Females are better people than males.

Thank you Lydia for accepting. I look forward to a stimulating debate. Before anything can be said about which gender, are a better people than another. We must first understand what it means to be “better people”. People throughout life who have exhibited behaviors such as aggression, apathy, depression, and dishonesty tend to more often than not lead to a detriment to society. Behaviors like these are the primary cause of problems between people and their relationships. Many would find themselves hard pressed to find a case where a conflict didn’t arise from at least one of these behaviors. People generally strive for happy, honest, and empathetic relationships to build their lives around. Since these more often than not lead to a better relationship and ultimately a better community, it would seem logical that we should gauge people’s personhoods by how they behave and how they interact with their community. Since a better community is our ultimate goal, we should label those who behave best as the “better people”. -Aggression is Humanities downfall- To start this contention off, I will begin by quoting Stephen Hawking,“The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or a partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all”[6]. I challenge my opponent to show aggression itself serves a beneficial purpose. Mankind does not need this behavior any longer. It should be understood that assertiveness, competitiveness and ambition are not hostile in nature, unlike aggression is. When fighters are in a boxing match, they do not act out of aggression, they are calm and collected fighting machines with a strong respect for their opponent [1]. Fighting itself is not aggression, however, it is undeniable that many fights are instigated through aggression. These meaningless fights could simply be avoided if aggression were not a part of the equation. Unfortunately we cannot do away with this aggression as of yet. As a result, nearly 53% of crimes committed are classified as “violent crime”[3]. -Incarceration Rates- Perhaps one of the strongest pieces of evidence that I will present is the staggering difference between genders and their incarceration rates. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, approximately 8.8% of females make up the prison population [2]. When we look at the total number of prisoners in the United States, there comes out to be around 2,266,800 [3]. This means that only 200,000 females are currently in prison. Among death row inmates, we see this figure plummet even further down to about 2% [4]. These are no modest numbers. This shows a direct correlation between the rates at which each gender commits a crime. The best explaination for this happening is that females generally do not posses the same level of bad behavior males tend to have. I would find few people who would argue the contrary to be true. -Empathy- This is where females begin to shine in comparison to males. Females, by their very nature possess more empathy than males [5]. Empathy is the key to living together in peace. Empathy is defined as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” If one truly shares feelings and understands another, there would be no reason for hostilities to occur. There may be disagreements, but that is a far cry for being hostile to one another. Much like within families, sometimes we almost “hate” each-other, but if one were to be asked if that family member deserved to die or be harmed over their disagreement, they would most likely say no. Empathy itself may as well be equated to love. If everybody on this planet could somehow empathize with one another, I would wager that crime rates would drop across the board, especially those involved in violent crime. -Suicide- An important part of living in any community is the ability to cope with one’s own reality. Even if all our bad behaviors were removed from this planet, there would still be reasons to morn and be sad. It is important that individuals within the community are able to conquer this despair and continue to be a functioning member of society, for their own good and everyone else’s. When we look at both males and females, there again seems to be an unfavorable consistency of males having a higher suicide rate. Looking through recent decades, it would seem males are four times more likely to commit suicide in comparison to females. In 2013, the percent of female suicide was only 22.1%, with males consisting of the other 77.9% [7]. Suicide doesn’t just effect the community on a resource level. It serves as a severe detriment to the personhoods of those who knew the victim, especially family members. It might as well be considered emotional homicide to the victims loved ones. This alone can trigger even more suicide due to the fact that a lot of people’s raison d’etra is living with the people they love. Suicide is despair incarnate. With that being said, I give the floor to Con! [1] http://www.expertboxing.com... [2] http://www.forbes.com... [3] http://www.bjs.gov... [4] http://www.deathpenalty.org... [5] http://greatergood.berkeley.edu... [6] http://www.iflscience.com... [7] https://www.afsp.org...