The Oxford Women's Open

On 30th April and 1st May the Oxford Union organized the first Women's Open tournament in Europe. A tournament for gals only, designed to promote women in the world of debating. Two BDU female debaters (Andrea and Dessi) attended the event. Here's a report I've been asked to post:

What struck us was that we were the only team from the continent, as the Brits like to call the rest of Europe. What impressed us were the judges. Each panel in one of the five rooms consisted of world-class debaters: amongst others were Jo Farmer (CA), Sayeqa Islam (DCA), Jonathan Leader Maynard, Tom Hoskins, Gavin Ilsley, Ben Jaspers, Ridyan Morgan and Art Ward. What delighted us was meeting Michael Saliba from Stuttgart at the tournament. He had been in Oxford since the beginning of the week and dropped by to do a little adjudicating.
After each round there were 30 minutes designated for extensive team and individual feedback. Although we didn't fare very well tab-wise, we did have a lot of fun debating the topics of the preliminary rounds and learned one or two new tricks and were reminded of some old basics. Plus we got to debate twice in the famous Oxford chamber:-)

The topics were:
R1: THW only emprison criminals who pose a physical threat to society!
R2: THW allow parents to set up and run their own schools!
R3: THW actively seek and deport illegal immigrants!
R4: THW allow minors to have sex chanage operations!*
R5: THW fund opposition movements in countries ruled by tyrannical regimes!
Final: THB that Catholics should democratically elect the Pope!

The panel judging the final consisted of 9 (!) judges, 6 female and 3 male. The "winneresses" of the final representing Cambridge in the Opening Oppostion were Mary Nugent and Natalie Smith. Congrats! They get to sepnt one week in a 4-star hotel on Malta!

The tournament, despite consisting of female participants only, was not much different than other tournaments. There was a bit more chatting after each round, but that's all in terms of supposed typical female-only behaviour.

The tournament is great for rookies (female only of course), but also for judges (both sexes) who want to learn from world class debaters.

*In round four we had a judge who had obviously studied Gender Studies and who taught us a new word: cisgender. The term describes a person who is comfortable with the gender assigned to them at birth, i.e. a biological female raised as a girl who feels comfortable with her gender identity. "Cis" derives from Latin and means "on the same side". The term is used in contrast to transgenders. Wonderful! Can't wait for the next gender debate!

Oxford Women's Open‏

In contrast to the achte minute blog, PR organ of the umbrella organisation for German debating VDCH, it's not the purpose of this Blog to advertise upcoming tournaments or to glorify mediocre final debates. However, in this case, we will make an exception. This tournament promises to be great and we encourage all women debaters to take part in this unique event!

On Friday April 30th and Saturday May 1st, the first debating competition of its kind in IONA comes to Oxford!


Our world-class judging pool is headed by the team of:
- CAs Kirsty Russell and Sayeqa Islam
- DCA Jo Farmer

Women's is also a Pro-Am meaning that no team may have two speakers on it who have broken at Euros or Worlds - obviously both must be female! Reg is set at £40 per team, in return for which we promise you...

- World class judges in every room
- 5 rounds breaking to Semi-Finals
- Crash for two nights
- Two amazing socials

WHY?:
We think there’s a problem with retention of female debaters on the circuit, and this is no where more evident than in the Oxford Union Society itself. The top levels of debating simply do not bear out the kind of gender parity that IONA should be seeing after decades of female involvement and we believe all steps should be taken to change this. The Oxford Women’s Open intends to form one part of the drive to further nurture female debating talent, equipping competitors with the skills they need to break through on the circuit. It is only through such opportunities that we can expect to see a shift in the dynamics of debating any time soon.

HOW?:
Time for adjudication after debates will be double the IV norm, with an emphasis on training and improvement. To ensure that this feedback will be of the top quality, and therefore relevant to competitor development, we have packed our adjudication team with Worlds and Euros semi-finalists, finalists and champions. Every room, and every competitor, will receive world-class coaching throughout the tournament - there will be no ‘bin rooms’ that get neglected.

To reg please send an email with your names to oxford.womens@googlemail.com

See you there!
The Oxford Women's Team

BDU Officially a Target to "Hit On"

"How are you doin'?"

Although it did not happen in the absolutely-obvious Joey style it was crystal clear: the Berlin Debating Union was being hit on. We always knew it or at least made ourselves to believe it very convincingly that we're a very sexy club - but now we know for sure!
But do we like it?

Last Tuesday at exactly 8pm four young men entered room 293, Invalidenstraße 110. They were successfully convinced to debate. Somehow it was very obvious that they were hitting on some of the female debaters. Somehow the thought came to mind they might, maybe, possibly be part of the Berlin Pick-Up Community. What sin could the BDU have possibly comitted to be blessed with their presence? How did we come to be one of their numerous guinea-pigs? And where was our big brother to protect our "Ehre"?
They said they were studying public speech, wanting to learn "wie man Leute begeistert mit reden." bla bla bla

One of their hitting-on-victims felt like an object afterwards. "Hm", she thought "so maybe they were trying their different hitting techniques on me? I felt flattered first. But now that I'm pretty much sure that they were testing on me, I feel like an object. Bastards!!"

Fazit? The concept and the techniques of those guys don't work on well-informed, thinking, debating girls?

They said they will maybe come back... We dare them to debate the following topic with us: THW ban pick-up communities!

What's the feminine form of Oscar

I just came across two gender-related articles in the New York Times that might be of interest for you. The first concerns the contribution of female soldiers to peacekeeping missions. We had a debate on whether soldiers should be barred from having children last week, and what the NYT says partly confirms the opp's line (and my widely criticized decision as adjudicator).

The other article is a comment by Kim Elsesser on this year's Oscars. I think her proposal for a gender-neutral award would be quite a good motion.

By the way, the NYT's series "The female factor" is truly excellent.

In all of us command

On the way back from a debating tournament in Vienna this weekend we had quite an intense discussion on whether its motions were a good choice.

Above all, the motion of the first round - "Should national anthems be formulated in a gender-neutral way?" was controversial.

I believe this debate to be far easier for the opposition because it requires sophisticated feminist reasoning to overcome the deeply entrenched common sense idea of "this is simply a historic document".

However, as some people already told me on the tournament, there is an ongoing debate about this issue in Austria - read this dpa story.

And on my favourite feminist blog I just read a few hours ago that there is such a debate in Canada as well.

This adds a sense of realism to a motion that I considered absurd before. Still, the question remains whether current debates in politics necessarily are good motions for a debating tournament.