• PRO

    My opponent claims that, since these laws treat women...

    Feminism is not sexist.

    I thank my opponent for his second round of rebuttal. I would like to start by addressing my opponent's complaint that I neglected the 'women's right' part of the definition of feminism. While I grant that I did not downright say the words 'women's right' everytime I talked about equality, I thought that it was obviously implied. I do not see how someone can talk about equality in society without obviously referring to equal rights; the only things that society can actually change are human rights. So, to me, that was obvious, but I apologize to my opponent for the misunderstanding. Most of my opponent's arguments seem to be focused on convincing me that that the laws he presented (VAWA and Selective Service) are sexist, but my arguments had nothing to do with that. So, for the remainder of this debate, let's work under the assumption that I grant that these law are indeed sexist. Now, my arguments were focusing on the association that my opponent makes between these laws and feminism. My opponent claims that, since these laws treat women differently than men, they must be feminist in nature and therefore feminism must be sexist. As I said earlier, that is an unsupported association. According to the definition of feminism, a law could be considered feminist if it supports equal rights between men and women, not if it supports women in general. Does my opponent thinks that the VAWA and the Selective Service support the latter? If so, then they are not feminist. Therefore, pointing to these laws as a justification for claiming that feminism is sexist is unjustified. 'I agree that we are addressing the IDEA of feminism, however, rather than argue that the focus of Feminism on women's rights specifically is sexist, i chose to argue that the laws that are supported in order to give women equal rights in America is sexist.' The problem is that the laws my opponent has presented are not promoting EQUAL rights and therefore cannot be associated with feminism. My opponent then completely misunderstands my analogy, focusing on what atheism and feminism are rather than actually addressing my point which was basically that you cannot judge an ideology by its abuse and misuse (because then you are judging people, not the ideology), which is what my opponent seems to be doing with feminism. It has nothing to do with what atheism is. 'PRO tries rebuts my arguments by attempting to argue that since Feminism does not support the VAWA, it cannot be sexist' No... what I'm saying is that since feminism is not the support of the VAWA, one cannot point to this law to accuse feminism of being sexist. My opponent then tries to explain why he associates the VAWA with feminism, claiming that they both support women's rights. But my opponent is doing exactly what he accused me of doing; he is leaving out part of the definition of feminism, focusing on the 'women's rights' aspect and leaving out the 'equality of the sexes' aspect. Then my opponent goes on to explain how Selective Service is sexist which is, as I have said, irrelevant. 'The argument is not for prevention of the law, the argument is against misapplication of rights' I would ask my opponent to clarify what he means by 'misapplication of rights' so that I can answer this point. The analogy with taxes seems rather pointless. The conclusion I draw from this round is pretty similar to the one I drew for the last round; once again, my opponent is confusing the idea of feminism with some aspects of society that favor women. I do not have any CX question either.