Everywhere A New Zealander
The Kiwi Who Took On Jordan Peterson
In the last column I introduced the gender luminaries and thought criminals that hail from New Zealand and have made their mark on the world stage. In this column I intended to introduce local gender luminaries and thought criminals. However, a reader sent me information about a little-known New Zealander living overseas who has also inserted herself into the global gender debate so let me introduce her here.
Amanda Wensley Peet (AW Peet) is a professor of physics at the University of Toronto, Canada. Here she studies string theory as a quantum theory of gravity, quantum field theory and applications of string theory to black holes, gauge theories, cosmology, and the correspondence between anti-de Sitter space and conformal field theories.
I didn’t understand any of that either. Clearly, Peet is a big brain. She grew up in Christchurch, got her Bachelor of Science at Canterbury University in 1990 before moving to the United States for her doctorate at Stanford.
In 2015 Peet came out as non-binary and trans. This decision was inspired after attending the Toronto Trans March in June 2013. The speeches deeply resonated to Peet. Following this, she underwent a personal journey of self-discovery and, by 2015, she began accessing gender-affirming medical care.
She now sports facial hair and goes by the moniker AW Peet with they/them pronouns. You can read about her journey here. I like the bit where she calls the discovery of her new identity ‘the Grand Unifying Theory of Me’. Such a uniquely science-y way of describing what she’d been through. Peet claimed to be happy but, to me, the text read as both touching and poignant.
Some have suggested she was responding to an academic environment which recognised her genius but discounted women in the profession. In any case, it’s clear from her writing that she was always a gender non-conforming intellectual with a dash of trauma thrown in. We learn she is also disabled (chronic pain) and suffers from depression, anxiety and PTSD as a result of several violent crimes.
But Peet did more than just ‘come out’ publicly. She actually had the temerity (some might say foolhardy courage) to debate academic colleague and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson on television for his refusal to acknowledge gender identities on campus and his opposition to proposed anti-discrimination legislation under Federal law Bill C-16. That bill passed in 2017 and it is now illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity or expression in Canada.
In the 2016 televised debate Peet references her heritage as a New Zealander and says that in New Zealand academics are the critic and conscience of society. She also encourages anyone struggling with using correct pronouns to “be kind as their first impulse.”
Peterson responds by saying that kindness is an excuse social justice warriors use when they want to exercise control over what others think and say. This will chime with many New Zealanders having lived under the yoke of kindness during the Ardern years.
In hindsight, having witnessed Peterson’s evolution into a highly successful public intellectual, Peet might have thought better of taking him on publicly but she did it - and for that she has to be commended. So many in her camp refuse to engage. Transwomen are women. No debate.
Afterwards she reported facing online harassment that impacted her mental health. In a 2019 interview in a university publication she said:
“The amount of transphobic harassment I’ve had… as a consequence of being an out trans person in the last few years is more than all of the misogyny that I’ve ever experienced as a presumed woman in physics for over 20 years.”
This is peculiar and at odds with what usually happens. Typically, after a confrontation between a gender activist and a gender critic, the gender critic faces abuse by the TWAW crowd.
One can only hope Peet’s mental health has improved since then.
Local gender luminaries and thought criminals to come.
I think I saw her in an discussion with someone else some years ago, and the first thing she tried on was the "can we all be kind" line at the beginning of it. I can't remember who else was in the discussion was with her, but one of them immediately pushed back on that, which was great to see.
I groaned at her reference to her "mental health". That phrase has to be one of the worst, most tedious, and overused phrases in the English language.
Her website is the most self-obsessed thing I've ever seen. Aside from the whole page dedicated to condescendingly explaining her identity at length, and her pronouns (https://ap.io/g/), she has a whole page on "how best to accommodate" her and her disabilities: "Never assume that you know what life as a person with disabilities is like. The truth is, you probably have no idea." https://ap.io/home/disability/
On another page she asserts that shaking hands is a high-stakes issue of consent: "For instance: before shaking someone's hand, stop, and ask "May I shake your hand?". Wait for their answer, then respect their wishes. Folks with different neurologies have markedly different touch needs, and you should respect them."
She also says that you should never ask for evidence of wrongdoing, just always blindly trust every accuser: "One of the key insights of modern approaches to inclusion is the importance of listening conscientiously to folks with lived experience of discrimination. For example: is not necessary for men to try on sexism for a short period to certify that sexism exists -- it is enough that women (and people perceived as women) say that it does."
She also then claims that microaggressions are real and a major concern and that "many early career researchers end up forced out of the profession" because of these microaggressions.
She then points to other concepts from social science and victimhood studies, such "stereotype threat, and implicit bias." but stereotype threat doesn't replicate and has been debunked, and implicit bias is one of the worst and most invalid concepts ever.