Watch psychology professor Dr. Jordan Peterson speak about how the Right and Left may be able to find common ground on the topic of sexual deviance among young people in society with Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, Charlie Kirk, and others behind the scenes at last week’s Turning Point USA’s annual Student Action Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida.
This video was taken Thursday in the green room moments before Peterson took the stage to address thousands of students in attendance.
Transcript below:
I was in Washington a week ago, and I was thinking, we were talking about how to bring people together across the House divide, because the House is extraordinarily divided now, and people aren’t talking, and I thought it would be very interesting — well — abortion is obviously a key issue, but it’s one that’s unbelievably contentious.
One of the things I thought about with regards to the abortion issue, is that, by the time you’re talking about abortion, you’re probably having the wrong conversation, which is why it’s so deeply polarized. There’s a sequence of bad decisions that have already occurred by the time that’s the conversation, and one of the things you see that’s really quite interesting — and I just started to think about it this way, in this last week or so, is that — the traditional right, the conservative types, are pushing quite hard, and always have, for the encapsulation of sexual behavior within a fairly traditional structure, marriage.
But you know, you’re seeing sexual taboos — sexual taboos are very common across cultures, but — you’re seeing the same thing emerge on the Left in a completely different form, because on the one hand, especially the radical Leftist types, their basic claim is that anything goes, but at the same time, they’re putting forward these affirmative consent regulations and laws in many states, and they’re insisting that we live in the middle of a rape culture.
They’re acting as if sex is a very volatile and dangerous enterprise — which actually happens to be the case — and so, even though that issue is extraordinarily tense, partly because people on the Left — would like to let a thousand flowers bloom, let’s say — there is an accruing agreement that there’s some deep discussion that has to be had about sexual morality, and that’s a place where — despite the differences — some sort of bipartisan discussion might occur.
Obviously, people are very upset about the manner in which sexual activity is occurring — especially among young people — they’re upset on the Left, and they’re upset on the Right.
I think it’s partly also a consequence of the fact that we haven’t adapted to the birth control pill yet. It was a major technological revolution, the birth control pill. It’s only been 50 years, and we haven’t figured out what it means for women to have control of the reproductive function, or what the consequences of that should be, socially. The Leftist types, especially in the sixties, thought you just blow sexual morality apart completely, because now people were free to do what they want, but that isn’t working. There’s a backlash against that on the Left, as well.
So, it would be engaging and necessary to think that though, because maybe there’s some room for a real discussion about that.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo and on Instagram.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.