“The manner and tone in which Dr. Peterson espouses his public statements may reflect poorly on the profession of psychology…. [and may be] reasonably regarded by members of the profession as disgraceful, dishonourable and/or unprofessional…with a high “recurrence risk” and “posing moderate risk of harm to the public.” The Ontario College of Psychologists
You know society is in a lot of trouble when high risk criminal reoffenders of life, limb and property are let loose on the Public, but alleged white collar offenders of tone and and manner of expression are being required to submit to forced remediation for the protection of the Public. Forget 1984, this is more like Orwell 1994.
The Ontario College of Psychologists successfully enforced its finding that Jordan Peterson, a U of T and Harvard Professor and more recently a worldwide speaker including at Oxford University, is “highly” likely to reoffend with the manner and tone of his “expression” posing a “moderate risk to the Public.” The danger to the Public is so urgent that the College declined Peterson’s offer to self-remediate under the oversight of Random House’ publishing standards among other experts. Instead, he must be remediated to the satisfaction of one of two College selected coaches or risk loss of his professional license.
The College hastens to reinforce that the College is not, repeat not, disciplining Peterson for his Charter right to free expression. It’s just that the College has a professional code of ethics to uphold. It’s about his manner and tone is all.
[The College] proportionately balanced the impact of imposing the [“specified continuing education or remedial program”] on Dr. Peterson’s right to freedom of expression protected by s. 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms …The order is not disciplinary and does not prevent Dr. Peterson from expressing himself on controversial topics…[it is] not disciplinary, but remedial.”
This is a bit of a head scratcher. It’s not disciplinary but it is being imposed on him against his will, and he is being required to pay for it or risk losing his license. He’s not being prevented from expressing himself, but he is being prevented from expressing himself in the manner he wishes to express himself.
The answer to the riddle gentle reader, is that it’s about a small everyday offence of tone and manner framed in bureaucratic and criminal language. It’s hitting a tone and manner offence with a Feminist sledge hammer.
But why go after someone like Peterson? Someone who is well known and regarded as a nuanced and gentlemanly speaker “with the patience of Job” as insults are hurled at him regularly. The College is treating him like an uncouth Eliza Doolittle requiring elocution lessons to be fit for proper society:
The Panel noted the advice provided [to Peterson] in 2020 in concluding that the “recurrence risk” of Dr. Peterson using unprofessional language in the future was moderate. The Panel proposed that Dr. Peterson undertake “to reflect on these issues with a period of coaching” with a person selected by it as a remedial step.
It gives you the uneasy sense they really think Peterson, a loyal workhorse for the psychology profession helping mostly young men in our societal suicide crisis, will willingly be trotted off like Orwell’s Boxer by horse van for R&R with a sign saying “Remediation Factory.”
That is highly unlikely for many reasons including that there isn’t a substantive case against Peterson. The court ruling was an appeal ruling on process. not on the actual substance. The College states its concern is regarding his “responsibility to be cognizant of how his provocative language and tone might impact the public’s perception toward the profession of psychology, and that his public utterances may have negative consequences for those struggling with issues directly or tangentially related to his comments”
Peterson has posted over 42,000 X (formerly Twitter) posts, yet the College cites “concern” with the tone and manner of ten of those 42,000 posts:
The ICRC’s concerns with Dr. Peterson addressing Elliot Page as “her” and by their prior name, as well as calling a city councillor a “thing” and a doctor a “criminal” (a term even Dr. Peterson has expressed some regret using), arose from the language Dr. Peterson used, not his personal views. So too with his negative comment on the appearance of a woman on the cover of Sports Illustrated and calling Gerald Butts a ‘prik.’ On its face, the language raised professionalism concerns, and it was not necessary for the ICRC to engage with Dr. Peterson on his motivation for making those comments.
It’s not outside the realm of possibility that, for example, Butts, a seasoned, aggressive political mud slinger, or the confidently obese woman on the magazine cover, won’t have a dark night of the soul and recall that Peterson, a psychologist known to be highly intelligent and compassionate, once called him a “prik” and her “not beautiful.”
“Speaking the truth in love is not as much about having a gentle demeanor as it is about the way truth and love go hand-in-hand. Because we love one another, we must speak the truth. Because we know the truth, we must be people characterized by love” (John 13:34–35; 15:1–17).” Got Questions.
This sense of individual responsibility for the well being of others is presumably what led Peterson to regret his tone and manner in some or all of these ten tweets.
However, the first and foremost example the College cites is, “A tweet on January 2, 2022, in which Dr. Peterson responded to an individual who expressed concern about overpopulation by stating: ‘You’re free to leave at any point.’”
