Jordan Peterson, a Canadian clinical psychologist, has penned an article for the National Post to reaffirm his well-known stance: gender politics has no place in the classroom.
The bestselling author of the self-help book, “12 Rules for Life”, has revealed the story of a six-year-old girl who was forced to question her identity after a Canadian teacher taught her class that “there is no such thing as girls and boys” and “girls are not real and boys are not real”.
The 6-year-old asked her parents why her existence as a girl was not real and if she could see a doctor about the fact that she was a girl. She also said she was “not sure if she wanted to be a mommy”.
“She became unsettled about the reality of her biological existence. Her concern persisted over a three-month period — a long time in the life of a young person”, Peterson wrote.
The psychologist explained that at such a tender age, the girl was being required to question not only her identity but also what constitutes “real”, which made the whole idea of reality “shaky and unstable”.
“Trusting her teacher, as she apparently did, [she] listened to her lessons and tried to think through what the complicated and internally contradictory mess of information she was presented with might actually signify — and failing, as was inevitable, because there is nothing that it signifies that is reasonable, logical, practical, or true”, he added.
Even though the girl’s parents discussed their concerns with school officials, they claim that these authorities refused to agree to talk to them when these sensitive conversations took place and would not take any action to make sure that “children of female gender identity were positively affirmed”.
The girl has since moved to another school, while her parents filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal claiming that the school subjected their daughter to “ongoing discrimination on the basis of gender and gender identity, by a series of lessons that denied the existence of the female gender and biological sex and undermined the value of identifying as a female”.
Peterson, an outspoken critic of gender identity politics, became a public figure in late 2016 when he voiced his opposing stance to the Canadian parliament’s proposed Bill C-16, aimed at putting an end to “gender discrimination”.
At the time, Peterson, now a YouTube darling, uploaded several videos on the platform where he explained that the proposed legislation was in direct opposition of Canada’s free speech rights, arguing that “there’s a difference between saying something you can’t say and saying that there are things that you have to say”.
As a staunch advocate of free speech, he launched a new online platform earlier this month as a “censorship-free” alternative to Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, which have been under heavy criticism for blocking accounts of conservative commenters and content-creator.
