(Source: adamantineheart)
I still need feminism because all of my trophies from debate had men on top!
That is not oppression. This is the kind of stupid bullshit that makes people unable to take feminists seriously. That’s like saying I need the KKK because all of my favorite TV stars are black.
And it has nothing at all to do with the fact that the significant majority of people competing were probably men, meaning when they bought the trophy they figured they buy the one that was statistically more likely to represent the winner. Nothing at all, nope, nope.
For someone allegedly winning awards for debate, your logic really sucks.
Oh hey now, whoa. Whoa. Vehemently, like, whoa, there, dude. From Gender Bias in NFA-LD: An Examination of Participation Rates and a Content Analysis of NFA-LD Ballots by Susan Millsap, Otterbein College and Scott Millsap, Muskingum College:
Stepp and Gardner (2001) found in their study of the 2000 CEDA National Tournament that 64% of the competitors were male and only 36% female, which is a slight increase from 71% male and 20% female at the 1990 CEDA National Tournament. But this “is still not representative of the collegiate body in which women comprise 55.8% of students” (p. 74). Manchester and Friedley (2003) found that females were significantly under represented at the National Debate Tournament over a 17-year period of gathering data. In the same study the evidence reveals that some strides have been made in the participation of women and minorities in individual events participation. While Manchester and Friedley found no difference in the levels of participation between male and female participation at the 2001 AFA-NIET preliminary rounds they did find a gender gap in the semi-final and final rounds. Thus while individual events appears to have made some progress in shrinking the gender gap few strides have been made in debate, and little research has been done on why these students do not participate or succeed.
…. Greenstreet (1997) begins to address this issue with a taxonomy of women’s gender based experiences in forensics which suggests that “women value those experiences that include them — or allow them to include others — in the activity. The taxonomy also suggests experiences that exclude women and reinforce their identity as “other” are likely to discourage their participation” (p. 59). While Greenstreet reports that within the negative matrix of his taxonomy there were reports of verbal abuse within rounds and two incidents of sexists statements made on ballots there has been no systematic research on whether comments on ballots, the main communication instrument of judge to competitor, reveals any gender bias….
Wow, so like, maybe the fact that virtually all debate trophies feature males has something to do with females being underrepresented in debate events? Who would have thought that maybe people are actually like, marginalized and excluded by “having their identities re-inforced as ‘other’ “? Like, maybe if a few trophies had women on them- or even if they didn’t represent a human being at all- we’d see an increase in female participation? The particular issue of female underrepresentation in debate events may not be the most serious social justice issue facing us today, but the issue of belittling issues of representation and the establishment of certain identities as “other” or “invalid” really, really is like sort of a huge deal.And, yes, there are definitely other factors that might contribute to the fact that females and other minority groups were under-represented in debate events. But representing and validating minority identities on an institutional and cultural level is, like, super-duper important and has like, a really big effect. See here and here for excellent discussions of this topic. YOUR COMMENTS ARE WHY WE STILL NEED FEMINISM. Also, see here if you’d like a list of valid reasons not to take feminists seriously critiques of the feminist movement.
