Open Letter to Men in Speech and Debate
To the lumpenproletariat
who labeled my body “communal”,
Speech and debate is an incessant echo chamber of ego and size comparison (for now, I mean in terms trophies). There are many different characters within debate, but there is one character that stands as a giant amongst everyone else: “debate men”.
Take Wallace Chen for instance. Chen was a PF debater for four years at Clements High School. He ran arguments against sexism and spoke up about violence against women. Chen believed that using his debate platform to speak up on such issues would exempt him from sexual assault. However, this turned out to not be true. In 2019, Chen would call himself a “sex offender” as a joke on his Instagram thinking his jokes caused no harm. His jokes became more than dark humor. During his freshman year at Clements High School, he proceeded to unsolicitedly touch and photograph girls. Then, in November 2018, Chen proceeded to assault a young debate woman who repeatedly told him to stop. There is a pattern of sexist jokes and praxis in debate and society that needs to be addressed. Violent words towards women are the first steps towards worse situations like sexual assault and rape.
On June 13, 2020, the young woman Chen assaulted writes:
“This is something that can’t be hidden under the rug, it’s almost contradicting that debaters argue about morals everyday yet it’s difficult for them to treat women fairly.”
Wallace Chen now attends Dartmouth College living peacefully as the trauma he inflicted onto multiple women continues to haunt them.
“Debate men” feel as if they are exempt from exhibiting sexist behavior because of their awareness of overt forms of misogyny that exist within the world. However, for that reason, “debate men” are specifically sexist in a violent way because they choose to weaponize their awareness of sexism as an excuse to abuse, harass, and shackle women to the patriarchal structures of debate.
Debate men exclude themself from sexism to hide their toxic masculinity because as a man in debate, they’re supposed to be aware of the patriarchal structures that exist but will continue to weaponize that awareness to allow themselves to make comments such as “not all debate men”. You hate sexism, so you can’t be sexist, right? Fuck no. When men like ******* refuse to listen to the reality of women’s oppression, it reaffirms male privilege and shifts the attention towards a male-centered culture. In Speech and Debate, which is already male-dominated, it is a paradox to debate supporting sex work in round yet hate women outside of round.
These men say that women should “be free from the shackles of the patriarchy, ‘’ but then go on to weaponize language to strengthen those same barriers pushing women out. After all, not all men are sexist, especially if they’re aware of aforementioned patriarchal structures, right? Wrong. Women are constantly at the center of critique, and it is fucking tiring. Dare I post this and get called a misandrist?
(Allow me to educate on the irrelevance of the word. Sociologist Allan G. Johnson writes in The Gender Knot: Unraveling our Patriarchal Legacy that the term “misandry” is actually used to put down feminists and shift the attention towards men. Society offers no comparable anti-male ideology to misogyny. Given the brutal reality of women’s oppression, there is no such thing as a male equivalent to misogyny.)
You go on to lure women into having sex with you and proceed to think of words like “communal”. Is this what a self-proclaimed heterosexual, cis-male feminist looks like?
Words and phrases like “still hit tho” and “communal” dehumanize women in the most sexually oppressive ways. I understand that “Still hit tho” is commonly used in today’s society, but it is used to deny women the right to sexual freedom. Sexual liberation has always been a part of feminists’ goals. When phrases like “still hit tho” are used, it sets back the efforts of feminists to sexually explore. These words — the same words that came out of your “woke” mouth — are used in the status quo to guilt, shame, denounce, repress, and dominate women. But I don’t expect you to understand this, between the combination of your narcissistic behavior and misogyny in addition to your lack of reading of radical queer and feminist literature. Just read some Foucalt for fucks sake.
It is ironic that men mention the “commodification of bodies” as a general topic for debate but fail to understand the way in which they have hypersexualized and thus commodified our bodies. Men view women’s bodies as objects for their sole pleasure. What a feminist, am I right?
Our bodies are our own. We are not to be used like a fucking communal restroom.
This may have been written to you, but this was not written for you. This was written for me and the women you have hurt. Fuck you.