Jordan B Peterson's Female Fantasies

Jordan B Peterson has read Fifty Shades of Grey and he has some thoughts.

This post is the start of an experiment in which I read 12 Rules for Life, the surprise hit book by controversial brain-owner Jordan B Peterson.

Although he has something called an Overture at the start, I’ve made the courageous decision to begin at Chapter One, which happens to be Peterson’s most famous argument. I hope you like the taste of lobster. And also BDSM? Okay let’s start.

Rule One: Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back

Peterson’s central argument here is that aggressive competition for space is key to the way humans interact. Just as lobsters in the ocean square off and fight for limited resources, so we humans must ‘straighten up’ and intimidate our rivals too. Peterson insists this is the way of all nature by reference not only to lobsters, but to the habits of wrens, chickens, wolves and dolphins. Thus - humans too.

A lobster, his posture extremely dubious. I typed ‘cartoon lobster in a bondage dungeon’ into Midjourney AI more times than I had expected today.

In consequence, 12 Rules for Life is fatally flawed before it even gets going. Embarrassing though it is to have to point this out to Jordan, humans are not lobsters. For reasons both obvious (no pincers!) and subtle (fewer legs), we are in fact almost nothing like lobsters. 

Here’s the most relevant difference: humans are highly social creatures. We constantly do things that would make no sense to a lobster (or wren, or wolf), like caring for the elderly or giving to charity. And, while lobsters are doomed to conflict by the limitations of the natural world, humans are able to overcome many of these limitations. Faced with shortfall, we build, reconfigure, reimagine. 

If two lobsters find there’s not enough shelter for them both, they fight. If two humans do, we can build another storey, or dig a basement. Partly for this reason, earth’s human population has ballooned in the past ten thousand years, from a few million to a few billion, while the lobster population has not.

So when Peterson writes: ‘It’s winner-takes-all in the lobster world, just as in human societies’, we may well laugh. It’s a bizarre comparison. But there’s also something harmful in this ideology. By setting up the world like a zero-sum, winner-takes-all competition for finite resources, Peterson encourages the young men who read his books towards a pugilistic, war-like mindset. He suggests that sexual mates have to be fought for. He promotes conflict rather than co-operation. He fails to see that we could solve problems better by working together as equals than by establishing pecking orders and fight clubs.

When we see the backlash against feminism among Peterson’s fans, aren’t we seeing this mindset in action? An anxiety that limited wealth, already being fought over by men, is now to be encroached upon by women? (And a suspicion they could be scared away if men got tough enough?)

I am pleased to report that typing ‘if Jesus was a lobster’ into Midjourney is every bit as satisfying as you’d hope.

Reducing us to lobsters - to our most primal instincts - is both wrong and unhelpful. And by wrapping it up in a message nobody can really argue¹ with - ‘Stand up straight with your shoulders back’ - he pitches it as common sense, easily lapped up. His appeals to economists, to anecdotes, and to the animal world, make it all terribly convincing. But convincing is not the same as correct.

After decontextualising a quote from Jesus (Matthew 13:12), Peterson remarks: ‘You truly know you are the Son of God when your dicta apply even to crustaceans’. But Peterson is not the Messiah and his dicta are, I regret to conclude, not applicable to humans.

Peterson on Female Sexual Fantasies

In the same chapter, there’s a brief, fleeting moment which gives a little glimpse of the toxic ideas Peterson quietly peppers into his work. He notes that a male lobster normally reacts to female interest

“in a dominant, irritable manner… If properly charmed, however, he will change his behaviour towards the female. This is the lobster equivalent of Fifty Shades of Grey, the fastest-selling paperback of all time… [and] the pattern of behaviour continually represented in the sexually explicit literary fantasies that are [...] popular among women.”

Peterson is not explicitly saying: “Women like it when you’re horrible to them.” You couldn’t nail him with this in an interview; the quote is too wordy. But any impressionable young man reading this paragraph can glean the sense. It is an implicit endorsement of “treat them mean, keep them keen”, made more insidious by the suggestion that women themselves find this the most arousing.²

The argument is obviously fallacious. Male characters in stories do often start out as arseholes or villains, but only because it’s interesting; nice men offer no room for character progression. And even if women may fantasise about taming a cruel man, it doesn’t mean they want that in real life. Fantasising from the safe distance of a novel is entirely unlike the actual experience of enduring a callous or abusive man. I enjoy rollercoasters, but I don’t wish to be placed on a genuinely malfunctioning biplane. 

It’s difficult to understand why Peterson included this aside: it is not pertinent to his central argument, nor to the rule that you should ‘stand up straight’. Presumably he’s just really committed to motivating men to be little turds. I am not sure we needed the encouragement. 

1. Except, er, doctors and osteopaths, who recommend slouching sometimes and note that standing constantly erect is so unnatural it may put strain on your muscles. Is it worth a lifetime of back pain to scare off the other lobsters? You decide! 

2. In another paragraph, Peterson announces that if you’re at the top of the human hierarchy, “You have limitless opportunity for romantic and sexual contact”. This is a surprise to those of us who imagine all sexual contact is limited by the need for another person’s consent. The word “limitless” is probably absent-minded hyperbole, but it’s a ham-fisted phrase and sticks out uncomfortably given Peterson’s track record on feminism.