teach-in” protest against the Professor’s comments on C-16. This teach-in had taken place on campus six days prior on 5th Oct 2016. See O’Denton, J., ‘Tensions flare at rally supporting free speech, Dr. Jordan Peterson’, The Varsity, 17.10.16, https://thevarsity.ca/2016/10/17/tensions-flare-at-rally-supporting-free-speech-dr-jordan-peterson/.
The above referenced “viral footage” from this event can still be found at genuiNEWitty, ‘Jordan Peterson’s First Protest At The University of Toronto’, YouTube, 12.10.16,
‘The Video Which made Jordan Peterson Famous’, YouTube, 13.10.16
and Rebel News, ‘Toronto Radicals Fight Free Speech’, YouTube, 13.10.16,
Rebel News also filmed the rally of 5th Oct – see ‘Transgender Protesters in Toronto: “Gender is Over”’, YouTube, 8.10.16,
Be advised that both of the Rebel News broadcasts I’ve cited here are heavily biased and neither filmed nor edited in an impartial manner.
[xxiv] As a somewhat interesting aside, the student organisers of this rally were indeed far from being in total alignment with Dr Peterson’s broader politics. See Liew, G., ‘Why I organized a free speech rally and invited Jordan Peterson’, CBCDocsPOV, 2018, https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/why-i-organized-a-free-speech-rally-and-invited-jordan-peterson.
[xxv] Quoted in Lauren Chen, YouTube, 2.11.16: 08:46.
There are several other instances of Peterson using this same defence. During his debate against Dr Brenda Crossman and Dr Mary K. Bryson at the University of Toronto in November 2016, he argued the following:
“And the other thing is: I don’t buy this whole idea that the people who are putting this legislation forward are valid representatives of the trans community … I’ve received at least 20 letters from transsexual people who are on my side - and, by the way, zero from others, believe it or not - who are perfectly happy with the idea of gender pronouns, they just want to be the other one. Now you can have a discussion about that, and there is lots of things to be said about it. But the idea that this community that is coming out and demanding these rights is somehow representative of this homogenous oppressed minority I think is rubbish!”
Peterson quoted in University of Toronto, ‘Full Video: University of Toronto Academic Forum on Bill C-16’, YouTube, 21.11.16,
01:16:42.
See also his discussion with Steve Paikin (The Agenda with Steve Paikin, 27.10.16: 09:59), his debate against Professor A.W. Peet on CBC News in October 2016 (CBC News, 29.10.16: 09:55), and his talk at the North York Civil Centre in January 2017 (Truthspeak, YouTube, 23.11.20: 19:17.).
I will return to discussion of this particular line of argument from Peterson in part 4 of this series.
[xxvi] Quoted in in The Agenda with Steve Paikin, 27.10.16: 10:22.
[xxvii] Ibid 35:14.
[xxviii] Lauren Chen, YouTube, 2.11.16: 08:22.
Again there are numerous other occasions on which Peterson has made this “historical accident” point. During his speech at the student-hosted panel event ‘Drawing the Line’ at McMaster University on 17th March 2017, for example, he said the following:
“[S]o I can tell you a little bit about why I was opposed to Bill C-16 – and there is a variety of reasons. I think the most important one is that it’s the first piece of Canadian legislation that’s ever been put forward that actually requires people to use a particular set of words … we’ve never had a piece of legislation ever that would require you to use a certain kind of vocabulary. And regardless of what that vocabulary is – and the fact that it happens to be about transgender terminology, hypothetically, is almost besides the point, as far as I’m concerned. Now this all focused on this particular issue – and it had to focus on some issue – but this isn’t the issue that’s [actually] at the bottom of it. It’s just that complex things manifest themselves in very particular locations, and this just happens to be the location that this is manifesting itself in.”
Quoted in Steve Hanson, ‘Jordan Peterson Speaks about Free Speech @ McMaster University 1/3’, YouTube, 18.3.17,
01:10.
[xxix] Hereafter ‘sex’. Please note that whenever speaking of the category ‘sex’ or ‘biological sex’ in this series, I am at all times referring exclusively to biological sex as it is expressed in human beings, unless stated otherwise.
[xxx] Clearly, Peterson has made this critique of the linguistic propositions on sex and gender embedded within Bill C-16 and the surrounding policies of the Ontario Human Rights Commission a considerable part of his campaign against the legislation from the very outset. See his very first video on C-16; ‘Fear and the Law’, 27.9.16: 33:44 onwards. See also the article he wrote for the National Post in November 2016: Peterson, J. B., ‘The Right to be Politically Incorrect’, National Post, 8.11.16, https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-the-right-to-be-politically-incorrect.
As stated, however, the point of this series is to show that these very objections to what is implied about the nature of the categories sex and gender within the language of C-16 are actually of most importance in explaining Peterson’s opposition to the bill. Rather than list-off here the various occasions in which Peterson has critiqued the C-16 legislation on this basis, then, I will return in part 5 of this series to the times in which he has addressed more directly C-16’s claims on the relationship between biological sex and gender identity. Before doing this, I will first examine the professor’s preferred critique of Bill C-16 on the basis of the threat that the legislation poses to freedom of speech.
[xxxi] What’s more, perhaps stating the obvious, Dr Peterson has only become more and more of vocal participant in the broader societal trans debate now that his popularity as a public intellectual has outlived his involvement in the Bill C-16 affair. In the past couple years, he has regularly hosted gender-critical and trans-critical writers and thinkers on both his podcast series and YouTube channel - including the journalists Abigail Shrier and Helen Joyce, among others.
Peterson also featured in the documentary What is a Women? released by the conservative news media outlet The Daily Wire in June 2022. This documentary, hosted by the political commentator Matt Walsh, took aim at the received wisdom within contemporary academia of a clear distinction between the two categories biological sex and gender. Peterson, in his appearance in the documentary, contributes towards Walsh’s critique of this received wisdom.
More recently, Professor Peterson was temporarily suspended from Twitter after “dead-naming” the male-to-female trans actor Elliot Page in a tweet commentating on the latter’s decision to undergo a subcutaneous mastectomy surgical procedure – implying, among other things, that undergoing such a procedure is not sufficient to change one’s sex from female to male. See Parkel, I., ‘Twitter reportedly removes Jordan Peterson’s tweet about Elliot Page’, The Independent, 30.06.22, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/jordan-peterson-elliot-page-twitter-delete-b2113127.html
[xxxii] This episode of Daily Politics can be found at PhantasyAngelify, ‘DAILY POLITICS 2018 (May 22, 2018) – JORDAN PETERSON on the BBC’, YouTube, 22.5.18,
See 44:58 for the above quoted exchange between Peterson and Jo Coburn.