George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
GMU KL – Harvard Rd 4 – Aff vs Wake
DL
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
1AC
Same as round 2
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
2AC
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
K
F/w- the Role of the Ballot should be to simulate the enactment of the plan- any
alternative moots fairness of being able to weigh the case and undermines the policy
education offered by engagement with the details of the plan
Our method of technical, policy-oriented debate about drug laws is necessary to effectuate
broader change
Paul Stares 96, General John W. Vessey Senior Fellow for Conflict Prevention and Director of the Center for Preventive
Action, Brookings, "Drug Legalization?: Time for a real debate", Spring,
www.brookings.edu/research/articles/1996/03/spring-crime-stares
As in the past, some
observers will doubtless see the solution in much tougher penalties to deter both suppliers and consumers of illicit psychoactive
will argue that the answer lies not in more law enforcement and stiffer sanctions, but in less. Specifically, they will
maintain that the edifice of domestic laws and international conventions that collectively prohibit the production, sale, and
consumption of a large array of drugs for anything other than medical or scientific purposes has proven physically harmful, socially divisive, prohibitively
expensive, and ultimately counterproductive in generating the very incentives that perpetuate a violent [underground] market for illicit drugs. They will conclude,
moreover, that the only logical step for the United States to take is to "legalize" drugs—in essence repeal and disband the current drug laws
substances. Others
and enforcement mechanisms in much the same way America abandoned its brief experiment with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. ¶ Although the legalization alternative typically
surfaces when the public's anxiety about drugs and despair over existing policies are at their highest, it never seems to slip off the media radar screen for long. Periodic incidents—
such as the heroin-induced death of a young, affluent New York City couple in 1995 or the 1993 remark by then Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders that legalization
might be
beneficial and should be studied —ensure this. The prominence of many of those who have at various times made the case for
legalization—such as William F. Buckley, Jr., Milton Friedman, and George Shultz—also helps. But each time the issue of legalization
arises, the same arguments for and against are dusted off and trotted out, leaving us with no clearer understanding of
what it might entail and what the effect might be.¶ As will become clear, drug legalization is not a public policy option that
lends itself to simplistic or superficial debate . It requires dissection and scrutiny of an order that has been remarkably
absent despite the attention it perennially receives. Beyond discussion of some very generally defined proposals, there has been
no detailed assessment of the operational meaning of legalization. There is not even a commonly accepted lexicon of terms to allow an intellectually
rigorous exchange to take place. Legalization, as a consequence, has come to mean different things to different people . Some, for example, use
legalization interchangeably with "decriminalization," which usually refers to removing criminal sanctions for possessing small quantities of drugs for personal use. Others equate
legalization, at least implicitly, with complete deregulation, failing in the process to acknowledge the extent to which currently legally available drugs are subject to stringent
controls.¶ Unfortunately,
the U.S. government—including the Clinton administration—has done little to improve the debate. Although it has consistently
stance has evidently not been based on in- depth investigation of the potential costs and
rejected any retreat from prohibition, its
benefits. The belief that legalization would lead to an instant and dramatic increase in drug use is considered to be so self-evident as to warrant no further study. But if this is
indeed the likely conclusion of any study, what is there to fear aside from criticism that relatively small amounts of taxpayer money had been wasted in demonstrating what
everyone had believed at the outset? Wouldn't such an outcome in any case help justify the continuation of existing policies and convincingly silence those—admittedly never more
A real debate that acknowledges the unavoidable complexities and uncertainties
surrounding the notion of drug legalization is long overdue . Not only would it dissuade people from making the kinds of
casual if not flippant assertions—both for and against—that have permeated previous debates about legalization, but it could also
stimulate a larger and equally critical assessment of current U.S. drug control programs and priorities .
than a small minority—calling for legalization?¶
Our framework does not avoid debate about personal conviction but trains debaters to be
effective advocates
Hodson 9 Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Towards an Action-oriented Science Curriculum, DEREK
HODSON, professor of education, Ontario Institute for Studies @ University of Toronto (2009) Journal for Activist Science &
Technology Education, http://www.wepaste.org/JASTE_1-1_1-Hodson.pdf
Politicization of science education can be achieved by giving
students the opportunity to confront real world issues that have a scientific, technological or
environmental dimension. By grounding content in socially and personally relevant contexts, an issues-based approach can provide the
motivation that is absent from current abstract, de-contextualized approaches and can form a base from which students can construct understanding
that is personally relevant , meaningful and important. It can provide increased opportunities for active learning , inquiry-based
learning, collaborative learning and direct experience of the situatedness and multidimensionality of scientific and technological practice. In the Western contemporary world,
technology is all pervasive; its social and environmental impact is clear; its disconcerting social implications and disturbing moral-ethical dilemmas are made apparent almost
every day in popular newspapers, TV news bulletins and Internet postings. In many ways, it is much easier to recognize how technology is determined by the sociocultural context
in which it is located than to see how science is driven by such factors. It is much easier to see the environmental impact of technology than to see the ways in which science impacts
on society and environment. For these kinds of reasons,
it makes good sense to use problems and issues in technology and engineering as the
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
major vehicles for contextualizing the science curriculum. This is categorically not an argument against teaching science; rather, it is an argument for
teaching the science that informs an understanding of everyday technological problems and may assist students in reaching tentative solutions about where they stand on key SSI.
Using technical discourse strategically is key to solve the K
Mary Caprioli 4, Dept. of Political Science @ the University of Tennessee, PhD from the University of Connecticut,
“Feminist IR Theory and Quantitative Methodology: A Critical Analysis,” International Studies Review, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Jun.,
2004), pp. 253-269
We should learn from the research of feminist scholars to engage in a dialogue that can be understood . Carol Cohn (1987), for example, found
that one could not be understood or taken seriously within the national security arena without using a masculine-gendered
language. In other words, a common language is necessary to understand and be understood. This insight could be applied to feminist research within international relations. Why not, as Charlotte
Hooper (2001:10) suggests, make "strategic use of [expert jargon] to gain credibility for feminist arguments (or otherwise subvert it for feminist
ends)." Little justification exists for abandoning the liberal empiricists who reason that "the problem of developing better
knowledge lies not with the scientific method itself but with the biases in the ways in which our theories have been focused and
developed" (Tickner 2001:13).
Claiming subject location influences truth undermines any possibility of meaningful
dialogue
Epstein 93 Richard James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Prof, Law – U. Chicago, Stanford Law Review, “Legal
Education and the Politics of Exclusion”, 45 Stan. L. Rev. 1607, July, L/N
Under the traditional view, there is the class of necessary
truths, but these are concerned with mathematical ideas, syllogisms, and definitions. In and of themselves, they tell us little about the external world, even though they supply
the analytical tools and the conceptual framework that are indispensable for understanding the world that lies beyond their ken. Once
sharpened, these tools must be applied to data that is gained through a combination of observation, testing, and critical
intelligence about some natural or social phenomenon. By insisting that knowledge is acquired through experience, classical philosophers understood the limits of pure deductive reasoning: Nothing
One source of exclusivity is an attempt to redefine the relationship between experience and knowledge.
could be found in the conclusion that was not already contained in the premises. n28 Human experience gave the link to the external world. An integral component of the role of experience, however, was that
There was no hint of exclusion. The power of language and science was that experiential information could
be understood by all. Granted, differences in background and experience may well lead persons to have singular insights or observations about the external world; but the motivation
whereby they obtained information about the world had little to do with the verification of the information they obtained ,
which itself could be checked through neutral processes and compared with the observations and theories of others in the
relevant field. n29 The heuristics and biases of various persons could only enrich the scope of knowledge by opening up a set of analogies and experiments that no one person, however insightful or
clever, could develop alone. In short, it was possible to have separate and idiosyncratic ways of acquiring the truth while having universal
means for understanding and verifying what constituted that truth. n30 The diversity of [*1618] perspectives therefore enriched the dialogue and showed the
strength of open competition. In the modern world of race and gender studies, this conception is regarded as wholly alien to the all important social
inquiries. The thought that principles of verification can be neutral and universal has been replaced by a notion that truths, like people, are socially situated and constructed. Persons
not possessing the requisite set of personal experiences are thought to be outside the loop : While they might be able to understand what insiders know or feel,
they can never exercise independent intelligence to decide whether a claim is true or false. If one wants to understand what is meant by oppression,
all human experience mattered.
