Recently, the College of Psychologists in Ontario ordered Jordan B. Peterson — a clinical psychologist, professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto and best-selling author — to undergo “professional coaching.” His sin? Tweeting opinions the college deemed “unbecoming of a psychologist.” Here, Peterson explains to The Post what he said, why he was right — and why it was imperative he speak out.
I am likely to soon lose my license to practice as a clinical psychologist in my home province of Ontario, in the Canada whose historically prosaic internal politics should by all reasonable standards still be off the international radar.
Why? A variety of charges have been brought against me by the administrative board granted government mandate to protect the public from misbehavior on the part of the practitioners of my profession.
What are those charges — pertaining to attitudes and actions that have caused unproven harm to others and brought disgrace upon the practice of psychotherapy itself — all brought forward, by the way, by individuals who were never my clients?
Two stem from criticisms I levied directly against the current leader of Canada, one Justin Trudeau, now recognized by a majority of the inhabitants of this frigid and sparsely inhabited land as the worst Prime Minister in this country’s history.
Four were a consequence of other arguably political opinions: a judgemental comment I directed toward Trudeau’s former chief of staff, who resigned under a cloud of controversy some years ago; an ironic comment about the diverse “identity” claimed by an Ottawa city councillor whose attitude toward the Canadian Trucker Convoy raised my hackles; and the entire transcript (I kid you not) of a three-hour public discussion with podcaster Joe Rogan, where I criticized the unreliable climate and economic “models” upon which we are now predicating our increasingly tyrannical international order.
One indicated my refusal to accede to the hypocritical woke insistence that an obese cover model was in fact a fit and beautiful athlete.
The one that truly riled the woke censors, however, was a criticism of the trans “gender affirmation” surgery that has now become all too commonplace.
What did I say, that resulted first in my suspension from Twitter itself and now the inquisition?
“Remember when Pride was a sin, and Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician?”
Was this a political opinion, too, a mere example of my “right to free speech,” my right to shoot my mouth off, however hedonistically and impulsively, as I see fit?
Or was it, instead, the exercising of my professional responsibility, in the face of an egregious and increasingly widespread medical crime?
Let’s consider the latter possibility. First, let us note that the United Nations itself recognizes “forced sterilization” not only as a crime, but as a veritable crime against humanity, the most serious imaginable crime.
That implies, at the very least, a responsibility among medical and adjacent professionals to speak up when they note such occurrences.
Second: it is also the case that I am duty-bound by the very standards imposed by the regulatory body in question to report all observed cases of the sexual abuse of minors.
Now, Ellen Page was no minor when her breasts were amputated, magically transforming her into the now-mandatory Elliot.
However, the rampant and self-serving publicity she engaged in, post-surgery, parading her new, mutilated chest for the world to see was certainly an enticement, given her undeniable celebrity, to legions of confused young women literally willing to risk physical dismemberment and sterilization to garner the attention they cannot otherwise seem to attract.
Thus, in my opinion, which I hypothetically have not only the right but the responsibility to express, the actress Ellen Page is enabling the butchers of the surgical profession to deprive minors who by definition are incapable of providing truly informed consent of their ability to reproduce (as well as their perfectly healthy sexual organs, primary and secondary, and their long-term health, both psychological and physical).
It might be objected — and indeed is being: the true danger to such children is not the enablers and butchers, but the bigots like me who are merely interfering with the expression of the true identities of these innocent and somehow for-the-first-time-in-history fully self-aware children.
My response? I have an explicit professional obligation to employ diagnostic techniques that do not and must not rely solely on self-report.
Ethical psychologists must specify their sometimes genuinely delusional clients’ identities using multiple measures: certainly, the direct and subjective testimony of those clients, but also objective measures of psychopathology and health, the reports of others, and whatever additional relevant historical and behavior data can be obtained.
None of this is optional: until yesterday, so to speak, it was both self-evident and mandatory.
Now the insistence on the omniscience of the subjective self is such that even though these requirements are still on the books, so-called therapists are required to ignore them, placing both themselves and their clients in peril.
Every clinical psychologist worth his or her salt knows this; indeed, has to demonstrate familiarity with such rules to obtain the very licence that is now in question in my case.
Every clinical psychologist who is holding his or her tongue in the face of the increasing tide of surgical butchery sweeping over the equally silent medical profession is therefore guilty of egregious malpractice by omission.
We will look back in the decades to come at the absolute catastrophe of the “gender affirming” movement with the same horror we view the days of lobotomies and eugenics.
There won’t be a professional left standing who will even in the very near future admit to ever having supported such a practice.
The Old Testament prophet Jonah, going peaceably and anonymously about his daily business, is called suddenly upon by Yahweh to speak truth to the evil inhabitants of the city of Nineveh.
As a reasonable man, he regards this call of conscience as a dreadful and dangerous inconvenience.
Instead of speaking, therefore, he makes tracks in the opposite direction, taking a boat to parts unknown and far away.
Then the wind blows, and the storms rise, and Jonah lands, perilously, in the drink, before a dread monster rises from the abyss itself, takes him in his jaws, and descends to the very bottom of the world.
The moral of the story? The ship of state itself founders when those commanded to speak remain silent. Then Hell itself makes itself manifest.
I am much more afraid of divine retribution, so to speak, than I am of the feeble judgement of the ideologically-captured low-level tyrant wannabe mouthpieces of the progressive state here in the smug and self-righteous Canadian province of Ontario.
I am not speaking my mind to enjoy the earthly delights of yet another right: I am speaking my mind because, as a professional — and a highly qualified and experienced professional at that, with a worldwide reputation and influence — I have a responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves from the dreadful greedy sadists whose actions my colleagues continue to enable, not least with their contemptible silence.
Rights be damned: it is the responsibility of men striving however imperfectly to be decent to speak when the sacrificers of children to false idols are once again roaming the earth — as they are now, and as they will continue to do, until the conspiracy of cowardly closed mouths that has enveloped those who should and do know better has come to an end.
For shame, psychologists.
For shame, physicians.
What you are doing, allowing to be done, and encouraging — on moral grounds, yet (!) — is brutal, vicious and exploitative to the point of veritable psychopathy.
I will have no part of it: the Ontario College of Psychologists be damned.
Take my license, if you can — if you dare, you pathetic censors.
It is an embarrassment to be associated with you, in any case, given the currently obtaining conditions.
Jordan B. Peterson is the author of the “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” jordanbpeterson.com
This story originally appeared on NYPost
