But no University of Toronto.

Um, been there some years staffs got involved because way were sent the letters that Dr Peterson's dean and then Vice Provo, I believe, had sent him.

And they worried us tremendously assed people, concerned about academic freedom and the integrity of teaching the letters warned Dr Peterson to stop saying publicly that he would refuse requests to use non gender door or additional pronouns.

Andi, this is, uh, uh, uh for us.

That was that was a very serious matter, very seriously in incursion on the freedom of teachers to teach as they will.

Teaching has a lot to do with the report between the professor and the students to classroom dynamics and the honesty and sincerity that teaching requires we thought were infringed by by these orders, especially orders coming from from Dean's and department Department heads.

Um and so we wrote letters to University of Toronto about this.

So we're very privileged to have Dr Peterson with us today to talk to us about these things.

Maybe also some or theoretical and abstract things than his own particular days.

He's going to talk to us about why Freedom of speech is not just another value, Peters.

Thanks.

So I thought I'd start.

I'm gonna approach this from three directions.

But I or in three sections, I thought I'd start by just letting you know why.

I was objecting specifically to build C 16.

I made three videos and late September and, uh, one of them criticized Bill See 16.

One of them criticized the University of Toronto administrations.

The hot human resources peoples decision to make so called anti unconscious anti bias training mandatory for their HR staff, which I thought was and still think was reprehensible.

And, uh, I don't even remember what the other one was about.

But it doesn't really matter those that was the 1st 1 the one of Bill See 16 that caused most of the fewer, surprisingly enough, And I said I wouldn't use the made up what I consider neologisms that purport to describe the status, the status of people whose sexual identity is ambiguous because that isn't how it looked to me.

It looked to me like these words like Z and Tzar and so forth were the linguistic vanguard of intellectual movement.

that I would say detest is probably the right description, and that's this strange blend of postmodernism and Marxism that has emerged to occupy the bulk of the humanities and a good chunk of the social sciences.

So that was the first thing is that I'm not using those words.

That was the first thing that was personal, right?

Is that that's not a form of linguistic game that I'm willing to play, and I have my reasons for that.

The second was I regard the lead any legislation that compels people to use a certain kind of language as a very dangerous first of all dangerous piece of legislation directly, but also a very dangerous president.

I mean, there are limits on free speech that are already reasonably well in Stan.

She aided in the law.

You can't incite a crime.

You can't threaten someone bodily in a believable manner.

You can't libel someone.

We already have reasonable restrictions on on what you can't say.

But we've never had legislation that required you to use a certain language except in certain commercial applications.

So, for example, if you sell tobacco, you have to put a warning on it.

But the United States Supreme Court decided.

I believe it was in the 19 forties that similar attempts to compel speech on the part of individuals in non commercial settings was unconstitutional, and and I know that that doesn't have any direct bearing on Canadian law.

But certainly the principal does.

And then I was also very see one of the problems with a piece of legislation.

And this is, I suppose, the problem with interpreting a text, as the postmodernists would say, is that it's not easy to get the level of interpretation, right, right for interpreting a text, you can look at the you could look at the letters that happens with biblical interpretation.

Very often you could look at the individual words you could look at.

The phrase is gonna get the sentences.

You can look at paragraphs.

You could look at the work as a whole, and then you also have to look at the context within which the work is being interpreted in order to come up with on interpretation of anything that's complex.

And so when you see a piece of legislation, it isn't obvious what the legislation is actually intended to do.

Despite what its purported to do.

And it isn't obvious what level of analysis to pick when you're going to criticize it.

In some ways, Bill See, 16 you could regard it as innocuous, just as an extension of rights that have already been granted to certain, Let's say, protected groups, although I'm not so thrilled about the whole notion of describing rights to groups to begin with, were already far down that path.

But and you know what?

I'm being accused of making a mountain out of a mole hill.

But happily enough, the University of Toronto, after I made the videos, immediately produced two letters that were informed by their legal departments.

