Topic To Be Chosen During Debate

I fear you not LM! Take your best shot :P My opponent's responses to my counterpoints are linked and as such, I will need to respond to them not in order, but with a larger, more encompassing post and will try to incorporate my opponent's major points of contention within. I will try to mark off which point I am responding to, but in order to avoid confusing the audience, I will need to string together as much of it as possible. First, I would like to answer one of my opponent's points directly. My opponent made a point about the current system being a social pressure and being a possible cause for the shyness in the first place. However, since my opponent is LM, he is also smart enough to know that I won't buy this argument. I would argue that the pressure would be a driving force for the shy to act, since they would assume that if they want results, they would have to act. More on this later though. I will now go over once again the seperate hypothetical outcomes of a girl-guy couple to which this debate is relevent. I used them in my initial response and my opponent used them in his. Scenario A: Guy likes Girl. Guy is too shy, Girl doesn't know but doesn't return the feelings. Scenario B: Guy likes Girl. Girl also likes Guy. Guy and Girl are both shy. Scenario C: Guy likes Girl. Girl also likes Guy. Guy is shy, but Girl is not. Wherein I use the term "Shy" to designate an inclination to NOT be the first to act due to personality. (This does not include the restriction of acting against social norms) In regards to Scenario A, I made a claim that my opponent's system would lead to even worse feelings for the Guy. My opponent responded thusly: "This argument only works under the idea that the burden is switched to women entirely...The guy in question would see that this girl has no intention on making the first move, thus, it would be up to him to do so. Or rather, the one who made the first move would be the one who desired the relationship the most." My opponent is only half correct in saying that this argument would only work if the burden was switched to women entirely. I am not misinterpreting my opponent's argument that the norm should be evenly divided. This is not why the burden is shifted entirely on the female in my hypothetical. Rather, I took it as a given that we were dealing with a shy male who had no intention of acting first anyway. In that case, my system would only leave the shy male with the notion that since he did not act, and since it is the norm for guys to act first, he can only conclude that the girl does not like him so much that she is willing to bypass the social norm(which is a concession that wouldn't necessarily wound the guy). Under my opponent's system though, the guy would think "It is fine for either of us to act. I know this, and she knows this. However, I am shy, and she is not acting. I must conclude that she is not interested in me at all". Without this hoop, a shy guy would expect better results with less output from himself. That makes the lack of said results sting even more. This connects with my opening response to my opponent: My opponent's system would increase complacency. It gives shy guys more of an excuse not to act and eliminates the pressure, which is a driving force for them to make the move. In regards to Scenario B, I made the claim that neither system would do any more good. My opponent was uncertain of my explanation: "Is he insisting that the...start." I will clarify that I am insisting that the probability of the relationship starting would be the same either way. My reasoning is that in the current system, 2 shy people would be akin to two immovable forces. However, the male is under pressure to act, but this is just POTENTIAL. Similarly, in the new system, 2 shy people would still not have any result, because the pressure is taken off the guy, and he now has one less driving force. However, the girl gains that POTENTIAL because the new system makes it less weird. The problem is, the girl is still shy personality-wise. Thus , there is no improvement. Now, we get to Scenario C, in which we shall further expand on the issue of the girl. My opponent argues that his new system would allow girls to be the first to act. I would like to clarify to my opponent that in the current system, it is not unheard of or frowned upon for a girl to ask a guy out. There are few if any negative social consequences if a girl chooses to do so. It is merely NOT EXPECTED that a girl will be the one to ask the guy out. My opponent's point on the strength of social restrictions is a good one in general, but there is nothing to suggest that the norm of guys asking girls out is as rigid as he makes it out to be. With that said, I will go on to the final Scenario: If the girl likes the guy and is not shy as a person, one of two situations can occur. C1: The girl will need time to decide/wait C2: The girl likes the shy guy so much, she asks him out at once. For C1 in our current system, the girl will only wait until ANOTHER guy of equal or greater quality asks her out, or if her feelings are so strong that she eventually asks the shy guy out. If we change the system however, there will be little to no improvement. The girl would not only be more free to ask the shy guys out, but also more free to ask regular guys out. If the shy guy is the only guy in her pool of candidates, she would have asked him out anyway. As per C2, the same logic holds. If she likes the guy with so much fervor, she would ask him out regardless. In this next section, I will detail the more off-to-the-side reasons for why this change would be negative. On the issue of flirting: I agree that the system is imperfect, but I wouldn't trade it for anything else. I'm sure that for many, MANY guys and girls, outnumbering the amount that would benefit from this proposal, the flirting, hinting, mystery of courtship is the most exciting and enjoyable part. I never actually asked my girlfriend out on a first date, it was simply a matter of hinting that got more and more obvious in a gradual process, and it was exhilerating for the both of us, simply because of the uncertainty. "Would you like to go out with me" kills it. In response to the issue about Biology, I retract my statements and I concede the point that shy men are no less biologically superior due simply to the fact that they are shy. However, I make this concession simply because I am running out of space, and find the argument not to be beneficial anyway. And in response to my opponent's final point about the new system potentially relieving social anxiety, I remind my opponent that I do not "buy" the argument and instead argue/reiterate that the new system would deter shy guys from asking girls out, having been relieved of a driving force to move things forward of their own accord, and that it would also deprive them of a beneficial tool to improve their own social awkwardness (if it extends beyond courtship, which I would argue it does most of the time)