Power Threads

Women deeply want men who are competent and powerful. And I don’t mean power in that they can exert tyrannical control over others. That’s not power. That’s just corruption. [Jordan Peterson on Threads]

Like many liberal herbivores I’ve moved over to Threads from Twitter (now rebranded as X). I’ve done this for the same reason as others I suppose: I’m hoping there will be fewer annoying people there. I’d like to think that doesn’t mean fewer people I disagree with – rather it means fewer people who post in a tribal way and just to annoy – people who buy into a conspiratorial ideology that they’ve swallowed whole. I’m thinking of right-wingers for the most part, but the left do it too.

Most people don’t examine their beliefs and then choose a party or side that best fits those beliefs. Rather they choose sides first with their gut and then take on board all the beliefs of the side they have chosen. Abortion. Capitalism. Climate change. China. Masks. Vaccines. Immigration. Crime and punishment. You could have a separate position on each since there’s no connection between them, but people aren’t like that. If they are climate change deniers they must also be anti-immigration. If they are pro-abortion they have to favour self-ID for trans people.

Returning to the quote at the top, I noticed a few comments to the effect of What are you doing here Mr Peterson? You’re not meant to be here. Jordan Peterson is a bête noire of the left and the sort of person they don’t want to have ruining their day on Threads. But why would they expect people like him not to have a Threads account? Threads has no way of stopping such people. People talk about the moderation on Threads compared to the free-for-all on X. But unless a person says something extreme I don’t see how that moderation will thwart them. No, all the right-wingers will migrate from X to Threads in due course. They will get no pleasure from sharing right-wingery only with like-minded people. They will want to own the libs.

Moving to the content of what Peterson wrote, what struck me first was his use of the following formula …

A is good, so this unappealing aspect of A is not really A – it is B. (In this case A = power and B = corruption.)

I discussed this at greater length here. It is a common and knee-jerk way of talking about things and it strikes me as wrong-headed every time I see it. Rather than admit that A has good and bad aspects people use this tired formula. Peterson compounds this error by his use of the word corruption for term B. Corruption generally refers to a system where public servants take bribes. That hardly fits tyrants. Is he using corruption in its other sense of general rottenness? That would fit better but it doesn’t seem like he’s doing that.

I’m interested in semantics but others may be more interested in sexual politics. A woman further down the thread clearly was. She gave an honest response, which I will paraphrase.

I don’t like you Mr Peterson. What you say sounds like stereotyping though I admit it happens to be true in my case. A stopped clock is right twice a day.

Now there are evolutionary reasons why Peterson’s post may ring true for that woman. Females need resources to nurture their young and look for mates that can provide them.

But I’m going to speculate on another reason …

When we are young we all (male and female) hope that there are competent people who will take charge if necessary. We know our own limitations but feel secure because we assume the adults know what’s what. That security breaks down a bit when we become adults ourselves and still haven’t much of a clue. Inadequate though we are, we are as good as it gets. Only in specific circumstances – with airline pilots, doctors etc – can we revert to childhood security.

Do some women feel that Mr Right will give them a more durable version of that pilot-induced security? The Mr Right option isn’t open to straight men, so they turn to philosophy, hobbies, work etc for security. Dreams and tales and hopes of perfect relationships tend not to interest them. It’s a theory anyway.

People call this kind of talk stereotyping. But stereotyping is merely a cussword for generalising with some guesswork thrown in, and this is fine as long as you acknowledge its limitations – that you may be wrong and it may not apply in every case or to everybody.

Caitlin Moran got a lot of flak recently over her book What About Men? In it she writes about what she thinks is wrong with the emotional lives of men. In brief, they ought to be more like women in the way they share their feelings. Imagine a man trying to write the same book about women! the critics said (even in the liberal press). No respectable publisher would take the book on. The man would have to vent on YouTube or somewhere like that. In any case what good has the female way of handling emotions done for women? They have worse mental health even than men, though it’s true they don’t commit suicide as much.

At least with generalisation you have something to go on. After all, some men do have mates that they banter with down the pub and so on (using the culture-specific language of the Moran’s native UK). Many don’t, but the generalisation is at least based on some observable facts. But speculation on the emotions of the opposite sex can have no such foundation. The inner life of a person is invisible and unknowable. One can only extrapolate from one’s own inner life.

So is it only okay to speculate about the emotions of people of the same sex as oneself? The variation within the sexes is likely greater than between the sexes so that doesn’t stack up. I’d say the important thing is not to be dogmatic. Speculation yes. Pontification no. I suspect this is where Moran fell down. She got careless and cocky and thought the Zeitgeist gave her a free pass to pontificate.