indignity, brutality or indifference, the argument goes, then one must be the victim of those experiences, or at least share the same race or sex of those who are. A statement of Mari Matsuda illustrates this
position: This article suggests that those who have experienced discrimination speak with a special voice to which we should listen. Looking to the bottom - adopting the perspective of those who have seen and
felt the falsity of the liberal promise - can assist critical scholars in the task of fathoming the phenomenology of law and defining the elements of justice. n31 This brief passage reveals much of what is wrong
with modern critical race theory. It begins with a plea that "we" should listen to those who speak with a "special voice." Yet by the next sentence, the "we" becomes "critical scholars," not the general community
The knowledge that the disadvantaged possess is obtained by experience, but it is apparently immune to crossexamination , for "the falsity of the liberal premise" is something that they have "seen and felt" and thus rises by assumption to the status of a selfevident certitude beyond challenge by outsiders , even those who started at the bottom and may have risen by dint of hard work. Finally, even the task of "defining justice" appears
of academics.
to be one that falls to the critical scholars, as if the rest of us are unable to add anything of moment to the debate. Matsuda's passage also appears to reject the possibility of intelligent empathy, whereby one can
those without first-hand experience can neither discuss its
implications nor evaluate the various proposals that are designed to correct whatever imbalances are perceived. Thus, people like myself who were lucky
to grow up in privileged family circumstances cannot even rely on their own observation of other individuals and other communities to advance
their own understanding or persuade others. There is, in short, a sustained effort to exclude outsiders from the debate, allowing only
those with preferred wisdom and insight to enter a social discourse. Forms of scholarship such as Matusda's are but one form of attack on the traditional aspiration to
think creatively about her own experiences to imag [*1619] ine the predicament of others. n32 It suggests that
universal knowledge. So too, I believe, is the rise of narrative accounts by feminist and critical race scholars, of which Professor Delgado's contribution to this symposium is typical. n33 In narrative, the address
is personal and literary. The characters are of the author's own invention and can be easily endowed with whatever strengths and weaknesses best serve to advance the tale. The use of this art form cuts out any
appeal to quantitative data or general theory, and is always congenial to strong expressions of personal belief. Because narrative adopts the perspective and voice of a single author, it cannot be easily refuted by
the usual forms of social science evidence. Other authors have different voices and perspectives, and there is no contradiction between the proposition that "A believes X," and "B believes not-X," even if there is
his narrative does
not lend itself to refutation by the forms of evidence and argument that can be raised against more traditional forms of
scholarly discussion. When the going gets tough, the narrative becomes an art form, an exercise of literary imagination. When the waters are calm, it is transformed into an idealized account of a
widespread social problem. Either way, the narrative adds its strength to the politics of exclusion by presenting a moving target to more
traditional practitioners of the academic art. The dangers of such an exclusionary approach should be apparent to all, but too often
they are not. The most important questions of race and sex generally do not concern intragroup relationships. Rather, they address the relationships between
a contradiction between X and not-X. The author can hint that in his view the narrative does express some larger truth entitled to respect in its own right. Yet by the same token,
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
persons of different groups: men and women, black and white, and so on . One cannot consider rape to be strictly a woman's question when the rapist is male and
when the rules governing the crime of rape affect men who act with honorable intentions as well as those who do not. Indeed, on the critical question of consent to charges of rape, no complete account can
ignore the behavior and perceptions of both individuals, [*1620] especially when miscommunications can easily arise. n34 Similarly, in dealing with issues such as the distribution of voting rights, the control
If one assumes that only those with
unique experiences can participate in the dialogue, then no one can speak with intelligence about these issues; for each of us
possess only partial knowledge , leaving open the possibility of both error and bias. Only by admitting all interested persons into the academic
discourse can we mitigate the inaccuracies caused by this sampling bias. Furthermore, exclusionary practices can lead to a fragmentation of the political system.
of criminal and civil juries, or the operation of harassment or discrimination, interactions take place between persons of all races and both sexes.
Many people now have strong and enduring reasons to distrust the opinions of others solely for reasons of their race, religion, ethnic origin and the like. No matter how it is sliced, any exclusionary system has
to lead to a skepticism that is inimical to the central academic mission of any university or law school. If each side can claim the uniqueness of its own insights, then there is no way to broker differences among
The form of relativism that allows for the special dignity of the black
experience or the female experience makes it impossible to explain to skeptical outsiders why those insights should command
special respect . Moreover, this philosophical approach implies that every narrative - including that of the white male, or even the fringe lunatic - should be exempt from outside scrutiny. But no one is
persons who come from different backgrounds or begin with different beliefs.
entitled to the comfort of a risk-free position in public discourse. The diversity of experience and the distinctiveness of perceptions is both an opportunity for understanding and an obstacle to it. Nevertheless,
the usual requirements of coherence in argument, articulation of theory, and the marshalling and evaluation of evidence must remain intact if the academic mission of a university or law school is to be fulfilled.
Aff is a DA- The state is key to provide certain social provisions and regulations like the aff
Sophie O’Manique 14, MA candidate in Political Economy @ Carleton University in Ottawa, “From Prohibition to
Decriminalization: Interrogating the Emerging International Paradigm Shift in the War on Drugs Discourse”, 2014,
https://curve.carleton.ca/system/files/theses/31680.pdf
Interestingly, statements that we can understand as destabilizing to the hegemonic War on Drugs discourse have, in this instance, emanated from actors that we can understand as
facilitators of ideological hegemony. This is very much the case in Guatemala, where right-wing President Otto Pérez Molina has been one of the most outspoken advocates on the
international stage for the legalization of drugs. While Gramsci stresses the importance of ‘organic intellectuals,’ who we can understand as counter-hegemonic actors, for
destabilizing hegemony, Polanyi posits that the
state has a role to play in protecting the citizenry of a given polity from the devastation
wrought by the un-regulated, free market. Unlike Gramsci who called upon left wing intellectuals to advocate for the interests of the marginalized classes, Polanyi
theorized that the state has a role in ensuring the wellbeing of its citizenry in the context of free market expansion, ideology aside. For
Polanyi, the move towards the free market brought with it the onset of a “double movement,” whereby the “the fact that leaving the fate of the soil and people to the market would
be tantamount to annihilating them,” and so, we see the emergence of a countermovement to mitigate the “devastating effects of a self-regulating market,” (1944: 131-132).
According to Polanyi, the
state has a role to play in countermovement, whereby in the name of social protection, the state should
employ “protective legislation, restrictive associations and other instruments of intervention as its methods ,” (1944: 133). While in
the Guatemalan case, President Pérez Molina is articulating a counter-hegemonic discourse whilst still committed to the dominant neoliberal ideological hegemony of the day, we
we can understand the current challenges that Guatemala faces in terms of the
illegal drug trade as stemming from poverty related to neoliberal restructuring and repressive drug policies imposed
by the United States, and the wellbeing of the Guatemalan populace is at stake given the levels of violence associated with the drug trade, the state, political ideology aside,
has a role to play in mitigating the negative effects of the free market .
can understand his statements through the lens of Polanyi. If
Civil society good – institutions and structures are key to equal gender decision making –
contributes to environment that favors women participation
UN et al. 5
(United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)
Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) “Equal Participation of Women and Men in
Decision-Making Processes,
with Particular Emphasis on Political Participation and Leadership,” http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/eqlmen/FinalReport.pdf, Last Accessed 10/2/14) ELJ
72. Civil society institutions and structures play an important role in placing pressure on politicians and institutions to support women’s
entry into decision-making positions and, once in office supporting their advancement of a gender equality agenda in policy making arenas.
Civil society also contributes greatly to developing a cultural environment that is favorable to gender
equality. The possibilities for women to participate in this way increase when there is executive support for civil society
involvement in politics. One good example is participatory budgeting processes, where the local population participates in deciding how the municipal budget should be spent. A parallel process
has been the institution of gender-sensitive budgeting, which aim to ensure that policy commitments are matched by resource allocations. 73. The experts agreed that decision-makers are
more likely to adopt gender equality agendas in situations when, on the one hand, political elites are held responsible for their actions and, on the other hand,
women are able and encouraged to participate in civic debates. This dual strategy is needed, because both political
elites and civil society need to mobilize around gender equality agendas in order to create sufficient political will to support
the equal inclusion of women and men in political decision-making.
Their Chapkins card is about the SQ and proves the perm – legalization is better – they
homogenize all women with marijuana
Ann Friedman 13, Why Aren’t Women at Home in the World of Weed?, July 22,
http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/07/why-arent-women-at-home-in-the-world-of-weed.html
I don’t expect to find many women who look like me taking bong rips under the fluorescent lights of the Anaheim Convention Center. And
I’m not surprised. Turns out the Kush Expo is like any other convention centered around what’s seen as primarily a male interest: Lots of booths, lots of
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
booth babes. One of them, CJ Hensley, is sporting a tiny shredded shirt with a pot leaf on it and a black lace bra peeking through. There is a wreath of plastic
pot leaves around the band of her bikini bottom. “Dressing up is part of the fun,” she tells me. Hensley has been at the Kush Clean booth, selling pipecleaning products and anti-bacterial wipes to germophobic social smokers, for three years now — ever since she turned 18, “got a medical card and became a
proud stoner.” I ask her if men are always hitting on her. “Yeah,” she says, rolling her eyes, “but I kind of ask for it. They’re usually too stoned and happy to
do anything weird.Ӧ I decide to seek out a few non-bikinied booth proprietors. Miranda Baskharoon, who owns a couple of cigar shops in
Southern California, is selling glass pipes and mini-vaporizers. She says she gets a lot of women customers at her booth. “They
approach me when they see a woman standing back here,” she says. “I don’t feel that my bikini or my body sells the product. I
don’t need to sell my body.”¶ Baskharoon introduces me to Stephanie, another vendor who’s selling THC-infused cupcakes she bakes herself.
She has long, wavy blonde hair and is wearing a spaghetti-strap sundress in a purple-paisley print. She and her husband, Buddy, have been selling their
potent snacks at various weed conventions for about a decade. Last year at Kush Expo, they won first and second place for best edibles and concentrates.
“Call us Mr. and Mrs. Nuggets,” she says, “because of the federal scrutiny.” Many of her customers are women who don’t fit the
stoner stereotype — breast-cancer survivors and people with arthritis . Slowly but surely more public-facing
venues for weed culture, like the Kush Expo, are starting to reflect that cohort. “As the years have gone by, the maturity has gone
up,” Stephanie says. “I think the frat-party-ness has faded away.”¶ But even as the culture grows up and the industry becomes more
professionalized, the sexism remains entrenched. The leaders of most major drug-policy-reform groups are men — some of whom have a history of
harassment. In a new research paper on the gender dynamics of the marijuana-growing community in Northern California, sociologist Karen August found
that “nearly all” business transactions were made by men, while women are “heavily involved” in work like tending plants and making edibles. She references
Craigslist ads with titles like “Girl Trimmer Needed” and “lady trimmers wanted.” Several of the ads are overtly sexual: “Need a good looking trimmer that is
Dtf.” Or, “looking for new help, topless extra.” “There are a few successful women growers,” August writes, “but more numerous are the smaller marijuanarelated cottage industries operated by women” selling paraphernalia, clothing, posters, and other knickknacks with marijuana themes. Precisely the sort of
thing on sale at the Kush Expo.¶ As I look around, I see far more nearly naked women than female small-business owners. I approach Amber Kidd and
Jennifer Rodriguez, two tattooed girls with heavy eyeliner and metallic hot pants who are handing out stickers, and ask if they’re participating in tomorrow’s
Hot Kush Girl competition I saw on the billboard, which is advertising a $1,000 cash prize. Their shake their heads no — not because it’s sexist but because
they think it’s rigged. “I don’t participate,” Rodriguez says. “You get up there half-naked and do whatever they tell you, and in the end someone’s girlfriend
wins.” Even when you’re a hot kush girl, you don’t quite belong.
Illicit trade allows violence against women
Fendrick 13 Sabrina, staff writer, 5-30-14, "Marijuana Prohibition Puts Industry Women at Risk" NORML,
blog.norml.org/2013/05/30/prohibition-puts-women-at-risk/
As more women are drawn to Humboldt County’s marijuana trade and off-grid lifestyle, a local battered-women’s shelter has
noticed a growing trend of violent encounters. The Standard-Examiner reports that, “The bulk of… cases involve single young women
aged 18 to 26, who may travel to the area and are lured to farms by promises of work, money and, often, romance. The women are hired for trim work,
which involves cleaning freshly harvested pot and preparing it for sale .” Most women who survive violence are hesitant to seek
help in general. The women in the pot-growing business however, are under even more pressure to keep quiet because they are
part of a culture that promotes secrecy. There is no doubt the pot-growing industry supports the local economy by pumping much-needed cash into the
community. The problem is however, that because farm owners and managers (most of whom are male) are running illegal operations
under federal law, standard employment regulations such as working conditions and sexual harassment laws
do not apply . The Director of W.I.S.H (Women’s Crisis Center of Southern Humboldt), points out that, “Men managing the farms can be
paranoid over the threat of raids or people stealing the plants. Women’s cell phones may be taken away and they may not be
allowed to leave until season’s end. Some are forced off farms at gunpoint without being paid. Women may be beaten or
psychologically controlled…”. The cycle of violence is perpetuated by an underground, black market economy. This is just one more
reason marijuana needs to be legalized and regulated. Moving the entire marijuana industry above ground will protect
workers’ rights , hold employers accountable, and remove the culture of secrecy that continues to foster female
exploitation .
No root cause and war turns
Goldstein 1 professor of IR – American University, Joshua S, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and
Vice Versa, pg. 412
First, peace activists face a dilemma in thinking about causes of war and working for peace. Many peace scholars and activists support
the approach, “if you want
peace, work for justice.” Then, if one believes that sexism contributes to war, one can work for gender justice specifically (perhaps among others) in order to pursue peace.
This approach brings strategic allies to the peace movement (women, labor, minorities), but rests on the assumption that injustices cause war. The
evidence in this book suggests that causality runs at least as strongly the other way . War is not a product of capitalism,
imperialism, gender, innate aggression, or any other single cause, although these influence wars’ outbreaks and outcomes. Rather,
war has in part fueled and sustained these and other injustices . So, “if you want peace, work for peace.” Indeed, if you want
justice (gender and others), work for peace. Causality does not run just upward through the levels of analysis, from types of individuals, societies, and governments up to
war. It runs downward too. Enloe suggests that changes in attitudes towards war and the military may be the most important way to “reverse women’s oppression.” The dilemma is
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
that peace work focused on justice brings to the peace movement energy, allies, and moral grounding, yet, in light of this book’s evidence, the
[File Name]
emphasis on injustice as
the main cause of war seems to be empirically inadequate .10
Masculinity is not the root cause of war
Ehrenreich 99 – Ph.D Cellular Immunology @ Rockefeller University, author of 21 books, political activist (Barbara,
“Fukuyama’s Follies” [“Men Hate War Too”], 1999, Foreign Affairs Volume 78, No. 1, January/February,
http://www.metu.edu.tr/~utuba/Ehrenreich%20etal.pdf, Spector)
there is little basis for
locating the wellspring of war in aggressive male instincts —or in any instincts, for that matter. Wars are not barroom brawls writ
large, but, as social theorist Robin Fox puts it, "complicated, orchestrated, highly organized" collective undertakings that cannot be
explained by any individual impulse. No plausible instinct would impel a man to leave his home, cut his hair short, and drill
for hours under the hot sun. As anthropologists Clifton B. Kroeber and Bernard L. Fontana have pointed out, "It is a large step from what may be biologically
innate leanings toward individual aggression to ritualized, socially sanctioned, institutionalized group warfare." Or as a 1989
conference on the anthropology of war concluded, "The hypothesis of a killer instinct is.. . not so much irrelevant as wrong." In fact, the male appetite for battle has
always been far less voracious than either biologically inclined theorists of war or army commanders might like . In traditional
societies, warriors often had to be taunted, intoxicated, or ritually "transformed" into animal form before battle.zs Throughout Western
history, individual men have gone to near*suicidal lengths to avoid participating in wars— cutting off limbs or fingers or risking
execution by deserting. Prior to the advent of the nationalist armies of the nineteenth century, desertion rates in European armies were so high that, according
to historian Geoffrey Parker, “at certain times, almost an entire army would vanish into thin air .” SO unreliable was the rank and file of the famed eighteenth-century
Prussian army that military manuals forbade camping near wooded areas. Even in the supposedly highly motivated armies of the twentieth-century democracies, few men can bring
themselves to shoot directly at individual enemies—a fact, as Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman writes in On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and
If Fukuyama had read just a bit further in the anthropology of war, even in the works of some scholars he cites approvingly, he would have discovered that
Society, that has posed a persistent challenge to the Pentagon.
