Woman should be allowed to walk around topless in public without being shamed for it.
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 3 votes and with 12 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 4
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 30,000
- Voting period
- One week
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
The debate will be based on a societal ought, so I believe a shared BoP is appropriate here.
I don't do contingencies beyond default debate rules so argue any way you see fit.
4. Men do not get shamed for doing it.
7. Being topless is an amoral act. Which is to say that it has nothing to do with morality whatsoever.
Pro: "Men do not get shamed for being topless"Me: "Yes, they do. If I walked into my office without a shirt on tomorrow I would be shamed, along with every other male professional who works with the public."Pro: "Okay, you've now turned this into a red herring. Once again, I said in public"
Pro: "I cannot even fathom a situation where the act of being topless by itself is immoral. Being rude implies that you're offending someone, so once again, it's only immoral to be rude if you're on private property"
- Do laws define what is socially acceptable?
- Does shame always equal prejudice/bullying?
Con: "Societal pressure tells us what is appropriate"Pro: False. Societal pressures are just people's opinions imposed on you. People do not have the right to impose their opinion on you, so this is both immoral and illegal. Furthermore, Societal pressure are not a path to truth. Societal pressures lead to the Nazi regime, if societal pressure can do that, then we don't need them.
Con: "I think it's inappropriate for (men or woman) to be almost naked at a public playground, or in a public court appearance, or war memorial. "Pro: All of those are public places and you have no right to tell people what to wear. In this case of courtrooms, they have a strict dress code and while you might get told to leave for being topless, the judge cannot have you arrest nor shame you for it.
Shame is just a mean of control, nothing else. It is only your opinion that it is good and I'm willing to be that's not a popular opinion. Unless you can prove that shame is necessary, then I don't want any part of it.We do outlaw shame, Shame is a form of bullying and bullying is illegal.
Nobody's offense matters. It only matters if they are being offended on their property, then to continue being on their property would be illegal.
Every point you've made relies on "legality" or "rights".
You keep jumping to "Shame = Nazi!", but this is a slippery slope fallacy
Con's forfeit may have been accidental, but I'll view it as being a sore loser. I didn't see any rebuttals that Pro didn't cover, but obviously, Con missed some by forfeit.
Interesting debate.
This debate was fairly tactical, with con actually making a pretty decent counter plan.
The only difference between the two positions is effectively that pro feels that women shouldn’t be shamed for being topless, and con feeling that they mostly shouldn’t, but the ability to do so should still not be precluded - as shaming serves a valid purpose.
Jumping in: this is a debate about whether social control through shame is valid. Cons argument is that exercising social control via social norms is acceptable.
Pros main argument - is effectively that social norms are arbitrary and subjective - and tantermount to bullying. A primary point made, which I feel most relevant is that if there was some way that control over individuals was objectively necessary for moral reasons - which this is not.
My main issue is that much of cons argument is talking about the social repercussions and appeal to our own sensibilities : in particular social situations as in courts, no shoes - shorts - or service. In my view, however, I don’t think con does enough to tie these requirements to shame. While I can accept pros arguments that shame is a mechanism of control - I can’t buy that his examples of control are or should be enforced by shame, which is mostly what pros final round convincingly argues.
As a result, arguments to pro.
Conduct to pro for the forfeit.
I'm deciding based off of who debate better, not my personal opinion. I don't want to be called names in the comments. -_-
Argument:
I really liked this debate, and I wish Con hadn't forfeited so I could see his rebuttal. Pro started with focusing on public spaces, which I liked. Con, in that area, failed to show why women being topless is bad. What I didn't like is that Pro tried to use existing laws as a main argument. I don't like that because it gives him an inherent advantage, so I'd rather that both parties argued from a stance that a decision on the debate topic has not yet been decided in the real world. Regardless, Pro did an amazing job of backing up his points. He showed how shame is not a reason to take a right away from these women, which pretty much obliterated Con's arguments. Con really had no other critiques. However, I think that he still did a great job anyway.
Conduct:
Con forfeited, which is bad conduct.
*Tied In All Others*
Woman think of pecks sexually as well. As far as I can tell, modesty is an imposition of society and there is nothing intrinsic about it. We don't see other mammals covered there sexy parts. I think that intelligence is counter to evolution and causes us to do strange things that make no sense. If someone wanted to root the argument in evolution, I would say that maybe jealously is the reason. A man is self conscious and worried that someone might woo away his mate, so he tries to desexualize here to keep the other alphas away.
So are you.
You're welcome to have that perspective, even if it's objectively wrong.
I'm saying it.
I think the taboo on women's breasts has to do with the sexual associations. Everyone is trained to think of female breasts sexually, and most people regard open sexuality as taboo. So there is a difference between males and females being topless. This view is incorrect, but the problem is either the sexuality taboo or the sexual association with women's breasts. That's where the problem lies, in my opinion.
I never said it was the only reason it was bad. I never even said it was a reason for it being bad.
stigma against polygamy is the only reason that polygamy is bad, genius.
Honestly, I haven't read the entire debate. But I will say that from my viewpoint it's a question of how much stigma is bad and to the extent it's necessary. A socially-cohesive society will always intricate forms of stigma; it's necessary and the concept itself isn't inherently good and bad.
(e.g., stigma against mental-illness bad to an extent; stigma against polygamy good to an extent).
Well there were prongs of our arguments that met up, so there was enough discourse to go around, but it did fizzle out quicker than normal because we weren't on the perfectly same track.
Yeah man, I'm not against women being topless in public. Taking the "women shouldn't have rights" approach is a pretty weak argument anyway haha.
In my opinion, your morality argument was the strongest one. There's really no reason for a certain behavior to be stigmatized if it doesn't hurt society. One could argue that nudity is somehow bad for kids, or the public, but it's a weak counter.
I think Tiwaz is right though, we were kind of arguing about different things. You were saying that social stigma (which causes shame) is a bad thing, and I was arguing that individualized shame is inherent and necessary. These two things aren't really interchangeable; one refers to the individual the other refers to society. Our arguments were slightly misaligned in that respect.
Until we meet again, Steel Ralph.
It was a fun debate and my opponent took a practical approach as opposed to when I posted this on DDO and my opponent basically argued that the act of female nudity was immoral because society said so.
Your approach had a little more rationalization to it because I could sometimes see situations on private property where it wasn't just outright sexism.
I must have missed this comment. No problem man. Life happens.
Hey Ralph, good debate! Sorry about the forfeit at the end, just got busy with school work, you know how it goes.
Nice job, guys.
I wish you hadn't forfeited.
Thanks though!
I don't know if you're on a computer or not. But I type really fast and I pretty much just write these things off the top off my head.
Holy crap you're quick. It takes me so long so come up with a decent sounding argument and you just rip one off 10 minutes. HOW THO
Hi Tiwaz, that's a good point. I guess I was operating on the assumption that social stigma implies shame, however a clarification there would be prudent.
I like your argument for the most part, it just seems you're confusing shame with social stigma. Individual shame can be the result of acting discordantly with a stigma; likewise, an act is shameful if society has defined it negatively.
Stigma isn't inherently good or bad but a distinction between shame and stigma has to be made.
I swear I posted that. Good thing it saved I guess.
Indeed. But I intend to improve in the places where I lacked in this argument before. I will use your blade to further mold my armor.
Haha we sure did. Hopefully this one will be just as fun. I have the advantage though - I've read your position on this before :)
Indeed. ooo, we had a fun debate last time right?
We meet again Steel Ralph