Jordan Peterson: Why I Refuse To Use Special Pronouns For Transgender People
21 May 2018, 09:55 | Updated: 21 May 2018, 10:21
Jordan Peterson told LBC he is refusing to let the government tell him what he can and can't say.
A bill in his native Canada has made it a hate crime not to use the correct pronoun for transgender and other non-binary groups.
And Mr Peterson, a Clinical Psychologist from Toronto University who has shot to prominence in recent months, says it is not the government's role to control what language you use, especially pronouns such as ze and zir.
Speaking to Maajid Nawaz, he said: "There's 70 different pronouns to hypothetically describe people who don't fit anywhere on the gender spectrum, which is also something I don't understand conceptually.
"A person is now compelled under Canadian law to use the pronoun of another individual's choice on pain of law.
"And I thought, no that's not acceptable.
"It's one thing to put limits on what a person can't say, like in hate speech laws, which I also don't agree with.
"But to compel me to use a certain content when I'm formulating my thoughts or my actions under threat of legislative action, I thought no, the government has introduced compelled speech legislation into the private sphere. It's never happened in the history of English common law, so I said there's no way I'm abiding by that.
"I don't care what you're damned rationale is. 'We're compassionate'. No you're not. You're playing this radical, collectivist left-wing game. You're trying to gain linguistic supremacy in the area of public discourse.
"You're doing this by using compassion as a guise as you're not going to do it with me."