Wisdom, um, stating that what I had done with the video was perhaps in conflict with the university ethical guidelines, if you forget the ones that had to do with freedom of expression and that they might, that my actions and even in making the video might have violated that the tenants of the Ontario Human Rights Act as that's or the at least as it's interpreted by the on terror Human Rights commission.

And so that helped put to rest any suggestion that I was actually scaremongering because as soon as I as soon as I made the videos, the legal department at the UT immediately validated my fears.

And so that was a perverse was a perverse effect of their of the letters they sent to me.

So, um, the other thing, that there is other elements of the legislation that I object to and objected to and still do and if you read the policies within which the legislation will be interpreted as the federal justice website indicated that it would be interpreted in within the policies that the on terror Human Rights Commission has already established.

First, there's close cross talk between Ontario and the federal government because the liberals Aaron power in both and the radical end of the Liberal Party's in power in both situations.

And no, it turns out that it's illegal for like you're liable as an employer.

For example, if any of your employees say anything that could be construed as harassment, say, on the grounds of sexual, uh uh, or gender identity, even if what they say has unintended consequences.

And even if you don't know that they said it, and so that kind of legislation, I just think it's just absolutely reprehensible.

And then because it's designed to cast the broadest possible net to catch the most fish.

And it's clearly being implemented by people who are not precisely pro employer.

Let's put it that way.

And then there's another a little ugly secret hidden underneath the policies.

And that's manifest most clearly in the form of what's come to be known as the Gender Unicorn, which I would recommend that you look up, which is an animated character designed to indoctrinate small Children into the social constructionists worldview, which claims that biological sex, gender identity, gender expression and sexual proclivity very independently, which they most certainly do not now that's what I said in the video.

That's partly why I have been accused of, say, being a transphobic.

I also complained that the university was taking policy advice from the people who started black lives matter, and I don't have anything against black lives matter particularly.

But the two people who started it, r r nata the sorts of individuals.

Let's say that the university should be basing its policy decisions.

The advice they shouldn't be taking advice from those people with regards to their policy and apparently that makes me a racist.

So the first part of the argument about what happened with my videos was actually whether or not I was racist, transphobic and all of that.

But the point that I was making the technical specific technical point was that the claim that those four phenomena very independently was just patently false.

And it iss by any reasonable definition of false, and I know that it's part of, Ah, much broader propaganda exercise, as evidenced by the Gender Unicorn, for example, which gets Children to indicate on four sliders.

They're sex assigned at birth, their gender identity, their gender expression and their sexual proclivity.

And you can look at the animation or at the at the cartoon and decide for yourself by its graphic style.

What age people it's aimed at.

So, um, is this a bill to protect transsexual rights?

Or is it a bill to further ah, postmodern neo Marxist agenda?

Well, God only knows, But as far as I'm concerned, having analyzed the context within which this bill arose and within which it will be interpreted, I'm going to go for the furthering the postmodern neo Marxist agenda until I'm until that's thoroughly disproved.

I would also like to inform you that I've had plenty of letters from transgender people.

At least 30 and only one of them was critical of what I'm doing because they claim and as as have many of the people I've talked to, that the idea that a group of activists self can self nominate as the representatives of a given group and then speak for them as if they have a homogeneous voice is absolutely absurd.

And it is.

It is completely ridiculous.

And most of the transsexual people that have bean contacting me have said the same thing, which is these people don't speak for me.

I wish they'd shut up because they're doing a lot more harm than good.

And I don't buy what they're doing anyways.

So, you know, I think that the claim of the activist types to speak on behalf of the groups that they purport to represent is weak at best, and I don't know why we ever assume that it that their representation is valid except that we're afraid to criticize that particular presupposition, you know, I mean, there's nothing more ridiculous than assuming that someone is because someone is black, that they speak for black people.

I mean, I think I can't think of anything that's more particularly indicative of a fundamentally racist attitude than that.

You know?

Well, those people, they're all the same.

It's like, Yeah, well, sorry it didn't work out that way, So I wanted to clarify all that so that, you know, you have a little bit clear idea about why I was doing what I was doing in.

