Is Anyone Not Ready?
By: Annabelle Long
Tags: Feminism, Debate, Memoir, Friendship, Politics

Every woman in debate has a “gross debate guy” story; many have worse. Elyse and I regularly had uncomfortable interactions with men who judged us, and we frequently debated budding sexists who seemed to enjoy nothing more than speaking over us. Two men who’d judged us in a debate (and decided different ways) once hashed out a disagreement about how to consider our arguments about gendered violence on a high school debate podcast. “The plot thickens,” the host of the podcast said upon realizing his guests had a bone to pick, “I didn’t realize this was personal for the two of you.” Personal for them. A podcast. Hilarious. Too perfect.

My primary “gross debate guy” story is relatively mild (assuming sexual harassment can ever be considered to be so). A year after I quit the Cal debate team, I received an unsolicited, multi-clip dick video from an older guy I debated as a high school sophomore and again as a college freshman. When I debated him in college, my partner was a guy, and after I delivered the final negative rebuttal and the other guy gave his 2AR, he confronted my partner in the men’s restroom, taken aback at the speech I’d given — what the fuck was that, he demanded, banging on the stall door, furious that he might have just lost to us, to me. He did lose to us, to me. We eliminated him from the tournament. But it didn’t stop him from sending me a video of him masturbating more than a year later. You can take the girl out of debate, but you can’t stop the creepy debate guys from bothering her, or something like that.

I struggle with the thought that some version of me probably existed somewhere in his brain, maybe since the first time I debated him when I was 15 and I lost to him and he told my older male teammate he thought I was cute. Who was that girl to him? What did she represent? Was the video he sent three years later supposed to scare her? Seduce her? Is there (can there ever be?) deeper meaning in a dick video? Whatever the answers, whoever she was to him, she was a placeholder for women in debate as a whole, I imagine: ripe and tempting when young and beatable, complicated and threatening when older and better. In any case, regardless of if meaning can or should be derived from a video of someone’s dick, she (I?) was apparently humiliating to lose to.

Sexism is embedded in every part of debate; not all of it comes in the form of graphic Snapchats or sleazy comments from coaches. The most everyday forms, which is to say the most acceptable forms, come in debate rounds themselves, in the assigning of speaker points based on how someone sounds, in telling a tenacious freshman that she’s too aggressive and should really be nicer in cross-ex, in judges rolling their eyes at emotional arguments about gendered violence. At one national tournament, Elyse and I were the only two girls in the top 20 speakers, clocking in at 18 and 20. At that same tournament, there were two guys named Nicholas in the top three speakers.

Debater Girls was primarily an out-of-round brand, and while we resisted some of these more insidious forms of sexism, we also fully conformed to sexist expectations in other regards. Perhaps most noticeably, I deliberately lowered my voice when I spread.

After receiving our first bid to the Tournament of Champions at the season-opener in Dallas, TX.

I’ll be the first to admit that I think spreading sounds better in a lower voice. It’s never something I was told; I was lucky to have coaches who were mindful of the potential long-term psychological effects of telling a 15-year-old girl that she’d be better and more people would like her if her voice was deeper, but it’s something that became obvious over time. A few weeks into the seven-week summer debate camp I attended before my senior year, my voice was hoarse from hours of drills and practice debates, and I had to lower it out of necessity. Despite the fact that I’d lost my voice and was pushing into a lower range than felt natural in order to be heard, instructors complimented me on how I sounded. The positive reinforcement convinced me to keep the baritone, and at the highly competitive season-opener in Dallas, I won the 7th place speaker award, beating over 220 competitors from across the country. Further validation.

When I watch recordings of myself from when I debated, it’s funny (if mildly embarrassing) how much I lowered my voice. I sounded — and with my flat-ironed blonde hair, unfortunately looked — like Elizabeth Holmes, the start-up scammer who wore black turtlenecks and adopted an unnaturally deep voice to gain credibility in male-dominated Silicon Valley. She was clearly emulating Steve Jobs, and it paid off: despite the fact that her product never worked, she won praise from across the globe, earning honorary doctorates and “Woman of the Year” awards and hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. Lowering my voice in order to make myself seem more competent in the eyes of greasy middle-aged debate coaches felt similarly scammy. I was also playing a part. And I was also getting away with it.