In American politics, the concept of racist dog-whistling is nothing new. From George Wallace and Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, white supremacy is often communicated through coded messages that have built-in deniability should someone call the speaker on it.
In recent years, some of the tactics have become more sophisticated, and some of the messages have been a bit harder to decode, and some of the subject matter is about subjects other than race, like gender.
In the 2016 campaign, vice presidential candidate Mike Pence repeatedly referred to the importance of “broad-shouldered leadership.”
Of course, it was not lost on many people that Pence was drawing a contrast to Trump’s female opponent, Hillary Clinton. Traditionally, women do not have broad shoulders. Pence was, of course, implying that women are not fit to lead. Yet, when asked if he was referencing Trump’s masculinity, Pence replied, ‘Oh, not a bit.”
This is exactly what dog whistles sound like, and they are a key feature of our politics.
Enter men’s rights celebrity Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto psychology professor who speaks out about everything from preferred pronouns for transgender people (he refuses to use them) to the gender pay gap (he downplays it) to white privilege (he ridicules the notion).
He is constantly accusing others of misquoting him and taking him out of context, which is a hallmark of dog whistlers everywhere. And so, it’s important to understand that what he says isn’t nearly as important as what his words suggest and imply to their intended audience.
Here’s what he told Nellie Bowles of The New York Times:
“You know you can say, ‘Well isn’t it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine’ — well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn’t matter because that is how it’s represented. It’s been represented like that forever. And there are reasons for it. You can’t change it. It’s not possible. This is underneath everything. If you change those basic categories, people wouldn’t be human anymore. They’d be something else. They’d be transhuman or something. We wouldn’t be able to talk to these new creatures.”
This is quite a remarkable quote, isn’t it? What Peterson is obviously suggesting with this statement is that gender traits are fixed across time and impossible to change without becoming a different species.
Peterson seems to have a strong affection for archetypes to reinforce gender roles. He went on to mansplain to her, “[Witches] do exist. They just don’t exist the way you think they exist. They certainly exist. You may say well dragons don’t exist. It’s, like, yes they do — the category predator and the category dragon are the same category. It absolutely exists. It’s a superordinate category. It exists absolutely more than anything else. In fact, it really exists. What exists is not obvious. You say, ‘Well, there’s no such thing as witches.’ Yeah, I know what you mean, but that isn’t what you think when you go see a movie about them. You can’t help but fall into these categories. There’s no escape from them.”
Not one of these arguments is convincing to me. They are merely reflections of the way people have traditionally thought, but there’s no reason for us to give a damn or continue thinking that way.
But there’s another Peterson quote that really grinds my gears:
“The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.”
So, does that mean Peterson thinks leaders should have broad shoulders? Of course it does because, after all, men have broad shoulders.
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