Instigator / Pro
7
1684
rating
15
debates
100.0%
won
Topic
#1198

Debate Art should change their “gender” option and replace it with “sex”, where only “male” or “female” are options

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
3
0
Better sources
2
2
Better legibility
1
1
Better conduct
1
0

After 1 vote and with 4 points ahead, the winner is...

semperfortis
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
20,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
3
1641
rating
63
debates
65.08%
won
Description

Full resolution:
Debate Art should change their “gender” option and replace it with “sex”, where only “male” or “female” are options

BoP is shared.

In “edit profile”, Debate Art currently provides a ‘gender’ field with multiple options for a user to choose from. For Pro to fulfill their BoP they must reasonably assert why this field should be replaced with a “sex” field with “male” and “female” as its only options. As Con, they ought to argue why the current gender field, with it's current options ought
not to be replaced by a sex field. Moreover, it is to be assumed that there can only exist either the sex field or the gender field; hence it should be argued why one should take precedence over the other.

Sex - “the sex as determined by the presence of the XX (female) or the XY (male) genotype in somatic cells, without regard to phenotypic manifestations.”

Gender - “either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female

Format:
R1: Pro provides opening statements and waives, Con provides opening argument
R2: Pro provides opening argument with rebuttal, Con rebuts
R3: Defence/rebuttal
R4: Defence, with closing statements (no new rebuttals)

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@Tejretics

A discussion would be great! I understand that view completely and I think you are right.

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@semperfortis

At the very least, I’m interested in discussing this with you, because I think there’s real benefits from having a “gender” option irrespective of the fact that gender is “scientifically imprecise.” For example, “political ideology” is also imprecise and a social construction—it is nonetheless an option, because it contributes valuable information. Gender might be even more important information for the mental health of DART members who are, for example, trans, or have gender dysphoria (and the scientific consensus, by the way, is that trans people—whose gender, whether that’s neurological or socially constructed, differs from the sex they were assigned at birth—exist), to ensure that other members refer to them by the appropriate pronouns, for example.

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@Barney

Thanks for taking the time to vote!

---RFD (1 of 2)---
Interpreting the resolution:
Pretty straight forward proposal.

Gist:
I learned more about intersexed people than I ever thought I needed. While I disagree with pro, he makes a strong case.

1. Value Proposition to Status Quo
Con suggests more choices are good, and a lack of harm by existence of said choices. Pro counters that the bio section lets them full express themselves and explain any special details like pronouns (add some back and forth, a couple references to Sharkdado... which FYI, is a sexuality).
Con clarifies: “being able to determine something about a DART user's personality helps another such user much more than knowing what genitalia said DART user has.” Wholly agreed.
As for the potential moving the goalpost fallacy, I am oddly siding with pro on it. It seemed to be a suggestion of a tactic which should be employed in light of him proving the coherence of the sex field, which left the gender field assumed incoherent by comparison and not defended on that point.

2. Wasteful Change
The ol’ if it ain’t broke line expanded out... These don’t tend to sway me, especially when we know the competing value proposition is incoming (as much as I agree BoP rests on pro). As pro ended up pointing out, it’s only a minute amount of effort to change this.
I do count pro’s rhetorical just get rid of all the fields against him...

---RFD (2 of 2)---
3. Biological Neatness
For the first heading on this (relating to the physical world), pro did very well to say “The importance of this will be shown later.”
Con counters that this is a website (I liked a lot of this, but it got tedious by the end), but later messily talked about “more real-world uses.”

4. Gender is unscientific
It certainly can’t be determined by an outsider...

5. Aje
Well played...
Nice counter from con about why people use genders other than their sexes.
I probably found it too amusing that pro used Toasters as a gender in his defense... But pro rightly caught con insisting on biological standards.

6. Data Use
It needs to be said, people do have the option to change such things any time they want, and that is unlikely to change under any storage name. However, pro does make a case for website design and advertising to which better data would be useful. ... Con’s rebuttal directly dismissed this listed value, which as a debater I do understand the flow we get into, so am calling it a minor oversight rather than a conduct violation.
Con rightly points out that people who want to flip flop, will do that no matter what the field is called. Pro insists that there would be less of this, and the data would still be better.

