Canada’s Gender Identity Law Set to Murder Free Speech – Will the US Follow? June 10, 2017 JW Williams,
Canada: Dr. Jordan Peterson is in the fight of his life over political correctness, risking his career to stop the government from forcing citizens to use politically-motivated speech via hate speech laws. He explains how the death of free speech kills negotiation, which is the alternative to war. He blames the postmodernists who are waging an all-out assault on the West.
Dr. Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. He is a YouTube sensation and has posted more than 125 videos on a wide range of topics that include neuroscience, existentialism, mythology, religion, belief systems, and war.
Dr. Peterson is a free-speech advocate who is risking his career at the University of Toronto because he opposes Canada’s Bill C-16, which would force people to use an endless number of gender pronouns such as ‘zee’ and ‘zer’ instead of ‘he’ and ‘she’. C-16 further mandates that those who identify as non-humans must be called ‘otherkins’.
This law not only forbids free speech but compels speech that is politically motivated.
C-16 would amend the Human Rights Act and criminal code, making gender identity or expression part of the hate-speech codes. Failure to use the proper pronoun would constitute harassment and discrimination that is a prosecutable offense. Peterson opines that teaching the biological differences between men and women may actually become illegal at some point in the future.
Bill C-16 also makes employers responsible for employees’ speech. The University of Toronto could even be held responsible for Dr. Peterson’s refusal to comply with the law. This feature is designed to turn employers into enforcement agents.
C-16 forbids schools to tell parents if their child decides to use an alternate gender pronoun, usurping parental control.
The basic issue, however, is not about pronouns, but about truth and freedom of speech.
Dr. Peterson says that gender-neutral pronouns are the vanguard of a politically correct movement and he is not going to use their words! He further states that if you use the language rules that your ideological opponent demands that you use, you cede the territory to them. And the West has been ceding its cultural territory to the politically correct authoritarians for a very long time.
Leftists use vulnerable groups as a shield, and those who oppose them are smeared. Leftists assert that opposition does not have a right to make an argument against their cause du jour, claiming it is discriminatory. Peterson says that kids on the left equate arguments and free speech with racism, which destroys language and communication.
Peterson blames the Marxists who transformed themselves into postmodernists in the 1960s when they realized that their working-class utopias in the Soviet Union were “absolutely murderous”.
He specifically called out French postmodernist Jacques Derrida who initiated an all-out assault on Western categories of thought by claiming that categories are used for exclusion and oppression. However, Peterson says, categories are the basis for cognition and how we think, therefore, Derrida has made the claim that thought itself is an agent of oppression.
He concluded the interview with some profound thoughts:
Truth is the best defense against suffering.
Free speech is the fundamental principle of Western civilization. Logos is the word that turns chaos into order, and is the function of the soul.
Without free speech, there is no negotiation. The alternative to negotiation is war. Combative speech is the alternative for actual combat.