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Feminism

I keep trying not to take debates, and then I see one like this and I have to. So by the Topic of this we can clearly see that Con is against feminism. It is on him to meet the BOP, and show that feminism is in fact bad. It is my job to undermine him and show that it can be good, and the purpose of it as a whole. Feminism - the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes http://www.merriam-webster.com... I will offer some contentions. Contention 1 The purpose of the feminism movement. My adversary says this and it ties in with the point I will be making. "It's truly incredibly, how feminists believe that you can create gender equality by focusing on the plights of one gender." That is the entire essence of this movement, and it is a necessity. You could very well change his quote to support slavery and say something like " It's truly incredible, how slaves believe you can create social equality by focusing on the plights of one race". The essence behind the feminist movement is equality within itself. It asks for equal treatment among men and women in regards to salary, job positions, and anything else that can fit into this category. The entire directive behind this movement, is that women should be treated and granted the same opportunities as men. This should be a self evident truth. Contention 2 Women compared to Men with Job opportunities. Granted we have made a huge step with this, it was not always the case. My cause is to show how feminism could have helped or will continue to help support this. Since we sunk into recession quite a few years back women are actually starting to outpace men in job hunts. This was not always the case. The Department of Labor has statistics that says this. "In 2010, women represented 46.7 percent of the United States labor force, a slightly larger share than at the start of the recession in 2007. Overall 71.9 million women were employed or looking for work, representing 58.6 percent of all women aged 16 and over." then also goes on to say this "Women surpass men in educational attainment. Among the employed ages 25 and over, 37.1 percent of women have at least a bachelor's degree compared to 34.9 percent of men. Because women are less likely than men to be in the workforce, female college graduates are still outnumbered by male college graduates in the labor force. However, women with a bachelor's degree outnumber men by 1.6 million in the population as a whole and women are a growing share of college graduates. As such, women college graduates are likely to outnumber male college graduates in the labor force in the near future." This is just recent studies and also mainly after the recession. Now if you look at this data below, we can also see this is clearly supported and men have far more job opportunities than women. Feminism can help keep this in check , and help to assure women have the same rights as men. http://www.dol.gov... Contention 3 Pay-scale Men Vs Women. This is a huge topic and probably one of the main reasons and issues surrounding the feminist movement. While actually receiving the job is a huge deal itself, more often than not women are paid far less than men. This also would make no logical sense due to the fact women have a higher chance of actually finishing a degree than most men(I have shown this through earlier stats and sources). Recent studies show this "This date symbolizes how far into 2012 the average woman must work to earn what the average man earned in 2011. While the wage gap has certainly narrowed with the past generation of working womenâ€"in 1967 women only earned about 58 cents to a man’s dollarâ€"progress has stalled in recent years. If progress continues at its current rate, it will take 45 years to eradicate the wage gap." "In 2010 women who worked full time, year round, still only earned 77 percent of what men earned. The median earnings for women were $36,931 compared to $47,715 for men, and neither real median earnings nor the female-to-male earnings ratio have increased since 2009." "The American Association of University Women tackled the pay gap question by looking at workers of the same educational attainmentâ€"same kind of college, same gradesâ€"holding the same kinds of jobs, and having made the same choices about marriage and number of kids. They found that college-educated women earn 5 percent less the first year out of school than their male peers. Ten years later, even if they keep working on par with those men, the women earn 12 percent less." It is quite obvious through multiple studies and statistics that women make less than men. Also bear in mind that women also have a higher graduation rate from college than men as well. Even with women having the same qualifications as a man, the usually tend to make 10-20 less than if a man were to receive the same job. This is not equality by any means, and is defiantly a reason for the feminist movement to stick up and fight for. http://www.americanprogress.org... http://www.payscale.com... Now for rebuttals. Since I focused more on the social side of this. I am just going to go through some of the points he made and offer rebuttals to what he said directly. This is different than how I normally do this, but to defend feminism I focused more on equality in the work place rather than specifically targeting how women are treated for being women(gender equality) (1A)"I've always been amazed with feminism. While there is an inarguable gender gap, I don't understand how focusing on one gender is supposed to, in anyway, bring out "equality". (2A)Well this is pretty self evident, if you don't focus on the issues that a specific "gender" is facing, they will never be resolved. Without making an effort to tackle some of the adversities they are facing nothing would change. Especially most of the facts that I mentioned in my contentions. (1B)"While it's true that women in the Middle East are treated absolutely disgusting, the men don't have it all that much better" (2B)This is just utterly incorrect and a failure to do proper research. Women can be killed or even have their face burned off with battery acid for trying to read. They must also cover their face at all times, due to religious reasons. Men have it far better than women in comparison to middle east standards. (1C)"It's true that being an attractive woman, walking around in a bad area, you could get raped. That's a fear I will always understand. However, if a man finds himself in a bad area wearing the wrong color, he may find himself being the victim of a drive by" (2C)This is a plausible statement, but it is also statistically shown that women are targeted for crimes far more than men because of their inability to defend themselves. (1D)"Feminists really like to point to double standards that favor men, yet most of these double standards they mention, are in no way true. When is the last time you congratulated a man for sleeping around a lot? My friends and I, always refer to men who sleep around a lot as "man whores." That is in no way, a term of endearment" (2D)Again this could be considered plausible, but fails to address the actual intent behind the movement itself. Thus ruling this point invalid or pointless. (1E)"I find that my issue with feminism is mostly rooted in the fact that they believe women are the victims, because they are women. When a woman is beaten, raped, or has her rights stolen, it's not a feminist issue. It's a humanitarian issue" (2E)This is defiantly a feminist issue. Where as it could be considered humanitarian in regards to issues like rape, when they are being paid less than men because of what gender they are, there is a proper cause to defend this. The movement itself takes a stand for discrimination they face as a whole, and try to make a level playing field. (1F)"All of my life, I have heard one feminist that I deeply agreed with. I can't seem to remember her name, she was big on YouTube. She managed to speak of women's issues, without blaming men" (2F)I would imagine that most feminist don't hate men. They may resent them because they are paid more and receive more benefits. This is inevitable if we look at psychology. This would more often than not draw some resentment. I would also venture to say that most women do not feel this way though. They want to tackle the social issues behind this and make a level playing field so they receive equal opportunities, not use the movement as a "hate on men" thing. That is why pay grades among women are starting to rise in comparison to men because of the work certain groups have put into resolving this issue. (1G)"That is what gender equality should be about. It should be about looking at the gap between men and women, and asking how we can close that and be as equal as possible" (2G)Then you support feminism at its core. This almost matches the definition I gave at the beginning and is the driving force behind women's rights. In Closing My adversary has not met his BOP nor shown why feminism is in fact bad. He gave reasons that he dislikes it, but I have shown the movement at its core aims to produce social equality and offer women the same rights as men. This is something we need to embrace as a society. Everyone deserves a chance at equality.