The universal women replicates their impacts
Harding 86 – Professor Social Sciences, Comparative Education, and Gender Studies @ UCLA, Ph.D Philosophy @ NYU,
(Sandra, “The Instability of the Analytical Categories of Feminist Theory”, JSTOR, Published by The University of Chicago
Press, Vol. 11, No. 4, Summer, 1986, pages 645-646, RSpec)
once we understand the destructively mythical character of the essential and universal “man” which was the subject
and paradigmatic object of non-feminist theories, so too do we begin to doubt the usefulness of analysis that has essential,
universal woman as its subject or object—as its thinker or the object of its thought. We have come to understand that whatever we have
found useful form the perspective of the social experience of the Western, bourgeois, heterosexual, white women is especially
suspect when we begin our analyses with the social experiences of any other women. The patriarchal theories we try to extend and
reinterpret were created to explain not men’s experience but only the experience of those men who are Western, bourgeois, white and
heterosexual. Feminist theorists also come primarily from these categories—not through conspiracy but through the historically common pattern
that it is people in these categories who have had the time and resources to theorize, and who—among women—can be heard at all. In trying to
develop theories that provide the one true (feminist) story of humane experience, feminism risks replicating in theory and
public policy the tendency in the patriarchal theories to police thought by assuming that only the problems of some women
are human problems and that solutions for them are the only reasonable ones. Feminism has played an important role in
showing that there are not now and never have been any generic “men” at all—only gendered men and women. Once essential and universal man dissolves, so does
his hidden companion, women. We have, instead, myriads of women living in elaborate historical complexes of class, race, and culture.
Furthermore,
Their critique has no explanatory power- they are just as exclusionary in politicing
identity
Jarvis 00 (Darryl, government and international relations, U. of Sydney, International Relations and the Challenge of
Postmodernism, “Feminist revisions of international relations,” p. 162-3)
Critics of feminist perspectives run the risk of denouncement as either a
misogynist malcontent or an androcentric keeper of the gate. At work in much of this discourse is an unstated political correctness, where the historical
marginalization of women bestows intellectual autonomy, excluding those outside the identity group from legitimate participation in its discourse. Only
feminist women can do real, legitimate, feminist theory since, in the mantra of identity politics, discourse must emanate from a positional
(personal) ontology. Those sensitive or sympathetic to the identity politics of particular groups are, of course, welcome to lend support and encouragement, but only on terms delineated by the groups themselves. In this way, they
Critical research agendas of this type, however, are not found easily in International Relations.
enjoy an uncontested sovereign hegemony oyer their own self-identification, insuring the group discourse is self constituted and that its parameters, operative methodology, ,uu\ standards of argument, appraisal, and evidentiary provisions are self
defined. Thus, for example, when Sylvester calls for a "home steading" does so "by [a] repetitive feminist insistence that we be included on our terms" (my emphasis). Rather than an invitation to engage in dialogue, this is an ultimatum that a sovereign
intellectual space be provided and insulated from critics who question the merits of identity-based political discourse. Instead, Sylvester calls upon International Relations to "share space, respect, and trust in a re-formed endeavor," but one otherwise
proscribed as committed to demonstrating not only "that the secure homes constructed by IR's many debaters are chimerical," but, as a consequence, to ending International Relations and remaking it along lines grounded in feminist
postmodernism.93 Such stipulative provisions might be likened to a form of negotiated sovereign territoriality where, as part of the settlement for the historically aggrieved, border incursions are to be allowed but may not be met with resistance or
reciprocity. Demands for entry to the discipline are thus predicated on conditions that insure two sets of rules, cocooning postmodern feminist spaces from systematic analyses while "respecting" this discourse as it hastens about the project of
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
deconstructing International Relations as a "male space." Sylvester's impassioned plea for tolerance and "emphatic cooperation" is thus confined to like-minded individuals, those who do not challenge feminist epistemologies but accept them as a
necessary means of reinventing the discipline as a discourse between postmodern identities—the most important of which is gender.94 Intolerance or misogyny thus become the ironic epithets attached to those who question the wisdom of this
reinvention or the merits of the return of identity in international theory.'"' Most strategic of all, however, demands for entry to the discipline and calls for intellectual spaces betray a self-imposed, politically motivated marginality. After all, where are
feminist postmodernists too
deflect as illegitimate any criticism that derives from skeptics whose vantage points are labeled privileged . And privilege is variously interpreted
historically, especially along lines of race, color, and sex where the denotations white and male, to name but two, serve as generational mediums to assess the injustices of past histories. White males, for example, become
generic signifiers for historical oppression, indicating an ontologicallv privileged group by which the historical experiences of the "other" can then be reclaimed in the context of their related oppression,
such calls issued from other than the discipline and the intellectual—and well established—spaces of feminist International Relations? Much like the strategies employed by male dissidents, then,
exploitation, AND exclusion. Legitimacy, in this context, can then be claimed in terms of one's group identity and the extent to which the history of that particular group has been “silenced.” In this same way, self-identification or “self-situation”
establishes one’s credentials, allowing admittance to the group and legitimating the “authoritative” vantage point from which one speaks and writes. Thus, for example, Jan Jindy Pettman includes among the introductory pages to her most recent book,
Worlding Women, a section titled “A (personal) politics of location,” in which her identity as a woman, a feminist, and an academic, makes apparent her particular (marginal) identities and group loyalties.96 Similarly, Christine Sylvester, in the
introduction to her book, insists, “It is important to provide a context for one’s work in the often-denied politics of the personal.” Accordingly, self-declaration revelas to the reader that she is a feminist, went to a Catholic girls school where she was
Like territorial markers, selfidentification permits entry to intellectual spaces whose sovereign authority is “policed” as much by
marginal subjectivies as they allege of the oppressors who “police” the discourse of realism, or who are said to walk the corridors
of the discipline insuring the replication of patriarchy, hierarchical agendas, and “malestream” theory. If Sylvester’s version of feminist postmodernism is projected as tolerant, perspectivist, and encompassing of a multiplicity of approaches, in
reality it is as selective, exclusionary, and dismissive of alternative perspectives as mainstream approaches
are accused of being. Skillful theoretical moves of this nature underscore the adroitness of postmodern feminist theory at emasculating many of its logical inconsistencies. In arguing for a feminist postmodernism, for
schooled to “develop your brains and confess something called “sins” to always male forever priests,” and that these provide some pieces to her dynamic objectivity.97
example, Sylvester employs a double theoretical move that, on the one hand, invokes a kind of epistemological deconstructive anarchy cum relativism in an attempt to decenter or make insecure fixed research gazes, identities, and concepts (men,
women, security, and nation-state), while on the other hand turning to the lived experiences of women as if ontologically given and assuming their experiences to be authentic, real, substantive, and authoritative interpretations of the realities of
international relations. Women at the peace camps of Greenham Common or in the cooperatives of Harare, represent, for Sylvester, the real coal face of international politics, their experiences and strategies the real politics of “relations international.”
But why should we take the experiences of these women to be ontologically superior or more insightful than the experiences of other women or other men? As Sylvester admits elsewhere, “Experience … is at once always already an interpretation and in
need of interpretation.” Why, then are experience-based modes of knowledge more insightful than knowledges derived through other modes of inquiry?98 Such espistemologies are surely crudely positivistic in their singular reliance on osmotic
perception of the facts as they impact upon the personal. If, as Sylvester writes, “sceptical inlining draws on substantive everydayness as a time and site of knowledge, much as does everyday feminist theorizing,” and if, as she further notes, “it
understands experience…as mobile, indeterminate, hyphenated, [and] homeless,” why should this knowledge be valued as anything other than fleeting subjective perceptions of multiple environmental stimuli whose meaning is beyond explanation
other than as a personal narrative?99 Is this what Sylvester means when she calls for a re-visioning and a repainting of the “canvases of IR,” that we dissipate knowledge into an infinitesimal number of disparate sites, all equally valid, and let loose with
a mélange of visceral perceptions; stories of how each of us perceive we experience international politics? If this is the case, then Sylvester’s version of feminist postmodernity does not advance our understanding of international politics, leaving
Personal narratives do not constitute theoretical discourse, nor indeed an explanation of the
systemic factors that procure international events, process, or the actions of certain actors. We might also extend a contextualist lens to analyze Sylvester’s
untheorized and unexplained the causes of international relations.
