Forced Conversion
Canadian psychologist and Internet lightning rod Jordan Peterson, who has been at the fore of opposition to preferred pronoun compulsion, has been threatened with suspension of his license to practice his profession. From The Free Press:
The College of Psychologists of Ontario has told Peterson that if he doesn’t go to therapy—sorry, a board-mandated “Coaching Program” with a board-issued therapist—it may revoke his license to practice psychology.
Occupational licensing excesses were a plague on economies and liberty before woke came to the fore of society. So much so that even Barack Obama, certainly no friend of small government or individual liberty, spoke against them (albeit late in his tenure, with little actual change effected).
Being required to get a license (and, of course, pass tests and pay money) to do a job is defended as protecting the public, but it is far more often about protecting the incumbents. Raising entry barriers to jobs and professions increases scarcity and lets those already 'in' charge more and control the landscape better. In the 1950s, about 5% of jobs required licenses. Nowadays, it's more than one in three, and includes florists, hair braiders, travel guides, horse massagers, landscape architects, librarians, packagers, auctioneers, locksmiths, interior designers, casket makers, shampooers, fortune tellers, teeth whiteners, home entertainment installers, travel agents, upholsterers, and gas pumpers. While there's an argument for licensing of doctors, attorneys, and other professionals in fields where incompetence can have tragic results, even those have been more about job protection than public protection. That nurse practitioners or physicians' assistants aren't granted limited prescription authority, and that paralegals aren't allowed to draft simple things like wills, puts the lie to safety arguments.
As if that isn't bad enough, now we have the licensers, even in esteemed fields like medicine and the law, politically and culturally weaponizing their power. The American Medical Association and the American Bar Association have "gone woke," incorporating requirements or 'recommendations' that have nothing to do with professional quality.
We have Joe Rogan, who despite being much more of a liberal than anything else has incurred the wrath of the scolds, discussing how he originally felt that Peterson was overstating the risk of the pronoun demands, but that he turned out to be right after all.
Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire compares attempts to mandate pronoun use to forced conversion to a religion. The act of using "she" instead of "he" for someone with an XY chromosome can be seen as an acceptance or endorsement of the assertion that gender is a construct rather than biological. Whichever side of the debate you fall on, if you believe that compelling others to accede to your views is OK, you are no friend of liberty.
Just a couple months ago, I wrote of "soft coercion," where individuals are given a Hobson's choice: "you don't have to behave as we ask, but if you don't, your career or your personal life will be shredded."
That there are religious parallels in this latest bit should come as no surprise, especially to regular readers. I've offered such parallels to global warming, social justice, and political dissent, to name but three, and it’s grown ever clearer to me that there’s something in human wiring that creates an affinity for this sort of thing.
This is the state of our society today. Mechanisms originally put in place to protect and benefit the public are being turned into tools of coercion and mandatory compliance. The usual norms, the unwritten daily rules that we consider 'politeness' and social behavior, are being overlaid with a totalitarian "do it our way or lose everything" duress. Power, once granted to the government, will almost inevitably be used in a way other than originally intended. That America has a First Amendment, and that courts (so far) have been enforcing it, is the only thing standing between us and such as is being attempted in Canada and elsewhere regarding things like preferred pronouns. That we have to rely on the courts, which should be a last resort and final backstop rather than the sole protector of our rights, tells us how little our politicians esteem their oaths of office.
Peterson has built a career outside his psychology practice, in motivational speaking and in public debate, so he can survive being de-licensed. He is, like Dave Chappelle, JK Rowling, and others with FU money, "uncancellable." Not in their league, but still uncancellable. Peterson is able to say he’d rather not practice than capitulate to the licensing board’s social justice demands. Most others don't have that luxury, and so they're required, no matter whether they would of their own free will, to comply with a growing list of demands that have nothing to do with the quality or skill they bring to their jobs.
The more Americans resist such coercion, hard or soft, the more aggressive the coercers are becoming. The Executive Branch under Biden is proving to be especially aggressive, and not just in this particular segment of leftism. The cancelniks that form the core of support for such coercion aren't the sorts to say "we've gone far enough."
Compelled speech is worse than censored speech. The latter, like water flowing downstream, can leak through or cut around most obstacles, and even the mightiest dams have to let some water through or be overwhelmed. The former poisons the water itself, and will in most cases harden the compelled against the views they're forced to aver.
An afterthought. I’m genuinely sympathetic to individuals who genuinely feel there’s a disconnect between how they see themselves and the ‘traditional,’ for want of a better word, male and female labels. As a libertarian, I elevate every individual’s right to pursue happiness. That said, I’m with Rogan and Walsh in believing that the obsession a vocal sliver of our society has with this extremely small populace has fostered a whole lot of Me Too copycatting and a deluge of narcissism in this whole pronoun business. If it were just that, it’d not be that big a deal, but it became both business and racket in short order, and there’s a horrifying amount of ‘positive reinforcement’ toward teens who might hint or for a moment suggest they might want to ponder if they are not ‘typical’ boys or girls. The massively disproportionate numbers of teens and tweens claiming to be trans is a ghastly telltale.
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Peter
“Mechanisms originally put in place to protect and benefit the public are being turned into tools of coercion and mandatory compliance. The usual norms, the unwritten daily rules that we consider 'politeness' and social behavior, are being overlaid with a totalitarian "do it our way or lose everything" duress. Power, once granted to the government, will almost inevitably be used in a way other than originally intended. That America has a First Amendment, and that courts (so far) have been enforcing it, is the only thing standing between us and such as is being attempted in Canada and elsewhere regarding things like preferred pronouns. That we have to rely on the courts, which should be a last resort and final backstop rather than the sole protector of our rights, tells us how little our politicians esteem their oaths of office.“
Pumping gas requires a license now? As a 12 year old growing up in Miami, my father owned a Texaco gas station, which meant that I had a job whether I wanted it or not. My brother and I dutifully worked pumping gas, checking oil and washing windshields after school and on weekends, with zero wages. It was a family business, so you did what you had to do. Caveat: I had access to the soda machine key, so I could nab a grape or orange bottled soda whenever I needed one, with permission of course. I have fond memories of changing from my oversized Texaco uniform into my football uniform to walk about a mile to practice and games, only to return and swap back into my Texaco garb and go back to pumping that petrol. I say fond now, but trust me I was not fond of doing that back then.
As for Peterson, I was randomly introduced to him by an Uber driver. I was having my car repaired and caught an Uber back home. The driver was a nice young man, but he was playing some music I didn't particularly care for. Along the way he changed it to a Peterson podcast, and I really liked it. He seemed to have some things to say that were thought-provoking. I was really surprised that this young driver, who I had already stereotyped, was into this kind of discussion. I learned a lesson that day about making assumptions, and I appreciated the guy for turning me on to someone I might not have otherwise discovered. I made sure to tell him that.