Setting aside that it is Peterson who urgently strives to protect young people from suicidal ideation resulting from the overpopulation propaganda being foisted on them, is Peterson’s above retort (out of his 42,000 tweets) enough to set off remedial coaching for this Harvard Professor as a high risk to reoffend with no chance for self-remediation?
For comparison, this is a random example on a CTV national news broadcast which is subject to licensing and regulation for its speech by the Canadian Radio and Television Communication.
A CTV panelist stated that people who were stupid enough to “poke the bear [referring to people doing stupid stuff at the zoo] deserve to be lower on the food chain and we need to thin the herd by you.” Will anything come of the CTV segment? Almost certainly not.
Peterson has a special responsibility as a psychologist which the College lays out, but is that responsibility any more than a national news broadcaster licensed by the CRTC? Lots of people would wince at what both the CTV panelist and Peterson said (I did), however, are unelected bureaucrats now going to equally monitor the Left and the Right for tone and manner offences?
Peterson’s defence that his words are true (for example, that there is no overpopulation problem, which is true by most and increasingly objective standards and in fact we need to be having more children) will fall on deaf, but ever so polite, ears. This is a world where, like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, most of those in authority only believe in the objective truth of their own beliefs.
Even if what Peterson said in some or all of his “ill mannered” tweets was untrue, and the College had actual legitimate complaints from actual complainants who had even met Peterson, as Peterson argues he was “off duty” at the time.
Even the Canadian Civil Liberties Association establishment, clearly not a fan of Jordan Peterson, agrees with Peterson taking the position the College has no right to require Peterson to attend remedial training.
Peterson was actually way “off duty” in what is effectively a bar called X/Twitter where people get drunk on political talk, follow other people around and word brawls break out regularly. It’s not like the scientist who made the propagandistic statement to Peterson about overpopulation didn’t know who Peterson was or that the protection of young people from suicidal ideation is an especially important issue to Peterson. There’s little doubt that scientist knew he was poking Peterson on an especially sensitive issue for him and expected the type of reaction he received.
This is almost certainly true of the other other random X/Twitter users who reported Peterson to the College. The College would have a point if Peterson made these statements in a power imbalanced relationship with a patient. However, with possible rare exception like the scientist above, Peterson was replying to public figures many or most of whom are in positions more powerful than himself. When the then Ellen Page signed up to be a celebrity and have “people” including lawyers surrounding her, she signed up to throw and take punches.
The notion that the Public would be psychologically scarred because a psychologist called their political enemy a “prik” on Twitter, I mean, c’mon.
It’s not to endorse it, but to say that given this is about ten of 42,000 tweets, and hardly worthy of being included in a list of examples requiring tightly controlled remedial coaching.
It’s telling that Peterson’s self-remediation offer for his tone and manner was declined by the College, especially for someone of his calibre. It suggests the College wants to establish itself as the authority on acceptable tone and manner and therefore is unwilling to even allow industry professionals a voice on the issue.
Maybe this is really about unelected Leftist bureaucrats exerting presumptive authority over a new expression limit of their own devising with which to set legislative precedent over time? Is this why the DOJ unleashed the FBI on “ill mannered” parents who shouted at school board meetings when their children were being threatened with indoctrination ?
Are the tone and manner regulators coming to a civil tribunal near you to tamp down on the urgency of your tone alerting other parents something is really wrong? Is this one step further in the UK’s speech police? Will unelected bureaucrats soon be issuing speaking tickets like speeding tickets? Is this an effort by the Left to literally quiet forthright, emotive conservative voices on the Right by demanding they adopt a Feminist tone and manner, which is wholly unnatural and untruthful to the Right, to limit conservative speech?
Maybe that’s crazy conspiracy talk and it’s something much less intentional. Something like subconscious feminist ideological retribution for men having historically idealized women trained to speak softly and carry pink lipstick.
Maybe it’s professional women now in positions of power getting some kind of taming of the shrew-man delight in training “toxic masculinity” to speak softly and drop the stick.
Unless all the other psychologists in Ontario meet the College’s strict standards in their tone and manner 100% of the time on and off duty, and have never had even .0001% questionable expressions, it’s as absurd as 1984 was in 1948 for the College to require Peterson to submit to self-remediation at his own expense or risk the loss of his license.
Like Trump, an offender of tone and manner to the Left if there ever was one, who has never even had a speeding ticket suddenly being indicted on four criminal charges largely for his words, there’s little doubt that if it weren’t for Peterson’s politics the College would have brushed off these Twitter complainers as political actors harassing Peterson while he was off duty. Instead, they found him guilty of tone and manner offences without the possibility of self-remediation.
I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. 1 Corinthians 4:3-4
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