Professor who refused to use other genders pronouns, was banned by Google | Hacker News Reader

Professor who refused to use other genders pronouns, was banned by Google

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22 pointsbloomca12 comments

Here's a good place to start with Jordan Peterson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJSJcPKA1Ug

I think he's a brilliant and courageous man. Before you criticize him, find out what he's really about. I would characterize him as "Mr. Rogers for adults." A part of his refusal stems from 1) his knowledge that the Canadian law in question asserts scientific falsehoods and codifies them into law and 2) his objection to the law's compulsion to say things (as opposed to a compulsion to not say certain things) which to him represent something related to Marxist ideology (through Postmodern Social Construction) and 3) other structural objections to the Canadian law in question, which he feels oversteps the protection of individual freedoms by, for example, abrogating due process.

I find that watching his lectures is very worthwhile, from the standpoint of the Humanities. He may well end up being one of those responsible for saving the Humanities as the 21st century internet continues to disrupt higher education. In particular, he has a formulation of the Humanities which is compatible with and draws from evolutionary biology.

From this[1] report:

"'I’ve had that account for the last, say, 15 years,' said Peterson to TheDCNF. 'All of my correspondence is in that account. It’s hundreds of thousands of emails from people all over the world.'"

Setting aside the fact that Gmail hasn't even existed for 15 years[2], this underscores the need for users to backup their cloud-based email accounts. A few of the many options include MailStore Home for Windows[3], Horcrux for macOS[4], imap-backup[5] for *nix (or anything Ruby runs on apparently), and Gmvault[6] for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

[1] Google And YouTube Ban Prof Who Refused To Use Gender-Neutral Pronouns http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/01/google-and-youtube-ban-pro...

[2] History of Gmail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gmail

[3] https://www.mailstore.com/en/products/mailstore-home/

[4] https://thehorcrux.com

[5] https://github.com/joeyates/imap-backup

[6] http://gmvault.org/

Gmail launched in 2004, about 15 years ago.

Gmail was in a very limited public beta during 2004 and 2005, not moving out of beta status until mid 2009. Even if he was an early adopter (which seems unlikely given the length of his email address and the fact that the oldest reference to it Google turns up appears to be from 2011), we still don't arrive at 15 years.

Whether he has 13 years or 13 months worth of email stored in his Gmail account, I hope he has started archiving it now!

My email address is also my full name and I was in at the very beginning as well. And 2004-2017 is 14 years.

It wasn't that limited. Anyone who got an invite could forward them along. Gmail still being in "beta" was a running joke for awhile.

From your first link:

> UPDATE: Peterson reported that he regained access to his Google and YouTube accounts shortly after the publication of this piece, but the company still has not provided the professor with specific reasoning for his ban.

There is no indication that this is related to any gender pronoun usage

And it's back: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/89244909895099187...

It's since been reinstated according to his Twitter. I would guess (and hope) that he was automatically banned based on the huge quantity of reports he presumably receives.

No where in the twitter feed is gender pronouns mentioned

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