Feminism

Alright. This was destined to happen. With all of the Youtubers going on about the evils of feminism and liberalism, an echo chamber spawns, and people like my opponent are sucked in. Before I engage in this debate, I acknowledge that there are crazed high school students who dye their hair, and preach feminist ideology without having the correct knowledge to do so. It happens. But, no, I will not agree that it is the evil bane of modern life. I will argue that feminism is still important in the present day. Reading the comments, I get that I"m unlikely to win, so I"m just doing this in the the hopes of changing at least someone"s mind. Anyways, I would love to explain why a lot of the statistics my opponent has listed have complicated non-sexist reasoning, but I don't have the room for that. Instead, I will refute some of his most incorrect claims. "Men lose custody in 84% of divorces" Regardless of how accurate this statistic is, there are good reasons for why this may be the case. A comprehensive study of this was done by Cathy Meyer of the Huffington Post, and to quote it: "In 51 percent of custody cases, both parents agreed " on their own " that mom become the custodial parent. In 29 percent of custody cases, the decision was made without any third party involvement. In 11 percent of custody cases, the decision for mom to have custody was made during mediation. In 5 percent of custody cases, the issue was resolved after a custody evaluation. Only 4 percent of custody cases went to trial and of that 4 percent, only 1.5 percent completed custody litigation. In other words, 91 percent of child custody after divorce is decided with no interference from the family court system. How can there be a bias toward mothers when fewer than 4 percent of custody decisions are made by the Family Court? What do these statistics tell us? 1. Fathers are less involved in their children"s care during the marriage. 2. Fathers are less involved in their children"s lives after divorce. 3. Mothers gain custody because the vast majority of fathers choose to give them custody. 4. There is no Family Court bias in favor of mothers because very few fathers seek custody during divorce." So essentially, the majority of the time, the father is less involved in the raising of the child (particularly in a relationship that ends up in a divorce) and fewer fathers receive custody of their children, because they don't seek custody. Additionally, con has also made general statements without providing any statistics. "Males are discriminated against in school and University. -Boys face vastly more corporal punishment than girls." If my opponent wishes to make these statements, even the ones with provided statistics, it is his responsibility to leave sources and such. I have a strong suspicion con went onto this men"s rights website, which listed all of these stats with sourcing them. My opponent has only sourced one site, that I dare say look like it has a tiny bit of a bias. "77% of homicide victims are men." So this statistic really goes to show what side my opponent"s source is on. If you actually read the study, it states the following within it: " their risk of being killed by a spouse or intimate acquaintance was higher (RR = 1.23). In contrast to men, the killing of a woman by a stranger was rare (RR = 0.18). More than twice as many women were shot and killed by their husband or intimate acquaintance than were murdered by strangers using guns, knives, or any other means." I agree that there are issues in which men"s rights are important. This is one of those issues. However, even a study cited by a website called realsexism.com fails to run its length without mentioning a feminist issue. The 77% aspect of this also has likely complex factors which make it so. "40-70% of domestic violence is against men, however, less than 1% of domestic violence shelter spaces are for men" The problem here is, I couldn"t find this anywhere. The website you sourced also provides no link to prove this either, so it sounds like a load of crap to me. I could go on, but I am going to stop here so I can explain my opponent"s even further flawed reasoning. Currently, feminism is being mocked and scorned by many. What people who do this don"t realize, is that said high school student on Tumblr does not represent feminism as a whole. What anti-feminists will do is cherry pick certain uncommon instances where men have a disadvantage, and proceed to mock this strawman idea of a feminist rather than intellectual feminism. As you go deeper into the anti-feminist movement, you will see how quickly it turns into sexism. The actual intellectual side of feminism is what one should take as an example. Thus, I hope throughout this debate, that my opponent attempts to debunk issues widely believed by intellectual feminists instead of mocking silly-looking high school students. Before I get into that though, I fail to understand why listing men"s rights issues debunks feminism.While I think that the studies my opponent's source has referenced make a lot of simplifications and often stretch the real results I, again, accept that there are issues in which men have a disadvantage. This, however, does not mean feminism is a useless movement. I am willing to debate the wage gap with you. I mean, I hope it doesn"t become the main point of this debate, but I am willing to discuss it. In the next round, I will list some examples of women being disadvantaged in society, as my opponent has done with men. I hope we can have a rational debate, and gain some understanding of each other"s ideology. Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com...