Rikki Schlott: Jordan Peterson Isn’t an Incel Hero—He’s the Voice Gen Z Needs

For the crime of teaching young men to assume responsibility for themselves, Jordan Peterson has been relentlessly attacked. But there’s nothing wrong with telling boys to buck up—in fact, it’s desperately needed.

The latest demonization of Peterson comes from actress Olivia Wilde. In an interview about a new movie she directed called “Don’t Worry Darling,” Wilde revealed the film’s misogynistic cult leader antagonist was actually based on “this insane man, Jordan Peterson, who is the pseudo-intellectual hero for the incel movement.”

Wilde suggests that incels—an online community of young men who feel rejected by women and often harbor hostile (and even violent) feelings towards them—think Peterson is “someone who legitimizes certain aspects of their movement because he’s a former professor, he’s an author, he wears a suit, so they feel like this is a real philosophy that should be taken seriously.”

The incel philosophy, as Wilde describes it, contends that women “must be put back into the correct place” and that men are justified in “[feeling] entitled to sex with women.”

Wilde, who recently directed the film “Don’t Worry Darling,” told an interviewer that Peterson was the inspiration for her movie’s main character — a misogynistic cult leader. Getty Images for for CinemaCon

As a young woman who has personally found great empowerment in Peterson’s books and lectures, it’s a characterization I know to be completely false.

Although I’m definitely not an incel, I read Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life a few years back in my freshman year of college. I also pored through his expansive library of lectures during the pandemic. While Peterson’s audience certainly tilts male, his wider message isn’t gender-specific.

In fact, it’s thanks in part to Dr. Peterson that, while it felt like the world was crumbling around me as a 19-year-old in lockdown, I decided to buckle down, work hard, and launch a career in journalism, rather than give in to nihilism.

Past self-help, part moral pathway, Peterson’s 2018 best-selling book “12 Rules for Life” has sold over 5 million copies worldwide. Brian Zak/NY Post

Never once did I feel Peterson wanted to “put me back into the correct place” as a woman. Had he done so, I, as a feminist, would have recoiled in horror. Actually, I found him to be one of the few cultural voices who pragmatically discusses many of the challenges women face in balancing career and family ambitions.

Beyond the fact that Wilde’s views of Peterson feel so removed from my own, he also took her attacks quite personally. Indeed, the famously stoic psychologist recently choked up when asked by Piers Morgan about Wilde’s comments.

“People have been after me for a long time because I’ve been speaking to disaffected young men. What a terrible thing to do that is,” Peterson said with tears in his eyes. “It’s very hard to understand how demoralized people are—and certainly many young men are in this category.”

In a recent appearance with Piers Morgan, Peterson expressed how much Wilde’s words