A CONTROVERSIAL academic who gained global fame as a strident anti-feminist is to deliver a lecture in Scotland on his latest book.
Jordan Peterson, a Professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, will appear at at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow to discuss his best-selling book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
Prof Peterson has attracted criticism for his stance on gender politics and has been accused of using social media to spread abusive misogyny.
He reportedly said that feminists have supported Muslims because they have “an unconscious wish for brutal male domination”, and referred to developing nations as “pits of catastrophe”.
Among other topics, he has attacked the Disney film Frozen for being feminist propaganda.
However, his self-help guide has become hugely popular and has been endorsed by online celebrities with a massive following among young people, especially teenage boys.
Peterson has been described as “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now” by David Brooks of the New York Times. But he has also been described as a right-wing reactionary.
Earlier this year Channel 4 journalist Cathy Newman challenged Peterson’s arguments over male and female behaviour. Following the interview, Newman was subjected to such a barrage of online abuse - including death threats - from his followers that police were called in. Peterson insisted he tried to stop the abuse.
Newman later told the Guardian: “I wasn’t prepared for the torrent of abuse after [the Peterson interview]. People say: ‘Why don’t you just block them?’ But there were literally thousands of abusive tweets – it was a semi-organised campaign.”
She added: “I’ve thought of coming off social media because why should I have to deal with all this crap? It’s too time-consuming, but why should I or any woman be silenced? It gives the trolls exactly what they want.” Peterson has 790,000 followers on Twitter and nearly a million YouTube subscribers.
The audience is invited to take part in a question and answer session after the lecture and “leave feeling better about the world”.
He will be at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow on Saturday 27 October.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel