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Why Young Women Are More Woke — Transcript

by Jordan B Peterson · 2,557 words · 375 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00people always ask what is the definition
0:02of woke well the definition of woke as I
0:05mentioned in the book is the making
0:07sacred of historically marginalized race
0:11gender and sexual identity groups that's
0:13it that's the one sentence definition
0:16and that is also what I would say what I
0:18would describe as the kind of big bang
0:21of our moral order and out of that
0:24emerges a kind of very fuzzy folk
0:27ideology which says um so these to the
0:30sacred groups um those groups cannot be
0:33offended so anything you say that might
0:35be interpreted by the most sensitive
0:37member of such a group as offensive
0:40marks you out as a a blasphemer you're
0:42profaning the sacred you must be
0:43excommunicated I.E canceled the other
0:46part of this is absolute equality in
0:49terms of prestigious positions and
0:50resources uh between these groups so for
0:53example you can't have a race gap or a
0:56gender gap in terms of the boardroom in
0:57terms of admittance to ilite
0:59universities and so on it's got to be
1:01zero so equality plus emotional safety
1:05these are the two pillars of this
1:07ideology but the point I make is this
1:09ideology is not some kind of system like
1:11loan liberalism or even Marxism that is
1:14uh it is more of a bottomup empathizing
1:17rather than a top-down systematizing
1:20cognitive thing it's much more emotional
1:22we're attached concretely to the black
1:25civil rights movement to the indigenous
1:27to the LGBT movement ments and it's our
1:31romanticization and sympathy for these
1:33concrete groups that provides our
1:35meaning and that's Primary in the system
1:38it's not a set of ideas like Marxism
1:41it's actually a set of attach emotional
1:44attachments and so this is very much
1:46emotional and it's driven from the
1:48ground up okay so let me let me ask you
1:51let me ask you some questions about that
1:53okay so I
1:56guess you you you you pulled out two
1:59strings there you you did associate the
2:02system of ideas with liberal
2:05progressivism let's say starting in the
2:08early 20th
2:09century but then you are also stressing
2:12the more emotional side of it uh let's
2:15call it the compassionate side so I I
2:18want to ask you and and you talked about
2:19it as bottomup and emotion-driven
2:22so it seems to me that there's the
2:26analysis of the woke phenomena
2:30has revealed a number of potentially
2:33fundamental
2:35causal elements you pointed to Liberal
2:38progressivism and compassion and the
2:41role of emotion let's say other people
2:44have pointed to the role of like a kind
2:47of a metam Marxism so it's the marxists
2:50of course divided the world into victim
2:52and victimizer essentially on economic
2:55grounds the difference now is that that
2:58that same narrative seems to play out
2:59out there are victims and there are
3:01victimizers but there is a number of
3:03Dimensions along which that axis of
3:06inequality can reveal itself and you
3:08talked about uh race gender and
3:10sexuality there there's other axes as
3:13well but those are likely the primary
3:14ones and then with regards to the
3:17emotional side this is something I can't
3:19help wondering about and no one is
3:22talking about it and I can understand
3:24why we did a series of studies in that
3:28were published in 2006 16 which was
3:30pretty much when I left the university
3:32so it never got completed but we
3:36identified a group of ideas that that
3:38hung together statistically that we
3:41called politically correct
3:43authoritarianism deviated to some degree
3:46from say the liberal
3:47progressivist ethos in that the people
3:51who adopted the set of ideas were
3:53perfectly willing to use compulsion and
3:55force that being perhaps the primary
3:58distinction the predictor that we found
4:01that determined whether or not people
4:03adopted those beliefs were first of all
4:05low verbal intelligence that was a
4:06walloping predictor and the second one
4:09was being female and the third one was
4:11having a female temperament and the
4:14fourth one was having ever taken even
4:16one politically correct course and so
4:18one of the things I'm very curious about
4:20see I've been thinking
4:22that one of the things that we're
4:25seeing is the increased female
4:28domination of the University system
4:30especially in the humanities and the
4:31social sciences and I think there's a
4:33fundamental feminine ethos that's
4:37instinctive that can be made more
4:40sophisticated with genuine education but
4:42that has a proclivity to divide the
4:44world up into predators and infants and
4:47woe beide you if you happen to fall into
4:49the Predator Camp it's very tightly
4:51allied with the victim victimizer
4:53narrative and you know you do point out
4:56in your book that there is a
4:58predilection for women between the ages
5:00of 18 and 34 and this is being shown
5:02everywhere they're way out of lockstep
5:05without it with every other demographic
5:07group way more Progressive far more
5:10radically left way more likely to uh
5:13identify for example to even claim that
5:16the Hamas terrorists are victims in some
5:18sense which is just an absolute Miracle
5:21of interpretation so so we've identified
5:24a number of streams there's a Marxist
5:26influence there's a postmodern influence
5:28which we haven't talked about there's a
5:29liberal Progressive influence there's an
5:32emotional influence and and then I don't
5:35know if you have any specific thoughts
5:37about how the increasing female
5:40domination especially of the humanities
5:42and the social sciences plays into that
5:43because that's a major league cultural
5:46revolution the fact that the
5:47universities are dominated for example
5:50administratively as well by females and
5:53so I know that's a hell of a thing to
5:55ask you to talk about right off the bat
5:57but I think that's actually really
5:58interesting and I I think it is a
6:00contributing factor but I just want to
6:02sort of put in a couple of caveats and
6:04the first is we only see this female
6:07effect amongst young people so older
6:10women we don't find greater support for
6:13Castel culture it's very much seems to
6:16be among young women the second thing is
6:18if you were to go back to 1970 for
6:20example women were you know there's a
6:22survey done every year in the US H
6:26higher higher education Research
6:27Institute 100,000 freshman 18-year-olds
6:31entering American universities uh in
6:341970 women were somewhat more
6:36conservative than men 18-year-old women
6:3818-year-old men and it's really not till
6:412004 we start to see those 18-year-old
6:44women starting to be more liberal than
6:46the men and that's now widened to about
6:4915 points um and so something's happened
6:52to women in the recent period That's the
6:55first first point to note so and that's
6:58the other thing is that fire which
7:01foundation for individual rights and
7:03expression does an annual survey in the
7:04US 55,000 so there's a lot of survey
7:07data in the book I I I try and ground
7:09this as much as possible in the data so
7:12they ask questions for example is it
7:14okay to shout down or block somebody
7:16from speaking and on those questions
7:20actually um especially using violence to
7:23to prevent somebody from speaking women
7:25are less likely than men to support that
7:28on blocking their about as like likely
7:30where women really stand out is should a
7:33speaker come to campus who wants to say
7:35something that might be offensive so for
7:37example uh to that says BLM is a hate
7:40group that says trans is a mental
7:42disorder there you see a big gender gap
7:45uh and you see it also amongst
7:46Republican women by the way versus
7:48Republican men so it seems like the
7:51attitude the sort of there's the
7:52authoritarian I want to do violence
7:55which is I think not gendered or it may
7:57even be somewhat more male but there's
7:59this protective oh I don't want anyone's
8:01feelings to be hurt and that I think is
8:04more female um so I think there are some
8:06nuances here the what I would say I mean
8:08the way I think about it is women will
8:10tend to back up this the the whatever is
8:13the moral order if the moral order is a
8:15woke moral order they'll back that up if
8:17it's a religious or patriotic moral
8:19order they'll be more likely to back
8:20that up whereas men will be more likely
8:22to be the contrarians I think because
8:25it's you know people will talk about
8:27well women are more compassionate but
8:29but the point is compassionate to who
8:32like compassionate to well that is the
8:34point that's for sure that's the point
8:36so compassionate to the transitioner or
8:38the D transitioner compassionate to the
8:41TR the biological male wants to enter a
8:43woman's shelter or woman's prison or the
8:45women in the prison I mean the ideology
8:48is what tells you who to be
8:49compassionate towards so if we if we go
8:50back to the liberal progressives Jane
8:52Adams was relatively PR lynching or at
8:55least thought that wasn't a bad idea
8:57because she was very very empathetic
9:00towards white women and so she was
9:02willing to accept that there were these
9:04black male predators and buy into that
9:06framing so what I'm just saying is I
9:08think what's happened is an ideology has
9:11crept in and told women who to be
9:13compassionate towards and who not to
9:15care about so okay so your point
9:17fundamentally is that I believe is
9:20that the the ideology specifies the
9:23victim victimizer Dimension and
9:25identifies the victim now do you think
9:28do you think it's so when we when when
9:30we when we did our study it was
9:33agreeable I said it was being female and
9:36having a female temperament those were
9:38both predictors we never saw that in any
9:40study we ever did looking at what
9:42predicted beliefs for example if
9:44generally if we controlled for
9:45temperament sex had no effect but that
9:48wasn't the case in this specific
9:50situation which which I thought was
9:52extremely telling and so and it's also
9:55very interesting as you pointed out that
9:57it's young women in particular and I
9:58can't help
9:59as someone you know psychoanalytically
10:02influenced I can't help but think that a
10:04fair chunk of this is misplaced maternal
10:06Instinct I I believe that the young
10:09women who are in by and large childless
10:12in the years when they shouldn't be are
10:14unbelievably sensitive well let's talk
10:17about what happened in 2004 you know you
10:19said that's when women started to shift
10:21their political priorities now I know
10:23from people who've been investigating
10:25this that um Tik Tok is a particularly
10:28pernicious influence especially with
10:30regards to the campus protests that are
10:32occurring right now and The Tick Tock
10:34short videos that are fostering that the
10:37campus protests at least among women
10:39focus on compassion for the war victims
10:43to to to the ultimate degree and they
10:45seem to be extraordinarily effective but
10:47there's a real problem here that needs
10:49to be wrestled with because if it is the
10:50case that young women are differentially
10:53sensitive to a certain kind of
10:55propaganda and they often and they also
10:57increasingly occup the majority
11:00positions in uh University institutions
11:02for example then we have a whole new
11:04kind of social problem on our hands
11:06because we've never had it's only been
11:09in the last 30 years that we've had the
11:12opportunity to see what female dominant
11:15large institutions would look like right
11:17that's historically unprecedented we
11:19have no idea what pathologies or
11:21advantages those systems might have so
11:24what do you think happened in 2004 like
11:26why did the tide start to turn then so
11:29my interpret there's other data s data
11:31series that we can see changing so
11:34political donations shifting towards the
11:36Democrats for example around roughly the
11:39same time now political donations come
11:41for people who are Highly Educated
11:43relatively well off for example I think
11:46what what happens in the US anyway is
11:48you get George W bush who's more of a
11:49populist not an elite style conservative
11:52who's just about tax and spend for
11:54example and I actually think you see you
11:57know he's also to some degree advancing
11:58the agenda of the religious right to
12:00some degree I think this populist style
12:04cultural conservatism doesn't work as
12:06well with the elite opinion formers and
12:09so they start to drift away in terms of
12:11political donations and the the if you
12:14like the kind of background the ambiant
12:16noise the mood music that is coming
12:18through the elite institutions the
12:20schools the culture just starts to turn
12:23against uh Republicans and conservatism
12:25for example so I actually think women
12:28are a kind of rof they kind of reflect
12:30what is the dominant ethos in a society
12:32or at least At The Prestige ethos in a
12:34society so if we actually swung the
12:36ethos against wokeism I think women
12:39would be in the Forefront of that uh I
12:41don't think there's anything biological
12:42so I I am a so more of a sociologist and
12:45a political scientist so I tend to
12:47approach these things from a kind of
12:49Sociology of emotions perspective which
12:51says that ideas can tell you which
12:54emotions to turn off and which emotions
12:56to express now of course that's
12:58refracted through things like gender so
13:00in this case I think women will just
13:02back up and reinforce the dominant
13:04values dominant ideology of the Elites
13:06in a society um so I'm not as convinced
13:10why the elites why do you think it's
13:12okay why would women specifically back
13:15up the dominant ideology of the elites
13:18is do you think that's a consequence of
13:19something like hypergamy or what's your
13:22what's your theory about that because
13:24it's weird if they're also standing up
13:26from the for The Underdogs is it that
13:28they accept the elite differentiation of
13:31who's an underdog and who's a power
13:33monger and then and and and then why is
13:35that associated with with youth let's
13:37say with with women I'm trying to
13:39disentangle all that well I think there
13:42are a couple of things I mean one is the
13:43education system uh which I think shifts
13:46in this direction in a big way I mean it
13:48was there in a few radical centers like
13:50Berkeley and the Toronto District School
13:52Board greater London Council so you you
13:56had these crazy places but what's
13:58happened is scaling up so what my book
14:00talks a lot about is these ideas
14:01actually go back quite a long way but
14:03it's the scaling up now it's in every
14:05school so I did a couple of studies with
14:06the man Manhattan Institute you know 90%
14:10of 18 to 20 year old Americans that I
14:13interviewed you know sent the survey to
14:15said that they had encountered at least
14:17one critical race Theory concept from an
14:19adult in school in in Britain it was
14:22about you know it was a majority as well
14:24not as high but a majority so it's sat
14:26it's hitting saturation level so that's
14:28what women are getting in class and then
14:30they see it in the institutions that
14:33maybe in the workplace uh in the
14:35government so they they're seeing this
14:36thing Dei everywhere and so they think
14:39yeah this is the way you have to be a
14:40good moral person and they simply
14:42reinforce those values
14:44[Music]

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