formulations, much as she insists her epistemogical approach does. Sylvester, for example, is adamant that we can not really know who “women” are, since to do so would be to invoke an essentialist concept, concealing the diversity inherent in this
“Women” don’t really exist in Sylvester’s estimation since there are black women, white women, Hispanic, disabled,
lesbin, poor, rich, middle class, and illiterate women, to name but a few. The point, for Sylvester, is that to speak of “women” is to do violence
to the diversity encapsulated in this category and, in its own way, to silence those women who remain unnamed. Well and good. Yet this
same analytical respect for diversity seems lost with men. Politics and international relations become the “places of men.” But which men? All men? Or
just white men, or rich, educated, elite, upper class, hetero-sexual men? To speak of political places as the places of men
ignores the fact that most men, in fact the overwhelming majority of men, are not in these political places at all, are not
decision makers, elite, affluent, or powerful. Much as with Sylvester’s categories, there are poor, lower class, illiterate, gay, black, and white men,
many of whom suffer the vestiges of hunger, poverty, despair, and disenfranchisement just as much as women. So why
invoke the category “men” in such essentialist and ubiquitous ways while cognizant only of the diversity of in the category
“women.” These are double standards, not erudite theoretical formulations, betraying, dare one say, sexism toward men by
invoking male gender generalizations and crude caricatures. Problems of this nature, however, are really manifestations of a
deeper, underlying ailment endemic to discourses derived from identity politics. At base, the most elemental question for identity discourse, as Zalewski and Enloe note, is
category.
“Who am I?”100 The personal becomes the political, evolving a discourse where self-identification, but also one’s identification by others, presupposes multiple identities that are fleeting, overlapping, and changing at any particular moment in time or
these identities are variously depicted as transient,
polymorphic, interactive, discursive, and never fixed. As Richard Brown notes, “Identity is given neither institutionally nor biologically. It evolves as one orders continuities on one’s conception of
oneself.”102 Yet, if we accept this, the analytical utility of identity politics seems problematic at best. Which identity, for example, do we choose from the many that any one subject might display affinity for? Are we to assume that
all identities are of equal importance or that some are more important than others? How do we know which of these identities
might be transient and less consequential to one’s sense of self and, in turn, politically significant to understanding
international politics? Why, for example, should we place gender identity ontologically prior to class, sexual
orientation, ethnic origin, ideological perspective, or national identity?103 As Zalewski and Enloe ask, “Why do we consider states to be a major referent?
Why not men? Or women?”104 But by the same token, why not dogs, shipping magnates, movie stars, or trade regimes? Why is gender more constitutive of global politics than, say,
class, or an identity as a cancer survivor, laborer, or social worker? Most of all, why is gender essentialized in feminist discourse,
reified into the most preeminent of all identities as the primary lens through which international relations must be viewed?
place. “We have multiple identities,” argues V. Spike Peterson, “e.g., Canadian, homemaker, Jewish, Hispanic, socialist.”101 And
Perhaps, for example, people understand difference in the context of identities outside of gender. As Jane Martin notes, “How do we know that difference…does not turn on being fat or religious or in an abusive relationship?”105 The point, perhaps
identity is such a nebulous concept , its meaning so obtuse and so inherently subjective, that it is near meaningless
as a conduit for understanding global politics if only because it can mean anything to anybody.
flippantly made, is that
The oppositional nature of our two political strategies produces better strategies
Kathleen Higgins 13, University of Texas-Austin, Philosophy Professor, Winter 2013, Post-Truth Pluralism: The Unlikely
Political Wisdom of Friedrich Nietzche
Progressives are right that we live increasingly in a post-truth era, but rather than rejecting it and pining nostalgically for a return to a more truthful time, we should learn to better
navigate it. Where the New York Times and Walter Cronkite were once viewed as arbiters of public truths, today the Times competes with the Wall Street Journal, and CBS News
with FOX News and MSNBC, in describing reality. The Internet multiplies the perspectives and truths available for public consumption. The
diversity of viewpoints
not going away and is likely to intensify. This diversity of interpretations of reality is part of a longstanding trend. Democracy
and modernization have brought a proliferation of w orldviews and declining authority of traditional institutions to meanings. Citizens have more freedom to
opened up by new media is
create new interpretations of facts.¶ This proliferation of viewpoints makes the challenge of democratically addressing contemporary problems more complex. One consequence of
all this is that our problems become more wicked and more subject to conflicting meanings and agendas. We can’t agree on the nature of problems or their solutions because of
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
fundamentally unbridgeable values and worldviews . In attempting to reduce political disagreement to black and white categories of fact and fiction, progressives themselves
uniquely ill-equipped to address our current difficulties, or to advance liberal values in the culture. A new progressive politics should have a different understanding of the truth
than the one suggested by the critics of conservative dishonesty. We
should understand that human beings make meaning and apprehend truth
from radically different standpoints and worldviews, and that our great wealth and freedom will likely lead to more, not fewer, disagreements about the world.
Nietzsche was no democrat, but the pluralism he offers can be encouragement to today’s political class, as well as the rest of us, to
become more self-aware of, and honest about, how our standpoint, values, and power affect our determinations of what is true and what is
false.¶ In the post-truth era, we should be able to articulate not one but many different perspectives. Progressives seeking to
govern and change society cannot be free of bias, interests, and passions, but they should strive to be aware of them so that they can
adopt different eyes to see the world from the standpoint of their fiercest opponents . Taking multiple perspectives into
account might alert us to more sites of possible intervention and prime us for creative formulations of
alternative possibilities for concerted responses to our problems.¶ Our era, in short, need not be an obstacle to taking
common action. We might see today’s divided expert class and fractions public not as temporary problems to be solved by more reason,
science, and truth, but rather as permanent features of our developed democracy. We might even see this proliferation of belief systems and
worldviews as an opportunity for human development. We can agree to disagree and still engage in pragmatic action in
the World
Linking legalization with broader conversations about structural oppression is the best
way to maintain progressive momentum
Ramsey 13 Grio reporter, 2013, Donovan, “Race, politics and the battle to legalize marijuana”, 1-26,
http://thegrio.com/2013/01/26/race-politics-and-the-battle-to-legalize-marijuana/2/
Grim said as time passed and other drugs — including marijuana — became popular, some government officials saw it as an opportunity to target minority groups who were commonly associated with them.
This hit a height, he said, during the decline of the Civil Rights Movement, a period of urban unrest and riots in major cities. Politicians looking to appeal to white voters ran campaigns promising law and order.
black Americans aren’t the primary users of marijuana
Only 11 percent of marijuana users are black, according to the D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, compared to the 77 percent of users who are white. Still
blacks comprise 32 percent of marijuana arrests and 44 percent of convictions nationally . It’s for this reason that the Colorado branch of the NAACP
backed its state amendment for legalization, citing it as a civil rights issue. “ Marijuana prohibition policy does more harm to our communities than good,” said
“The easiest way to keep those promises was with new policy around drugs,” Grim said. But according to the research,
– not even close.
the organization’s president, Rosemary Harris Lytle, in a statement. Her sentiments were echoed in 2010 when California was considering a similar legislative initiative. California NAACP president Alice
We have empirical proof that the application of the marijuana laws has been unfairly applied to our young people
of color. Justice is the quality of being just and fair and these laws have been neither just nor fair.” Voters in the state later rejected the legalization proposition, led partly by moral opposition, which
Huffman said then, “
included members of the black church. “We can’t trust the NAACP,” said Rev. Anthony Evans of the National Black Church Initiative, an organization reporting membership of 34,000 black churches across the
country. He sees pro-marijuana laws as a distraction from more pressing issues. “The first thing we have to do is make sure our people aren’t high on marijuana,” he said. “The black community has been the
victim of drugs and the black church is charged with protecting the community and keeping families together. We have to break ties with the NAACP on this issue.” Pro-marijuana activist say, however, that
existing drug laws only serve to break up black families, sending scores of black Americans to jail every year. Whether it’s
by design or just because of structural racism, the outcome is that many African-Americans are put into the
criminal justice system at very young ages, ” Grim countered. “Nationwide legalization would mean a lot. You have almost a
million people arrested every year for marijuana offenses, almost all of them simple possession. Not all wind up in jail but all have dramatic
consequences: a [criminal] record, money spent on lawyers, they could even lose their job waiting to go to court. Then there
are the millions of people on parole or probation. For them, the Bill of Rights is thrown out the window. They can’t associate with certain
people, leave the state, or even vote.” Today, 51 percent of Americans favor the legalization of marijuana , according to a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University. Black
Americans favor it by 57 percent. Both figures have increased steadily over the years. “People in this country have been exposed to misinformation about marijuana their entire lives,” said
Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML. “They’ve been led to believe it’s more harmful than it really is and as a result a lot of people have to
overcome that concern. The government is also coming to understand that prohibition fails and regulations works. They see that in recent years tobacco and alcohol use have dropped to historic lows, not from
prohibition but controls and regulations. We should apply that approach to marijuana.” After the laws passed in Colorado and Washington, President Obama told the press that enforcing marijuana laws was
Officials at NORML, who have watched the conversation around
marijuana policy for 40 years, expect legalization within the next 5-10 years with California, Oregon and Massachusetts being
next in line. “It won’t be a one-size-fits-all policy,” Armentano said. “It’ll most likely look like our regulation of alcohol after prohibition. Even now there are some regions that are
dry, allow open containers, or don’t sell on Sundays. We have age restrictions and laws around driving. We’ll get a patchwork regulatory system.” And in developing that system,
Armentano believes conversations about discrimination in enforcing drug laws should be front and center. Yet
not a top priority of his administration, perhaps signaling a step back on the part of federal agencies.
