Resolved: Modern American Feminism is Both Correct and Needed

Underrepresentation of Women in Positions of Power I would like to begin by refuting my opponent"s case on the biological differences between men and women, particularly his citation [3]: Del Giudici's paper is not uncontested, (1) and is, itself, responding to a contrary and more popularly accepted paper, Janet Shibley Hyde"s "Gender Similarities Hypothesis" (2) (it should be noted that Hyde"s paper utilized aggregative meta-studies, whereas Del Giudici"s paper did not). All of that said, we can"t rule out the supposed liberal bias of psychology, (3) though Del Giudici does not disclose his own personal beliefs in his paper. All that being said, having read Del Giudici"s paper myself, (4) I found his methodology to be absolutely bogus. Del Giudici"s findings (and Irwing and Booth"s findings) rest on the outcome of a self-filled standardized personality questionnaire! By this paper"s reasoning, quizzes at the back-end of Cosmopolitan are just as empirical! It"s tautological. Karl Popper also refutes this sort of research in the Degrees of Testability chapter of his seminal "The Logic of Scientific Discovery", and to a degree in his preface vis-"-vis Wittgenstein, Berkley, Locke, Hume. (5) In actuality, this data reinforces my case - if all the data does is confirm how women perceive themselves and not necessarily how they are, it speaks to a reading of gender and sexuality that is culturally or socially imposed. Similar data could be and has been drawn from studies on race and socioeconomic status; (6) unless we wish to infer that the disadvantaged are biologically predisposed to be that way, we may consider the a posteriori psychological ramifications of being black, or being poor, or being gay, or being a woman, etc, etc, ad nauseum, considering the weight of social and cultural expectations, of the effect of mass media on the conscious self. Furthermore, human beings actually have remarkably low sexual dimorphism - one may notice this if they have ever been attracted to famed transgendered super model Valentijn de Hingh, (7) or felt confused looking at a billboard featuring female model for men"s clothing Casey Legler. (8) Based on the above information, I continue to possit that it is not in fact a woman"s natural disposition that determines her role in society, but the pathological expectations that that society has for HER. While my opponent"s reference to the low number of women in dangerous fields is not unacknowledged (it should be noted, however, that is is still reflective of social expectation - masculine culture absolutely romanticizes the "dangerous job", etc., though ofc the fitness of some of these jobs certainly favours those with a larger physique, which is primarily men. THAT being said (anecdote incoming), my sister is a competitive powerlifter, while I, a man, am a lanky writer), it pales in comparison to the lack of women representing women within government, a system which functions to represent the people, yet as of now primarily represents old white men. Furthermore, while evolutionary psychology attempts to bank off of sounding like it"s a hard science, it"s actually almost completely unempirical and its methodology, as far as Karl Popper is concerned, pseudo-science. (5) A statement about the evolutionary role of the genders is about as scientific as most social science-based arguments in favor of feminism: it"s largely, while no doubt intellectually entertaining, speculative, only seeks to confirm itself, but is not really testable, refutable, or falsifiable. Reproductive Fairness I"d like to refute the term "feminist brainwashing" as it colours the position: reeducation is a core tenet of social progress. Certainly children in schools today already have gone through decades of education on racial equality to better prepare them for the contemporary social climate. It seems to be slowly working; a lot more people now care about race issues than ever before, general racial tolerance is up, (9) and we"ve certainly stopped forming lynch mobs. An evolutionary psychologist could easily argue that our previous state was biologically ordained: as postulated in Frances Cress Welsing"s "Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation", the white race needed to practice explicit racism in order to survive. Killing black people, and thus thinning the competitive genetic herd, was an evolutionary necessity, as was segregation. Contrarily, my opponent could then combat my strawman and claim that it was in fact the growing acceptance of racial minorities that was evolutionarily advantageous, because it diversifies and strengthens the gene pool. In matters of gender, one could turn to the arguments of Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, or even Valerie Solanas, or, if one really wanted to, even Friedrich Engels as providing contrary evidence of "evolutionary psychology" which posits arguments that entirely counter those of the ones my opponent had been attempting to use. As one can see, such a position is infinitely flexible and pseudoscientific. Again, not unlike the leagues of online feminists who attempt to augment practical arguments with academically fascinating, but unempirical and irrefutable, critical theory alone, because they happened to glance at a Judith Butler article in Gender Studies 101. Anthropology has showed much evidence that social circumstances have been demonstrably flexible throughout history, which includes attitudes towards female promiscuity. Warren Dawson tells us that, in some regions of Central Africa, polyandry (the practice of a woman taking several exclusive male partners) was common practice. There still exist cultures in the Amazon who practice multi-paternal families, in which a woman has sex with several men of her choosing before conceiving a baby that is to be their collective son. (10) And what of the matriarchal societies of ancient Vietnam, or of the Hopi and Iroquois Indians, ancient regions of India, the still thriving Mosuo people of Eastern China, etc.? To contend with the abortion argument: the sanctity of life argument of course begs the "unjust burden" counterargument. If we conclude that it"s unethical to force a fully conscious human being to surrender his kidney to save another, or that it"s unjustified for the very, very rich to comfortably support the poor masses the world over, then it is of course unethical to oppose a woman"s right to end the burden of pregnancy. That this is opposed at all suggests (though not entirely affirms!) a double standard, (11) to of course say nothing of the enormous barriers that still face women in the United States when they attempt to get a legal abortion. (12) We don"t necessarily have to get into an entire debate about abortion or the ethics thereof, however, as it IS it"s own highly-contested issue and could lengthen this debate tenfold - if my opponent is willing, we could just toss it out entirely. Looking forward to what looks like is going to be a great debate, even if I didn't proofread my argument and likely made some serious grammatical gaffe for which I will be greatly ashamed. (1) http://blogs.scientificamerican.com... (2) http://www.apa.org... (3) http://www.scientificamerican.com... (4) http://journals.plos.org... (5) http://strangebeautiful.com... (6) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... (7) https://www.google.ca... (8) https://www.google.ca... (9) http://static.ijreview.com... (10) https://www.sciencedaily.com... (11) http://www.debate.org... (12)