Dr. Jordan B Peterson is a professor and clinical psychologist at the University of Toronto. In this video titled Modern Times, he has a discussion with well-known American intellectual and social critic Dr. Camille Paglia. Although she is a committed equity feminist, she firmly opposes the victim/oppressor narrative that dominates much of modern American and British feminism.

They talk about the alliance between Marxists and post-modernists which currently dominate much of academia. If you only have a vague idea about what these ‘isims are about and want to know more, this is a good introduction.

This is a long video, over 100 minutes, so if you want to hear what they have to say about feminism in particular, start 30 minutes in.

Some of the statements which I found particulary interesting are:

Peterson:

“In the post-modern world, and this seems to be something that is increasingly seeping out into the culture at large, you have nothing but the tyranical father, nothing but the destructive force of masculine conciousness, and nothing but the benevolant great mother. It’s an appalling ideology, and it seems to me that it’s sucking the vitality (which is exactly what you would expect symbolicly), it’s sucking the vitality out of our culture.”

Paglia responds:

“There is no cure for the culture’s ills right now except if men start standing up and demanding that they be respected as men again”.

A year ago Peterson did research to see which character traits predicted adherence to a politically-correct creed. Being female was a predictor, as was the personality attributes associated with femininity – agreeableness and higher levels of negative emotion. So was personality disorder.

“Part of what I see happening is that I think that women who’s relationship with men has been seriously pathologised cannot distinguish between male authority and competence, and male tyrannical power. They fail to differentiate because all they see is the oppressive male…

We are increasingly dominated by a view of masculinity that is mostly characteristic of women who have terrible personality disorders and who are unable to have healthy relationships with men.

But here’s the problem: I know how to stand up to a man who’s unfairly tresspassing against me. The reason I know that is that the parameters of my resistance are quite well-defined, which is we talk, we argure, we push, and then it becomes physical. If we move beyond the boundaries of civil discourse we know what the next step is.

But that is FORBIDDEN in discourse with women. So I don’t think that men can control crazy women…

It seems to me that it is sane women who have to stand up against their crazy sisters and say ‘look, enough of that, enough man-hating, enough pathology, enough bringing disgrace on us as a gender’.

But the problem there… is that most of the women I know who are sane are busy doing sane things. They have their career, they have their family, they are quite occupied, and they don’t seem to have the time or maybe even the interest to go after their crazy, harpie sisters. So I don’t see any regulating force for that terrible femininity.

It seems to me to be invading the culture and undermining the masculine power of the culture in a way that I think is fatal.”

Paglia agrees:

“This is symptomatic of the decline of Western culture. It will just go down flat. I don’t think that people realise that masculinity still exists, in the world, as a code, among jihadists! And where you have passionate masculinity circling the borders like the Huns and the Vandals during the Roman Empire, that’s what I see. I see this culture rotting from within.”