January/February LD Debate Resolved.

Since Society cannot always guarantee that Justice is dealt affirm the Resolution: It is Morally Permissible for victims to use deadly force as a deliberate response to repeated domestic violence. I will now offer Definitions for this round: Repeated Action-Actions that happen many times or reoccur again and again Merriam Webster Domestic Violence: an escalating pattern of violence or intimidation by an intimate partner, which is used to gain power and control. 2008 NCPEA Therefore, avoiding the argument of simple random acts of violence since the abuse is being done in a pattern and methodically, it is not at all random. With this definition of Domestic Violence we can see it entails oppression. The reason for that oppression is because the abused are viewed as weak and masochistic. These statistics from the U.S Department of Justice show how estimates range from 960,000 incidents of violence against a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend to 3 million women who are physically abused by their husband or boyfriend per year. Women are usually the abused because they are seen as weak and masochistic creatures of society. Therefore my value for this round is justice. Just as D.A. Clarke, a feminist essayist and activist, writes in her 1991 essay Justice is a Woman with a Sword In male fantasy, women are always powerless to defend themselves from hurt and humiliation. Worse, they enjoy them. Treatment that would drive the average self-respecting man to desperate violence makes these fantasy-women tremble, breathe heavily, and moan with desire: abuse and embarrassment are their secret needs. The "womanliness" invented by pornographers is a deep masochism, which renders women as powerless to defend self and others as the sweetness-and-light female patience and martyrdom of Christian romanticism. It's but a short step from the ladylike and therefore ineffectual face-slaps of Nice Girls to the "hot and steamy surrender" in the dominant male's brawny embrace. When we as a society recognize we have this view of women then it is time to recognize the oppression that goes on in everyday life. Oppression cannot coexist with Justice because oppression usually entails taking ones natural rights to liberty/freedom and even of their physical sanctity or their right to life. The point of justice is to ensure those rights stay intact. Men usually commit domestic violence to be the "Alpha-Male" If anyone defies him then they will be beaten. This is immoral and wrong because there is no justification to simply beat someone just for dominance. When these beatings continue and Society fails to stop them Justice has been lost. My Value Criterion is to reduce oppression. 1st We should look to the reduction of oppression because the resolved entails some type of oppression through "Repeated Domestic Violence" So whoever can better reduce that oppression should win the round. 2nd Justice is very difficult to gain so long as oppression exists because justice aims to protect innocent people's rights and the taking of violator's rights while oppression (especially in Domestic Violence cases) is the taking of innocent people's rights as well as the violator's rights to remain intact. Therefore reducing oppression is a pre-requisite to gain Justice Contention I: Society sometimes fails to deliver justice to women who have been beaten, raped, etc. D.A. Clarke 2 There are several ways to prevent crimes from happening. One is education and reason, and our effort to bring up children to be good adults. Then comes elementary preparedness and awareness on the part of the innocent. Then there is active resistance and self-defense when a crime is attempted; lastly, there is the establishment of consequences for the perpetrator. Every time a man molests his daughter and still keeps his place in the family and community—every time a man sexually harasses a female employee and still keeps his job or his business reputation--every time a rapist or femicide gets a token sentence--there is a terrible lack of consequence for the commission of a crime. D.A. Clarke 3 We disagree as a society about the level of "punishment" which should be enforced. We can't agree whether murderers should themselves be killed. Most of us would agree that hanging is too severe a penalty for stealing a loaf of bread, but is it too severe a penalty for hacking a woman to death? Some would say yes and some no. Others think we should abandon the concept of punishment altogether. While we argue about these things, women are steadily and consistently being insulted, molested, assaulted and murdered. And most of the men who are doing these things are suffering no consequences at all. Sometimes Society either delivers very little Justice or at times no Justice at all, by Affirming the resolution we will better be able to achieve Justice by allowing those that have been abused the encouragement to fight back when they can no longer rely on Societies aid Therefore allowing them to themselves reduce oppression. Contention II: Through Affirming there is a possibility to end Domestic Violence D.A. Clarke 4 If the risk involved in attacking a woman were greater, there might be fewer attacks. If women defended themselves violently, the amount of damage they were willing to do to would-be assailants would be the measure of their seriousness about the limits beyond which they would not be pushed. If more women killed husbands and boyfriends who abused them perhaps there would be less abuse. A large number of women refusing to be pushed any further would erode, the myth of the masochistic female which threatens all our lives. Violent resistance to attack has its advantages all round. D.A. Clarke 5 If women become more violent, will the world be a more violent place? Perhaps, but it's not a simple equation of addition. We will have to subtract any violence that women prevent. So we will have to subtract a large number of rapes and daily humiliations suffered by women who today cannot or will not defend themselves. We might have to subtract six or seven murders that would have been committed by a latter-day Zodiac Killer, except that his first intended victim killed him instead. In the context of the resolution if women attacked their abusers then there would be less abuse. In two ways: 1 Women won't be continuously seen as weak and masochistic creatures anymore therefore Dominant Brawny men will be less likely to abuse which reduces the amount of potential oppression. 2The abuser that the woman would either injure severely or kill will not be allowed to move on and just start abusing more and more women thus reducing even more potential oppression. Under View Aff meets Self Defense As Jane Campbell Explains "The law of self-defense arises from longstanding principles governing behavior between those involved in aggression, but developed apart from the relationship between spouses. The law needs to recognize that batterers are different than others who make threats. They operate much like the way terrorists do by instilling fear that an attack is forthcoming, and thus, creating constant anxiety and fear in their victims. The sustained trauma created by an abusive relationship differs from other situations in which self-defense is used." As Elizabeth Ayyilidz Explains "Several aspects of the traditional self-defense doctrine are a difficult fit for women. As many commentators have argued, the law of self-defense is a male construct, defined by how men respond to violence. Rather than recognize and respect the fact that domestic violence is different, and often less avoidable, than other types of violence, the law often simply metes out unjust and overly harsh results for those whose self-defense does not fit precisely within the traditional, male-based canon." Thus Affirmation is justified by the Self-Defense Doctrine I now await my opponent :)