People have asked, so to speak, Why I chose to die on that particular hill and answer is every every massive conflict of ideas, let's say, manifests itself in the minute.

And that's why it's often difficult to gain any headway.

Because no matter where you draw the line, it's arbitrary and and subject to criticism.

And, you know, the fact that this happens to be about gender neutral pronouns regarding transgender people to me is just more or less an accident.

It could have been about almost any number of other things, but I would also like to suggest that what should have happened with what I did was nothing right.

I made some videos that was relatively obscure academic and I made some videos in my private time that we're, you know, pretty badly produced because they're just amateur.

I was trying to straighten out my thinking about a couple of issues the anti unconscious bias training, for example, and also this legislative mess.

And obviously it struck a major chord.

And that, to me, is indication that my original supposition was correct and that there was far more going on under the surface than there was at the surface.

I mean, you know, like I said, it's very difficult to pick the proper level of analysis, but one of the ways you justify your choices by observing the impact of your choice of level of analysis and seeing if it's if the consequences air commensurate with your original hypothesis.

And I thought, Well, just because people say they're doing one thing with a piece of legislation doesn't mean that that's what they're doing.

And course lead piece of legislation is a hydra.

In any case, it does all sorts of things that people don't intend it to do.

So that's a little background, and I'll leave the background at that and then I'll talk to you now from a practical perspective.

Why?

I believe that the idea of freedom of speech is not just another value among other values.

And I would say that the simplest reason for that is that speech isn't precisely a mechanism.

It's ah, it's a process.

It's a it's a it's a it's a It's a generative process Speech free speech is the process by which all ideas air generated and and I want it make it clear why I believe that to be the case with speech specifically because you might say, Well, no, that's thought but But I don't think that's right, because thing is, the thought is a far more collective enterprise than people generally understand.

First of all, most of the thoughts you have aren't your thoughts.

You know, I don't remember who it was that said that everyone is the unconscious exponents of a dead philosopher.

But that's definitely the case, you know, are the very linguistic mechanisms by which we formulate our our grip on the world, our collective constructs and in some cases, almost entirely because creative thought iss far rarer than people generally presume.

And what that means is that when we're speaking and when we're thinking we're usually using, if not cliches, which is very frequently the case, as you know perfectly well if you've ever graded a particularly bad undergraduate essay.

But even among more sophisticated people, it's generally the case that they're acting as avatars of ideas that they did not produce.

And so that doesn't mean they can't further the ideas.

But the point is, is that you know, we're born into a linguistically mediated culture, and it's it's mediated at all of the multiple levels of analysis that I already described and were shaped in the way that we view the world with regards to the input that that that we receive.

That's collective.

We learn language from other people.

We use the words that other people use we use the phrase is that other people use.

It's an intensely collective exercise, but even more specifically so.

That's from a general perspective, Let's say, but even more specifically, the problem with thinking is that you're a very narrow channel, right?

I mean, there's a lot of world, and there isn't very much of you, and that means that there's a lot more than you filter out.

Then there is that you take it and you're filtering is very, very intensive.

It's dependent to some degree on your embodiment.

It's dependent to some degree far more than people generally realize on your motivations and you're and your temperament, which is a topic will return to.

And then it's further narrowed by your position in society and by the people that you have around you and by your particular domain of expertise or lack thereof.

And and then there are sets of darker motivations as well, that blind you to certain things that you should be able to see but either don't or won't.

And so the problem with thinking is that a You're a narrow channel B.

You're not very good at it and see your incredibly biased.

And there isn't much you can do about that except listen and talk to other people because they're I mean, they're not the only source of correction, but they're a pretty intense source of correction.

I mean, we'r blasting corrective information at each other all the time, right?

I mean, even in a situation like this, which you could think of as a monologue but isn't it's a dialogue that the reason I'm watching all of you is to see, you know, are you paying attention?

And if not, I better adjust what I'm saying.

Do your facial expressions indicate that your understanding what I'm saying and following it?

Maybe you're not in Your eyes are open, you know, in some specific way.

You're you're actually facing me.

Your eyes are on me.