currently, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is staunchly against the legalization of marijuana. Recently, the Los Angeles Times accused the agency of preventing the release of the drug for scientific
studies that could prove its effectiveness as a medical treatment, despite the desire to conduct such studies by the medical community. A judge presiding over a critical case determined that marijuana would
remain a Schedule 1 drug – deemed dangerous and of no redeeming value – based on the lack of such studies. The Huffington Post reports that the DEA reinforced this anti-pot message in a financial statement
Time will tell whether the promarijuana movement will be able to counter such opposition. Activists such as Armentano have faith that, as the associations
between race and injustice in drug enforcement comes to light — particularly as it relates to marijuana — enough
empowering momentum will be built to ensure a positive change. “The way institutional racism and current drug policy
work hand in hand hasn’t been something that has gained real traction in the national conversation around legalization.
But in the near future, I expect it to be a driving force,” Armentano said. “ Imprisoning countless people of color is
one of the most egregious applications of the law. It’s also one of the most persuasive points for reform.”
made public last Wednesday, which in part reads: “Legalizing marijuana would increase accessibility and encourage promotion and acceptance of drug use.”
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Utilize rage as a means to mobilize legalization movements- targeted rage is key
Julia Lesage, 1985, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Nelson and Grossberg,
http://pages.uoregon.edu/jlesage/Juliafolder/womensRage.html
Feminism by itself is not the motor of change. Class, anti-imperialist, and antiracist struggles demand our participation. Yet how, specifically, does women's consciousness change? How do women move into
action? How does change occur? What political strategies should feminists pursue? How, in our political work, can we constantly challenge sexual inequality when the very social construction of gender oppresses women? In 1981 I visited Nicaragua
with the goal of finding out how and why change occurred there so quickly in women's lives. "The revolution has given us everything," I was told. "Before the revolution we were totally devalued. We weren't supposed to have a vision beyond home and
children." In fact, many Nicaraguan women first achieved a fully human identity within the revolution. Now they are its most enthusiastic supporters. For example, they form over 50 percent of the popular militias, the mainstay of Nicaragua's defense
against United States-sponsored invasions from Honduras and Costa Rica. In the block committees, they have virtually eliminated wife and child abuse. Yet in Nicaragua we still see maids, the double standard sexually, dissatisfaction in marriage, and
inadequate childcare. Furthermore, all the women I talked to defined their participation in the revolution in terms of an extremely idealized notion of motherhood and could not understand the choice not to reproduce. I bring up this example of
Nicaragua because Nicaraguan women are very conscious of the power of their own revolutionary example. They know they have been influenced by the Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions and are very much shaping how Salvadoran women militants
are looking at women's role in the Salvadoran revolution. Because of the urgency and violence of the situation, unity between men and women was and is necessary for their survival, but the women also want to combat, in an organized and selfconscious way, specific aspects of male supremacy in the workplace, politics, and daily life. Both here and in Nicaragua, women's daily conversation is about the politics of daily life. They talk to each other often, complaining about men and about
managing the domestic sphere. Women's talk also encompasses complaints about poor and unstable work conditions, and about the onerous double day. However, here in the United States that conversation usually circulates pessimistically, if
supportively, around the same themes and may even serve to reconfirm women's stasis within these unpleasant situations. Here such conversation offers little sense of social change; yet in our recent political history, feminists have used this preexisting
We
do not live in a revolutionary situation in the United States. There is no leftist political organization here providing leadership and a cohesive strategy, and in particular the struggle against women's
oppression is not genuinely integrated into leftist activity and theory. Within such a context, women need to work on another, intermediate level, both to shape our revolutionary
consciousness and to empower us to act on our own strategic demands . That is, we need to promote self-conscious, collectively supported,
and politically clear articulations of our anger and rage. Furthermore, we must understand the different structures behind different women's rage. Black women rage against poverty
social form--women's conversation in the domestic sphere--to create consciousness-raising groups. But to what degree is consciousness raising sufficient to change women's behavior, including our self-conception and our own colonized minds?
and racism at the same time that they rage against sexism. Lesbians rage against heterosexual privilege, including their denial of civil rights. Nicaraguan women rage against invasions and the aggressive intentions of the United States. If, in our political
work, we know this anger and the structures that generate it, we can more genuinely encounter each other and more extensively acknowledge each other's needs, class position, and specific form of oppression. If we do not understand the unique social
conditions shaping our sisters' rage, we run the risk of divisiveness, of fragmenting our potential solidarity. Such mutual understanding of the different structures behind different women's anger is the precondition of our finding a way to work together
toward common goals. I think a lot about the phenomenon of the colonized mind. Everything that I am and want has been shaped within a social process marked by male dominance and female submission. How can women come to understand and
collectively attack this sexist social order? We all face, and in various ways incorporate into ourselves, sexist representations, sexist modes of thought. Institutionally, such representations are propagated throughout culture, law, medicine, education,
and so on. All families come up against and are socially measured by sexist concepts of what is "natural"--that is, the "natural" roles of mother, children, or the family as a whole. Of particular concern to me is the fact that I have lived with a man for
fifteen years while I acutely understand the degree to which heterosexuality itself is socially constructed as sexist. That is, I love someone who has more social privilege than me, and he has that privilege because he is male. As an institution,
heterosexuality projects relations of dominance and submission, and it leads to the consequent devaluation of women because of their sex. The institution of heterosexuality is the central shaping factor of many different social practices at many
different levels--which range, for example, from the dependence of the mass media on manipulating sexuality to the division of labor, the split between the public and private spheres, and the relations of production under capitalism. Most painfully for
women, heterosexuality is a major, a social and psychological mode of organizing, generating, focusing, and institutionalizing desire, both men's and women's. Literally, I am wedded to my own oppression. Furthermore, the very body of woman is not
her own--it has been constructed by medicine, the law, visual culture, fashion, her mother, her household tasks, her reproductive capacity, and what Ti-Grace Atkinson has called "the institution of sexual intercourse." When I look in the mirror, I see my
flaws; I evaluate the show I put on to others. How do I break through representations of the female body and gain a more just representation of my body for and of myself? My social interactions are shaped by nonverbal conventions which we all have
learned unconsciously and which are, as it were, the glue of social life. As Nancy Henley describes it in Body Politics, women's nonverbal language is characterized by shrinking, by taking up as little space as possible. Woman is accessible to be touched.
When she speaks in a mixed group, she is likely to be interrupted or not really listened to seriously, or she may be thought of as merely emotional. And it is clear that not only does the voyeuristic male look shape most film practice, but this male gaze,
with all its power, has a social analog in the way eye contact functions to control and threaten women in public space, where women's freedom is constrained by the threat of rape. We need to articulate these levels of oppression so as to arrive at a
collective, shared awareness of these aspects of women's lives. We also need to understand how we can and already do break through barriers between us. In our personal relations, we often overcome inequalities between us and establish intimacy.
