A good commentary pins down its intention and scope forehand, and thus this is what I would like to do here. I have thought about two different approaches to write this commentary: to comment on two different opinions and focus on their exact point of disagreement or comment on their argumentation approaches and methodologies. I am doing the latter. The first one sounds more ambitious but I am limited by time and my ability in going through the books and recorded debates. And what intrigues me the most is how the female debater held the conversation. There weren’t exact claims made from the female debater through out this YouTube clip that I embedded above so the scope of argumentation method is probably easier.
The pivot was made from the claim “Women deserve less” to “Women are … (a series of description)” to eventually “Men only talk to women because they want to have sex with them”.
The female debater sticks to a principle – premise and conclusion. The male debater, however, bases his argument on his claims like “women are opportunistic maters / women are entitled”.
The male debater, with those claims composes almost personal attacks against the female debater. Whereas the female debater continuously and very much with patience asks for a logical explanation from the male debater to support his claim. These are two entirely different methods.
* He refers to the male debater and she refers to the female debater below.
I am surprised by the patience she demonstrates. I find her toleration in the switch of claims that was made from the male debater to be admirable. He came in with a series of claims, she asked for an explanation with logic, he then proceeds to frame the dynamic of the conversation as a justification in the attacks that he made against her.
Now, if we list out all the speeches from both sides, we see a clear difference in the destinations that their speeches reach: “women are …” assigns a certain demographic a certain set of characteristics and thus leading the listeners to form a solidified view of that demographic. “what substantiates that conclusion?” asks for a reasoning or truth, listeners will gain a justification (to whatever extent plausible) or understanding on how a certain claim comes.
The former is common in politics and tend to gain more power in a group setting because it begins with what people believe or think without challenging it. The latter is more rigorous in its pursuit in truth, it is seen more in academic settings. This explains why it seemed like the male debater had an upper hand and gained more agreement from the group (although there are other factors like perceived authority caused by their physical location, pre-existing political or ideological alignment between the male debater and the audience).
The female debater, however, does rush into cutting the male debater off before he finishes in the early segment of the debate. It is not my interest to debate whether it is justified or not. I am mentioning this because I want to avoid being biased towards one over the other.
This is sad. This is the downside to the practice of democracy. The votes (or agreement from the audience or civilians) follows whoever that speaks more of what the majority think. This is the kind of democracy that gives birth to Trump administration. When the majority believes women to be seen or treated less, when the majority believes that they hate the immigrants, then it is justified in their actions in pushing policies and creating the realities. I take it as the commentator’s important job to not let his or her political belief or moral standards to influence their writings on a topic. I therefore leave my frustration within this one paragraph without further stretching it.
But this is also the murder of critical thinking, self-reflection and rationality in our society.
Rebel 