Instigator / Pro
4
1499
rating
52
debates
35.58%
won
Topic
#2953
Parents Should Prohibit Their Sons From Wearing Skirts to Kindergarten
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
After 2 votes and with 10 points ahead, the winner is...
RationalMadman
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- Two days
- Max argument characters
- 3,000
- Voting period
- One month
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
Contender / Con
14
1702
rating
574
debates
67.86%
won
Description
Pro had won this debate, so I was curious if anyone could beat pro's arguments.
Round 1
Pro's most powerful argument can be summed up in a single paragraph: because of gender stereotypes, it's very easy for the child to be bullied. With lack of knowledge of what boy and girls are supposed to be, the kids would have no idea what mistake they are making. Parents need to establish the role of protection in order to shield the child from discrimination. It's simply too much worry both for child and for parents to take the responsibility, should the teacher or other adults make crude comments about your son wearing a dress/skirt. When your kid is that young, it's also helpful to establish standards. A professional work place would require a more formal type of uniform. Even if you aren't too formal yet, there's a certain type of dress for every situation, and it would certainly help not to wear questionable outfits. Crossdressing is difficult to justify especially when you are responsible for your child's resulting outfit and look. As you can see, we should prohibit our sons from wearing dresses or skirts into kindergarten class.
That's cute, I like that you tried. Time to remind you who RM is.
Let's start with a beautiful, simple Kritik:
Schools should do it and enforce it, not the parents.
Rather than push for parental-enforced sexist restrictions on clothing, Pro is entitled to push for schools doing it and I'd say it should be up to the parents if they agree to it, protest against it (especially via PTA powers) or send their children to other schools.
==
That was a bit too easy, let's not be a coward, let's slap on a more complex Kritik:
The very protection against bullying and discrimination you want the child to develop can't be achieved by Pro's suggested approach.
Imagine the parent is the bully... Well, they are. You see, instead of it being a teasing session to endure and disincentivise the child from wearing a skirt to school, the parent is quite literally bullying the child via their very authority to punish and discipline the child at home, in order to blackmail them to not wear a skirt to school.
Not only is this hypocritical, it's self-defeating. That young boy will potentially remain trans, effeminate and girly his entire life (or her entire life, if she transitions later in life to their preferred gender). So, what is that child going to do when they were raised to dodge bullying, to be a coward in the face of peer pressure against embracing their femininity? What's gonna happen when the bullies are also older and more sophisticated? What's that child gonna do, is he (or she) gonna know how to handle himself/herself? What's he gonna do when the homophobes and transphobes spit at him, kick him while he's down (metaphorically and physically) when he/she was raised to shrivel up and conform as a habit from a young age by parents who were meant to train him to embrace who he/she is? You think it's gonna get easier later?
==
Now for a proper non-Kritik constructive contention:
If the parents and society is transphobic and doesn't want 'him' to wear that, then they should perhaps opt to find gender-neutral dress code.
Again linking to the simpler Kritik, the school itself and PTA parents should push for a gender neutral dress code where skirts are just not worn, after all there's girls who dislike wearing it. So, why is it that parents should prohibit the child from wearing it? Why? What reason should it be them and not the school itself? Why are skirts even a 'thing' if they're a sore spot for feminine boys and masculine girls?
*mic drop*
good luck
Round 2
Con's first kritik is confusing and makes little sense. It is at worst a straw man and has no impact on my argument. Schools' enforcement doesn't mean parents can't also enforce the prohibition.
Con's second argument holds more water, but it's not about being cowardly, but rather assisting lack of understanding. The presentation is similar to informed consent: it's extremely rare that a kindergarten kid would understand all about gender roles, sex ideals and discrimination. The amount of hatred and backlash wouldn't match the seemingly innocent "statement". As a previous proponent said (translated to English): "It's good that the child is wearing a dress to exhibit himself. But it's bad that he is doing it in this situation. There is a place and time for everything." Indeed, one time the parent himself was caught wearing a dress as an adult and even he felt exasperated and difficult to handle the situation. When the child is alone and meant to establish their independence and learning under a safe environment, it's important to reduce risks and build up the basic knowledge so that they can wear the dress at the right time at the right location. It's also important that they grow to fully understand what they are doing and why society discriminates against boys wearing skirts.
The reason that Pro's entire Round 2 consists solely of rebuttals is that Pro has no constructive case to build on whatsoever.
My First Kritik
Pro tries to 'wave away' my significant, albeit simple, Kritik regarding who should be doing the prohibition. He calls it a 'Strawman fallacy' even though he certainly meant a Red Herring fallacy. This is not true, however, and Pro himself is committing a 'fallacy-fallacy' whereby he calls something a logically fallacious argument and dismisses it solely based on that.
The enforcement of prohibition being the parents makes essential that the school doesn't do it. This debate would be a near-truism if it was being argued by Pro that in schools and societies that ban boys wearing skirts altogether, that the parents should prohibit their child from going to school in the clothing that will get the child expelled. This is still not a 'pure truism' since I can counter it with the idea of supporting protests and PTA-based backlash on the school for its anti-trans and sex-normative attitudes but in the short-term, obviously it would be foolish for parents not to prohibit in this scenario.
Instead, the only way this resolution is fair and debatable is in situations where the school doesn't have an iron-clad uniform policy that explicitly bans boys wearing skirts. This resolution thus is specifically asking us if parents should ban the child from doing so and I say no, they should not because if the school and society allow it there's insufficient justification for the parents taking the role of rule-maker.
My Second Kritik
The rebuttal from Pro on this is that the child doesn't fully understand the reason for transphobia and sex-normative bias/prejudice in society and needs to learn this as they grow up before embracing who they truly are and how they wish to dress.
What kind of rebuttal is that?
The harms of being taunted and bullied are blatantly going to be felt regardless of age and if the child has grown up almost comfortable with the looks, stares and comments, they will easily handle it compared to an older teenager or young adult who only for the first time is daring to wear a skirt as an XY-chromosome individual. I am not advocating just simply letting the child wear the skirt and doing nothing to prepare them. Conversely, I am advocating giving the child tools to cope and forcing society and the school to become more accepting of it, as a collective of parents of boys who like to wear skirts.
The parents can make the child feel the very opposite to bullied and insecure, if they embrace the 'boy' for who he (or she) truly is and will grow up to become. Pro has provided insufficient reason to think this is the wrong approach.
Round 3
Forfeited
I told you in Round 1, don't post such Round 1's against me, it's straight disrespect. I am RM, not some noob.
If you two try this again, with more substantive arguments, I'll vote on it.
Also, I am Con. In America, any person who takes Pro would be cancelled immediately after the match, should it be broadcasted. People in China are nationally supporting and when it comes to social rights, centrists. They are not really exposed to western opinions so it would still make sense for them to argue this. Not here in America though.
The only reason Con lost in the original is because he wasn't even a pro at debating then. He was a fashion designer. He is there to give a speech about himself rather than to argue. In reality, if you take up this topic with any sociologist in the United States you'd be clapped.
Indeed I would have been, I was gone for UIL today, lol
are you Con on this topic?