---

Arguments:
See above review of key points. On balance pro pulls ahead, without a doubt proving that sex is a better metric, and further that it would be a better metric for this site. ... And yeah, I disagree for various subjective reasons, but he made the better case.

Sources:
I saw what I thought was callouts, but no sources were listed (I discount final round ones as unnatural).

Conduct:
Forfeiture.

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@semperfortis

Reading your arguments now... Neat thing about age: There's one or two major lawsuits going on about that right now (it's neat, but weird).

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@David
@blamonkey
@Barney
@Ramshutu

If any of you have time over the next two days, could you spare some to vote on this debate? The vote it had was removed and I hate debates going ties! Thank you.

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@Ramshutu

Oh, sorry. I had looked up how to go about voting on debates and all, but I didn't know there were requirements first.

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@LordLuke

Welcome to the site! Unfortunately your vote is ineligible due to the rules we have in place for brand new members. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

In the mean time, please take a look at the code of conduct at here: https://www.debateart.com/rules

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@LordLuke

*******************************************************************
>Reported Vote: LordLuke// Mod action: [Removed]
>Points Awarded: 3 points to pro for arguments.

>Reason for Decision: "Convincing Arguments:
semperfortis
It was very tough judging this debate, and I think there was potential for each of you to do much better (such as bring up the facts and statistics, like the ratio of transgenders to transsexuals and such, or something, idk anymore), but it seems that semperfortis has won. As I understand it, Speedrace had never effectively argued against semperfortis's claim that there is no basis for gender and it is therefore meaningless. Speedrace had shown it to seem highly ridiculous, but not in a logical way that directly countered the somewhat hard-to-see most important claims in semperfortis's argument. Con had given evidence that there is little need for the change, as well as that there is an opportunity cost to changing things later, but Pro asserted that there is little cost to this change, balancing Con's assertion (there was no refutation of this), then giving his reasons mentioned above, not adequately countered, as to why it is a worthwhile change.
P.S, I wrote a lot more but ended up deleting it..., this was an odd and hard-to-judge debate in my opinion.
Most Reliable Sources:
Tie. No impact on Debate.
Better Spelling and Grammar:
Tie. No impact on Debate.
Better Conduct:
Tie. No impact on Debate.

Reason for Mod Action>This vote is not eligible to vote. In order to vote, an account must: (1) Read the site’s COC AND have completed 2 non-troll/non-FF debate OR have 100 forum posts.

*******************************************************************

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@LordLuke

Thank you for taking the time to vote. The intent of that comment was to ensure that I wouldn't win automatically by virtue of him forfeiting.

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@semperfortis

Btw I never read your comment "We can do a rematch after this debate then. To the voters, compare arguments as if Speedrace never forfeited." but I figured that it wouldn't really matter anyway, unless there was something else he needed to say.

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@Tejretics

Sure. You would have to run me through everything and only if you are able to deal with a Scottish accent.

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@semperfortis

Would you be down to debate this? In a live debate, via Google Hangouts.

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@semperfortis

A debate via an audio call (e.g., on Google Hangouts) rather than a text-based debate.

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@Tejretics

A live debate?

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@semperfortis

That would be cool

I’d be happy to do a live debate on this at some point. (From Con.)

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@Speedrace

We can do a rematch after this debate then. To the voters, compare arguments as if Speedrace never forfeited.

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@semperfortis

Urg, DART doesn’t send me email notifications anymore so I forgot, I apologize dude, this was a good debate and I botched it :/

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@Speedrace

I understand.

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@semperfortis

I didn't realize I was supposed to rebut in the last round...I usually don't defend and rebut in the same round though so that was confusing

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@Speedrace

Yes sir

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@Pinkfreud08

You too sir :)

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@David
@bsh1
@Barney
@Ramshutu
@Dr.Franklin

This is actually turning out to be like a super interesting debate so stay tuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuned