Spoiler

From what I can tell, the contents of the C16 bill seem to have been exaggerated and mischaracterized by many – Peterson included. There’s numerous articles and expert opinions that have covered this in depth. The effects of the law have been discussed in detail by professors of law and the Canadian Bar Association. Reading the text of the law itself and the accompanying explanatory notes should help clear much of that up.

The law changes two things. One, that gender identity is now explicitly recognized in the criminal code for sentencing and the crimes of advocating genocide and the willful promotion / public incitement of hatred. Using the wrong pronoun does not fall under this by any stretch of the imagination. Two, it adds gender expression to the Canadian Human Rights Code. This is nothing new and has been the case where Peterson lives for 5 years already. It relates to discrimination in certain areas such as employment and housing, meaning that you cannot do things like deny people jobs or rent based solely on the fact that they’re transgender. As the Canadian Department of Justice has already confirmed, this will not provide transgenders with special rights. There’s several other articles out there that include interviews with legal experts and overviews of Canadian court cases / official statements on this topic, but I’ll just give you a few more if you want to go through them. Warning, the last one is far too personally negative when it comes to Peterson but gives a very lengthy (6000 words) and detailed overview of the law and what it entails.

So yeah, in my opinion many blanket statements do amount to fearmongering and give the impression that people will face criminal charges for using the wrong pronouns. Peterson himself has admitted he doesn’t actually know the legal side of things very well, yet he still presents himself as an expert talking at length about farfetched and very questionable interpretations of the law that has actually already been applied in most Canadian regions for years without any of the concerns turning out to be true. In my opinion, the "SJW's are going after free speech and you're going to be in trouble for not catering to gender whims" narrative seems very unsubstantiated here. [/spoiler]

Spoiler

As for the Damore memo, there are again very extensive factchecks that present alternative evidence, research and studies that challenge or add nuance to his claims. This 40 page overview by a behavioral science and evolutionary biology PhD candidate seems to cover much of it. It includes over a 100 references and concludes with links to numerous books and other analyses by scientists in a variety of fields. From what I can tell, Damore appears to be pushing an evolutionary biology narrative that is outdated and no longer supported by the majority. He cites studies and research of which the authors themselves have since said that his conclusions are not in line with their work or not necessarily applicable to the situation he’s referring to. The core of much of this resistance seems to be that while he gets the basics of some things right (there are of course some differences between men and women), Damore has overstated much of them, selectively ignored heaps of recent evidence challenging some of his points, paid little to no attention to how discrimination and social patterns can perpetuate inequalities rather than innate biological differences, and drew implications regarding human abilities and work skills that are inaccurate, all without recognizing the nuances and pitfalls of research in this field. One of the biggest issues with his memo is how it incorrectly appears to present particular schools of thought as fact and reflecting consensus while this is not the case at all, and how it misses findings in neuroscience that suggest conditioning and culture are at play rather than the biology he implies.

Damore raises some sound and relevant points and this discussion should be had, but a good amount of what he says simply lacks says nuance or is selectively interpreting evidence to make very questionable claims – as does much of the criticism depicting him as some sexist monster.

In regards to Bill C-16, I will have to take the time to go through all the info on it. I've read the bill itself and it appears to be very vague in its wording. I'm not a legal expert so I'm not going to make any conclusions, but it looks to a layman like me that much of the bill is left up to interpretation. IE: what constitutes bias, what constitutes gender expression, what constitutes hate etc.

One of the answers in the Department of Justice link you posted seems to confirm that:

A. In order to ensure that the law would be as inclusive as possible, the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression” are not defined in the Bill. With very few exceptions, grounds of discrimination are not defined in legislation but are left to courts, tribunals, and commissions to interpret and explain, based on their detailed experience with particular cases.