Originally, within the women's movement we approached the task of coming together both personally and politically through the strategy of the consciousness-raising group, where to articulate our experience as women itself became a collective,
transformative experience. But these groups were often composed mostly of middle-class women, sometimes predominantly young, straight, single, and white. Now we need to think more clearly and theoretically about strategies for negotiating the very
real power differences between us. It is not so impossible. Parents do this with children, and vice versa; lovers deal with inequalities all the time. The aged want to be in communion with the young, and third-world women have constantly extended
themselves to their white sisters. However, when women come together in spite of power differences among them, they feel anxiety and perhaps openly express previously suppressed hostility. Most likely, such a coming together happens when women
work together intensively on a mutual project so that there is time for trust to be established. Yet as we seek mutually to articulate the oppression that constrains us, we have found few conceptual or social structures through which we might
Women's anger is pervasive, as pervasive as our oppression, but it frequently lurks underground. If we added up all of
In the sphere of cultural
production there are few dominant ideological forms that allow us even to think "women's rage." As ideological constructs, these forms end up containing
authentically express our rage.
women's depression--all our compulsive smiling, ego-tending, and sacrifice; all our psychosomatic illness, and all our passivity--we could gauge our rage's unarticulated, negative force.
women. Women's rage is most often seen in the narratives that surround us. For example: Classically, Medea killed her children because she was betrayed by their father. Now, reverse-slasher movies let the raped woman pick up the gun and kill the
male attacker. It is a similar posture of dead end vengeance. The news showed Patty Hearst standing in a bank with a gun embodying that manufactured concept "terrorist," and then we saw her marrying her FBI bodyguard long after her comrades
went up in flames. In melodrama and film noir, as well as in pornography, women's anger is most commonly depicted through displacement onto images of female insanity or perversity, often onto a grotesque, fearful parody of lesbianism. These
displacements allow reference to and masking of individual women's rage, and that masked rage is rarely collectively expressed by women or even fully felt. We have relatively few expressions of women's authentic rage even in women's art. Often on the
news we will see a pained expression of injustice or the exploitative use of an image of a third- world woman's grief. Such images are manipulated purely for emotional effect without giving analysis or context. Some great feminist writers and speakers
such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Tubman have provided models by which we can understand ourselves, but too often the very concept of "heroine" means that we hold up these women and their capacity
women chained themselves together in the state house when it was clear that the ERA would not pass; the women sought
actions such as these often have little effect beyond their own time span.
We need to think beyond such forms to more socially effective ones . It is a task open to all our creativity and skill--to tap our anger as a source of
energy and to focus it aesthetically and politically. We may have to combine images of anger with something else--say, images of how women can construct the collectivity as a whole. It is here that, by their example, our
for angry self-expression as the exception rather than the rule. In Illinois,
to express our collective anger at our legislators' cowardice and to do so in a conspicuous, public way. But
third-world sisters have often taken the lead. Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus, Harriet Tubman leading slaves to the North, an Angolan mother in uniform carrying a baby and a rifle, a Vietnamese farmer tilling and defending her land,
women can gain more for themselves than merely negating the bad
that exists. And it is in their constant need to attack both sexism and racism, as well as poverty and imperialist aggression, that third-world feminists now make us all see much more clearly both the urgent need for and the possibility of
Nicaraguan women in their block committees turning in wife abusers to the police--these images let us see that
reconstructing the whole world on new terms. Artistically, emotionally, and politically women seem to need to glimpse dialectically the transcendence of our struggle against sexism before we can fully express sexism's total negation, that is, our own just
our suppressed rage feels so immense that the open expression of it threatens to destroy us. So we often do not
experience anger directly and consciously, nor do we accurately aim our rage at its appropriate target. To transcend
negation and to build on it means that we have to see what is beyond our rage . An example of such transcendence was demonstrated by Nicaraguan mothers of
rage. Sometimes
"martyred" soldiers (those killed by U.S.-paid counterrevolutionaries) to Pope John Paul II when he visited Managua in April 1983. They stood in the rows closest to the podium where the Pope spoke and they all bore large photos of their dead children.
As the events of the day unfolded, the women created an image that stirred the whole people, one that the Pope could not go beyond or even adequately respond to. Here is what happened: The Pope spoke on and on to the gathered crowd about obeying
the hierarchy and not getting involved with the things of this world. In frustration and anger, the women began to shout, "We want peace," and their chant was taken up by the 400,000 others there. The women's rage at personal loss was valorized by
the Nicaraguan people as a whole, as the grieving mother became a collective symbol of the demand for peace. The chant, "We want peace," referred simultaneously to national sovereignty, anti-imperialism, religion, and family life. The women spoke
for the whole. This brings me back to my original question about women's political action in the United States today. One of the major areas of investigation and struggle in the women's movement has been the sphere of daily life. This struggle,
represented by an early women's movement phrase--"the personal is the political"--derives from women's real material labor in the domestic sphere and in the sphere of social relations as a whole. Women have traditionally done the psychological labor
that keeps social relations going. In offices, in neighborhoods, at home, they often seek to make the social environment safe and "better," or more pleasant. That such labor is invisible, particularly that it is ignored within leftist theory and practice, is
one of the more precise indices of women's oppression. And it is feminists' sensitivity to and analysis of social process that clarifies for them the sexism on the Left. Often at a leftist conference or political meeting, many men continue to see women and
women's concerns as "other," and they do not look at what the Left could gain from feminist theory or from women's subcultural experience or from an analysis of women's labor. Women who come to such an event have already made a commitment to
learn and to contribute, so they make an effort to continue along with the group as a whole but are impeded by sexist speakers' intellectual poverty (e.g., use of the generic "he"), macho debating style, and distance from political activism. Furthermore,
not only women feel this political invisibility at leftist events. When black labor and black subcultural experience in the United States is not dealt with, nor is imperialism, or when racism is theoretically subsumed under the rubric of "class oppression"
and not accorded its specificity, then third-world participants face the same alienation. To demonstrate this process and analyze what divides us, I will describe an incident that occurred at the Teaching Institute on Marxist Cultural Theory in June
1983. It is worth discussing because it is the kind of incident that happens all too often among us on the Left. Early in that summer session, a coalition of students and the two women faculty members, Gayatri Spivak and me, formed to present a protest
statement to the faculty. It was read in every class. Here is what it said: The Marxist-Feminist Caucus met on Friday June 17th and concluded that the "limits, frontiers and boundaries" of Marxist cultural theory as articulated by the Teaching Institute
excluded and silenced crucial issues of sexism, racism and other forms of domination. We find ourselves reproducing in the classrooms of the Teaching Institute the very structures which are the object of our critique. The Marxist-Feminist Caucus
therefore proposes that each class set aside an hour weekly to discuss strategic silences and structural exclusions. A Marxism that does not problematize issues of gender and race, or of class consciousness in its own ranks, cannot hope to be an adequate
tool for either social criticism or social transformation. The institute had a format of having famous Marxist intellectuals lecture, specifically males with job security who have never incorporated a feminist analysis into their theoretical work. Both the
format and the content of their lectures enraged some of us, but not others. In a sense, writing a protest statement divided the school's participants between the political ones and the consumers of Marxist theory. This is because critical theory itself has
become a pathway for elitist advancement in the humanities and social sciences in universities where these areas are facing huge cutbacks. And the canon of that critical theory is based on Marx and Freud and their contemporary interpretants,
Althusser and Lacan. Both at the Teaching Institute and at prestigious universities, young academics could get their quick fix of Marxism, the knowledge of which could help greatly in their academic career. This is a capitalist mode of consuming
knowledge. Too many students, especially career- pressured graduate students, want only a well conceived lecture, a digest of Marxist theory and social analysis, something that can be written in a notebook, taken home, and quoted from in a future
paper or journal article. Furthermore, we intellectuals fall into this capitalist competitive mode. We feel pressured inside ourselves to be the best. Students are told to buy the best. All the faculty at the Teaching Institute felt that they could not make a
mistake, that they had to read and show they had read everything, that they had been challenged on their political practice, accused of being racist or sexist or undemocratic. Our control over the classroom and studied theoretical polish became a kind of
professional hysteria and worked against the collective building of Marxist knowledge and theory that we have needed for more effective social change. Since the early 1970s women have come together in meetings like these, in feminist seminars,
caucuses, and workshops, partly in resistance to a certain macho leftist or academic style and partly to build a new body of knowledge and feminist political practice. And we have been successful at doing this but it has meant double or triple work for
us. Feminist scholarship does not usually lead to academic promotion for a woman. The knowledge women produce is easily marginalized, as was made painfully obvious at that summer school. Feminists and third-world students came to the Teaching
Institute knowing how much they needed Marxist theory. They understood that abolishing capitalism and imperialism was the precondition for liberation. They came as political participants expecting to learn theoretical tools to use in fighting
oppression. But sex and race were too often ignored--I would say stupidly ignored--as social determinants in the theories presented about social change. (Beyond that, students felt intimidated by name-dropping and teachers' and other students' failure
to explain terms. They felt they had to give a polished rebuttal or a cohesive "strategic intervention" before they could speak to refute a lecturer's point.) And when students raised issues of sexism or racism, deflection became the all too frequent tactic
used by teachers or some of the white male students in response. No wonder that women, with their sex-role socialization, were often too intimidated to speak. This is a sad analysis, but not an infrequent one in academia. It speaks about political theory
and academic sexism and racism, and elitism and class privilege. The incident reveals much of what divides politically progressive people in the United States. These differences must be acknowledged in depth if we are to work together politically in a
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
coalition form. In particular, I understand the texture of women's silence in a forum that demanded a highly rational and developed intervention. Many of the women students at the Teaching Institute already produced feminist theory, but the
intimidating nature of this kind of aggressive public speaking made them seem like nonparticipants. And it often happens to me, too. I know that we watch and despair of our own colonized psyches which hold us back in silence precisely when we would
choose to be political actors, especially in a Marxist forum. What we have seen in the 1970s and 1980s in North America and Europe is a supercession of political forms related to developments in radical consciousness. Conditions have evolved in the
United States that make it impossible to conceive of a revolutionary organizing strategy that does not embrace a black and minority revolution and a feminist revolution. The lesson of the civil rights/black power movement was that blacks will organize
autonomously. Now it is the offspring of that movement, Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, that has taken the lead in building an anti-imperialist coalition that addresses the specific struggles and organizing forms of blacks, Latinos, women, and gays.
