One of the most influential voices of the past six to seven years has been Canadian college professor and cultural critic Jordan Peterson. The popular conservative-leaning clinical psychologist has become a target in Hollywood, watching comic books use his persona to create villains to fight traditional Marvel heroes, and most recently he was the archetype used in Olivia Wilde’s new anti-men/feminist film Don’t Worry Darling. In the film, a charismatic leader convinces men to mistreat women, causing them to feel like they are going insane if they don’t desire the Stepford Wives life from the 1950s. The problem is that Peterson doesn’t preach that, yet is still becoming known as the voice for “incels,” men who find dating difficult and blame women for not being attracted to them. All of this added up to Peterson having a breakdown on Piers Morgan’s latest TV show, revealing that every man has a breaking point, and also showing how some women have been irresponsible in their attempt to break down incel culture and toxic masculinity in the name of feminism.
Recently, while doing promotion for the film, Wilde said that incels are “disenfranchised, mostly white men, who believe they are entitled to sex from women.” First off, her definition is way off. In her attempt to fulfill some narrative that white men are the problem in society, she ignores the data collected this year.
According to a July 2022 survey by Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law concerning incel demographics, “over four-fifths (82%) of the 665 survey respondents identified themselves as between the ages of 18 and 30, and 55 percent identified as white or Caucasian, with the remaining 45 percent fairly equally distributed among Black, Latino, Asian, Indian, and Middle Eastern. Geographically, most incels were located in Europe (43%) and North America (38%), with smaller numbers in Central and South America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa.”
While there are many white males, many nationalities feel slighted in their attempts to be in relationships. She added that Peterson “is someone that legitimizes certain aspects of their movement because he’s a former professor, he’s an author, he wears a suit, so they feel like this is a real philosophy that should be taken seriously.” What she forgets to mention is that he’s a highly decorated academic with hundreds of papers in his fields of study.
While on Piers Morgan’s show, the host asked if Wilde’s assessment of him was true. “Sure. Why not?” Then he started to get a bit emotional. “You know, people have been after me for a long time because I’ve been speaking to disaffected young men.” Peterson, tears starting to fall, continued, “It’s very difficult to understand how demoralized people are, and certainly many young men are in that category. You get these casual insults, these incels — what do they mean? These men, they don’t know how to make themselves attractive to women who are very picky, and good for them. Women, like, be picky. That’s your gift, man. Demand high standards from your men. Fair enough. But all these men who are alienated, it’s like they’re lonesome and they don’t know what to do and everyone piles abuse on them.”
This emotional response appears to be a microcosm of how men feel today, based on the absolute demoralization they’ve faced by feminists. With terms being thrown around like “toxic masculinity” and the public mocking of men who aren’t sexually active, women have to take some responsibility in the breakdown of men. Wilde recently left her longtime lover and father of her two children, Jason Sudeikis, for young musical heartthrob and star of her film, Harry Styles. She was cheating on the Ted Lasso star while filming the movie Don’t Worry Darling, creating a media firestorm. Had a man left the mother of his children for a woman half her age, she’d be attacking him. Her hypocrisy is deafening.
Ironically, Peterson challenges men to be better, be smarter and become the man women desire. What Wilde needs is men weak to feel strong, like most die-hard modern feminists. It’s no longer about building women up, as much as it is about tearing men down. And based on Peterson’s breakdown, she won. Except, what we have is a society that has lost.
While being a woman isn’t easy, neither is being a man in our culture. And until we can at least accept that, we will continue to see strong men break down in the name of progressive politics.