The New York Times Enters the Icy Domain of Jordan Peterson, the Incel's Intellectual 

With my howling banshee shriek, I recommend you this New York Times profile of Jordan Peterson, a popular psychologist-turned-self-help guru and member of the Intellectual Dark Web of anti-“PC” warriors for sexless men and whites who’ve fallen victim to “forced diversity.” He posits that women have sex with the men so the men do not kill. The result is chilling and slightly nauseating. This is the stuff of nightmares:

“Over his bed is a painting celebrating electrification in the Soviet Union. On the wall across from it is a hyper-realistic painting of two nude women with swords.”

My hands are clammy. My blood has run cold.

Peterson–former Harvard University professor whose book 12 Rules for Life made the number one spot on Amazon’s bestseller list earlier this year–espouses a worldview which gives a darker, more hateful dimension to everyday misogyny. The interview reveals a flat-earth view of sexual and racial politics derived from made-up lore rather than facts, drawing on examples like witches. Here’s a summary of “what makes sense”:

“It makes sense that a witch lives in a swamp. Yeah,” [Peterson] says. “Why?”

It’s a hard one.

“Right. That’s right. You don’t know. It’s because those things hang together at a very deep level. Right. Yeah. And it makes sense that an old king lives in a desiccated tower.”

But the crux of the story, and the one he contests, is his suggestion that society return to “enforced monogamy” to prevent incels from murdering people:

Violent attacks are what happens when men do not have partners, Mr. Peterson says, and society needs to work to make sure those men are married.

“He was angry at God because women were rejecting him,” Mr. Peterson says of the Toronto killer. “The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges.” [Emphasis mine]

Mr. Peterson does not pause when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end.

“Half the men fail,” he says, meaning that they don’t procreate. “And no one cares about the men who fail.”

I laugh, because it is absurd.

“You’re laughing about them,” he says, giving me a disappointed look. “That’s because you’re female.”

Peterson has since clarified in a disarming blog post that “enforced monogamy” refers to the cultural norm of monogamy rather than a proposal for policing women or “arbitrary dealing out of damsels to incels.”

“Simply put,” he writes, “monogamous pair bonding makes men less violent. Here are some examples of the well-developed body of basic evolutionary-biological/psychological/anthropological evidence (and theory) supporting that claim.”

His followers are calling the Times profile a “hit piece,” and he calls it a mischaracterization as “hypothetical support for a Handmaid’s Tale-type patriarchal social structure.” But as for what women should do to fulfill their own needs, he more or less tells Bowles that the patriarchal social structure should be enough?

“So I don’t know who these people think marriages are oppressing,” he says. “I read Betty Friedan’s book because I was very curious about it, and it’s so whiny, it’s just enough to drive a modern person mad to listen to these suburban housewives from the late ’50s ensconced in their comfortable secure lives complaining about the fact that they’re bored because they don’t have enough opportunity. It’s like, Jesus get a hobby. For Christ’s sake, you — you — ”

Say no more. Night has fallen, and now my slimy spider-like body will creep out from the shadowy swamp to perform the wedded utilitarian sex that is my duty, as I hiss: come hither, my king.