If I am a professor at a university, and I refuse to refer to someone as zer, what in the law specifically draws the distinction between that and illegal discrimination? If I am a student, and I hold a protest  with signs stating that there are only two genders, what in the law distinguishes that from hate propaganda? What constitutes these things is unspecified. In the first instance, does the court not have the possibility to rule that my refusal to call someone zer is discrimination? Ergo, would that not be a ruling that I would have to refer to said person as zer under the penalty of law? There are claims that the bill does not apply to university classrooms, but I don't see that defined anywhere in the law. Where does it state that these laws to not apply in that setting?

 I've never seen Peterson claim that people would be thrown in jail for mis-gendering someone, however I have seen various people state that the law can inevitably lead to a jail sentence through contempt of court if one refuses to pay the fines levied against them for the courts ruling that what they did was discrimination.

Going through that, nothing seems to address the issue of interpretation. In fact it only seems to reinforce that it is a problem to me.

I'll have to look over the Damore links later, I know research evolves overtime and new findings are always coming out. I just hope most of it is strictly fact/research-oriented, and I don't see a bunch of mess trying to tell me the guy was pushing an 'alt-right' agenda or anything, because I watched multiple interviews with him and he didn't give me that impression at all. He just seems like a very analytical person that offered input in what ways he understands best, statistical data specifically. That his cited stats needed updating seems far more reasonable and likely than him trying to push a partisan narrative.

Thread seems kind of ambiguous. I feel emotions but I’m not really sure if I can feel empathy or not.

This is strange because I'm actually pretty empathetic even though I'm often too apathetic. I suppose the difference is that I consciously try to be more empathetic, perhaps to make up for my apathy, but mostly to try and understand other people better.

It was ridiculous.

Ridiculously better.

Quote from: Aether on February 08, 2018, 06:35:53 PM

Sri Mooji. That dude turned me away from a dark path that would've left me so miserable and broken I would probably be dead right now.

I'm beginning to feel the same towards Jordan Peterson as well.

i have no idea what to think about jordan peterson

he's the most down-to-earth and well-spoken person i've ever seen on the right-wing and he's obviously a smart guy, but he's also just dead wrong about so many things, and he comes across as smug to me

Personally, his message about taking responsibility to give your life meaning resonates with me immensely and I think it's a message that people desperately need to hear right now.

I can't find anything he's said that I can definitely say he's dead wrong about, though I still observe what he says critically. That's probably because I don't believe myself to be anywhere near smart or wise enough to say I understand much of what he talks about to the extent that I could refute him. Especially when even he claims to not have an entire grasp on many of these things and is still trying to figure them out himself. The psychological significance of religion being one of the main ares. I'll give him props, though, for being the only person to ever make the The Bible interesting for me.

I'm actually a bit too apathetic at times, though with me being so sick right now I'm much more sensitive to emotions than I'm used to and I sure as hell don't like it.

I'm definitely a logos over pathos kind of guy.

He was on yesterday so I imagine so.

They aren't used to having this much freedom on a forum.

A fair amount of new peeps. I suspect they'll all stop posting within a day or two.

We got new members coming here. Fuck off so you won't scare them away.

Nah, if they can't handle loafposting then they don't deserve to be a member.

Does the latter not lead to the former anyways?

Ayy always a pleasure to meet more artists. You don't have to draw me anything but post some of your stuff in the ArtHub thread if you want. The more work posted there, the better.

Criminy-Jim-Jam!

Quote from: Aether on February 07, 2018, 01:17:51 PM

Quote from: βlack on February 07, 2018, 01:06:13 PM

I've been able to post so far so I'll start making topics for Sep7 if someone can shove me a template to use.

I think we should really highlight that we have a lot more freedom here - avatars, names, swearing, religious and political discussion... we even have/had a form of Coup for gods' sake.

If Cheat will get his jew ass into gear we could have full-blown rainbow vomit coup extravaganza.

god please never again

Bring it on. Furry avatars and all.

It was just a site error I think. Did it to me, but my account isn't at risk.

Huh just got a 500: Internal Server Error. Site crash?