Twitter presence Jordan Peterson claimed that Elliot Page’s top surgery and the doctor performing it was “criminal”. He’s now admitting he was incorrect, even as he compares such procedures to Nazi experimentation, and says he has “post-coital, so to speak, regrets” about the remark.
Jeet Heer, in flagging a comment that others skipped over in pursuit of his thoughts on Nazis, writes that it is “very strange”.
But even this understated reflection only highlights why everyone is ignoring it: because Peterson is, literally or otherwise, intimating that he masturbated to this.
Peterson is using the term in a metaphorical way, perhaps, but a grossly sexual metaphor is hardly better than its grossly sexual plain meaning. Consider the context: a video clip of him confirming he wanted to be taken literally when he appeared to be using a metaphor, admitting he was literally incorrect, and asserting that it should be literally correct.
No-one wants to deal with this remark because to point it out reveals what we’re complicit in when we pick from the rest to engage with in good faith: a bleak, unhinged nightmare.