Such a coalition relates to the existence of the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the anti-imperialist movement, by supporting these groups' autonomous organizing and granting new respect, not by subsuming or controlling them.
Furthermore, at this point in U.S. history, issues of mass culture and mass communication have to be dealt with, so that minority figures such as Jesse Jackson or Harold Washington, Chicago's black major, have developed an ongoing analysis about
racism in the press. As a feminist who has worked both in the cultural sphere and in anti-imperialist work, I have experienced this supercession of forms. In the early 1970s a politically active woman was either "on the Left" or "in the independent
women's movement." Some socialist feminists within leftist organizations formed caucuses to try to influence their organizations. In the 1970s I chose to work mostly within the independent women's movement, especially in creating a women's studies
program at an urban university. In developing feminist media now within the women's movement, I find many of my sisters addressing broader issues of imperialism, racism, class oppression, and the nuclear threat. Many of us are joining progressive
coalitions around these issues. Within these coalitions we must be able openly to declare, "I am a feminist and our feminist position represents the most advanced stand. You men have to join us." Indeed, many men, often younger men, have. As
feminists, we are the ones who are building a whole theoretical critique of mass culture and mass communication; we are the ones who are learning how to appropriate all of culture in an oppositional way. And because of our historical position in
advanced capitalism, we are one of the first social movements to address cultural issues in such a thorough and complex way. Many feminists are eager to participate in coalitions, the major political strategy for us in the 1 980s. In Chicago, we saw the
women's movement and the Left work to elect Harold Washington. In the San Francisco area, gays and lesbians have formed a Central America support group. Both in the United States and abroad, the antinuclear movement contains within it allwomen's affinity groups. Latinos in various areas identify and organize as Puerto Rican or Mexican-American according to their ethnic origins and concentration, and also unite in Central American solidarity work. This great diversity of sectoral
organizing enriches all of us who are working for social change. Some of the best aspects of current progressive organizing have, in fact, derived specifically from the development of the contemporary women's movement. I mentioned the
consciousness-raising groups earlier. I think the women's movement has introduced into political discourse an open and direct critique of the macho style and political posturing of many male leaders. As feminist activists, we have created among
ourselves new forms of discussion and a creative, collective pursuit of knowledge--in contrast to an older, more aggressive, male debating style. Particularly important for me, the women's movement has pursued and validated as politically important
cultural and artistic work. In Chicago, where I live, I experience a strong continuum and network among community-based artists and women in the art world. We have built up intellectual ties between academic women and feminist film- and
videomakers who have created an analysis of how sexuality is manipulated in the visual culture that surrounds us. As a consequence, feminist film criticism has developed a new theoretical framework for analyzing ideology and the mass media. In fact,
consider how unleashing our anger might
capacitate us to act for change, I reconsider Frantz Fanon's essay "Concerning Violence" in The Wretched of the Earth. In that essay he describes decolonization, particularly the process by which the native sheds the
colonizer's values and the colonizer's ways. I understand that my black and Latina sisters in the United States experience a rage against the economic and racial violence perpetrated every day against them; in a way that is
similar to what Fanon describes: this rage knows its resolution lies in a complete change of the economic order in which we live. At the same time, I must ask what kind of rage it would be that would
effectively contest women's oppression--given all the levels at which gender inequality and women's oppression is articulated in social and personal life. What Fanon describes to us is a specific historical moment
I think that our building of a feminist cultural theory has made a key contribution to the Left and to revolutionary movements throughout the world. When I want to
at which mental colonization can be and is surpassed. As I look at women's mental colonization, I see our internalized sense of powerlessness, our articulation into masochistic structures of desire, and our playing out of personae that on the surface
active rage
seem "passive," "self-defeating," "irrational," "hesitant," "receptively feminine," or even "crazy." Much of this behavior stems from internalized and suppressed rage. Fanon describes such behavior in the colonized and posits
, the
violent response to violence, as its cure. What would the overturning of male supremacy and women's colonization mean to women? How would it be accomplished? Fanon understands that a whole social structure and a new kind of person must come
signals a survival struggle that
does not characterize the war between the sexes . As I read Fanon for what he can teach me about women's resistance to oppression in nonrevolutionary society, I read him as a communist
into being, and that those with privilege know, fear, and resist this. His call to armed struggle, based on the very clear demarcations and abuses of power that the native always sees,
psychiatrist talking about how social movements can change the mentality of the oppressed. When I ask about revolution for women now, minimally I see that our contestation cannot be conducted in the mode of nice girls, of managing the egos of and
Angry
contestation may take us the extra step needed to overcome our own colonized behavior and tardy response. Let me now rewrite for you parts of Fanon's essay to
show its power when discussing the relation between psychological and social change. The distance between the violence of colonization and its necessary response in
armed struggle, and the emotional rage I am referring to here in combating sexism, marks the distance between the periphery and the
center of international capitalism. By using Fanon in this way, I do not wish to co-opt him for the women's movement but to learn from him, just as I learned from the Nicaraguan women's courage and tenacity. If women must learn to be openly
patiently teaching those who oppress, which is a skill and duty we learned from our mothers in the domestic sphere. If we do so, once again we will be placed in that very role of "helpmate" that we are trying to overcome.
angry, we must learn to draw links between ourselves and those who are more oppressed, to learn new methods of struggle and courageous response. Combating women's oppression as we know it is a historical process: that is to say, it cannot become
intelligible or clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the movements that give it historical form and content. Combating women's oppression is the meeting of two intrinsically opposed forces, which in fact owe this originality to
that sort of substantification that results from and is nourished by the social construction of gender. The husband is right when he speaks of knowing "them" well--for it is men who perpetuate the function of wife. Men owe the reproduction of their
bodies and psyches to the family. Feminist revolution never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally. It transforms passive femininity crushed with inessentiality into privileged agency under the floodlights
of history. A new kind of woman brings a new rhythm into existence with a new language and a new humanity; combating women's oppression means the veritable creation of new women who become fully human by the same process by which they
freed themselves. Feminists who decide to put their program into practice and become its moving force are ready to be constantly enraged. They have collectively learned that this narrow world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be called into question
by absolute contestation. The sex-gender system is a world divided into compartments. And if we examine closely this system of compartments, we will at last be able to reveal the lines of force it implies and to mark out the lines on which a
At the level of individuals, anger is a cleansing force. It frees the woman from her inferiority complex and from despair and inaction; it makes her fearless
I will stop citing from and reworking Fanon, deliberately at the point of individual rage. Now is a time when we need to
work in coalitions, but we must be very honest about what divides us and what are the preconditions we need before we can
work together. I have made the decision to work in leftist and feminist cultural work and in Latin American solidarity work. I think in all our strategies we must analyze the relation of that strategy to feminist, antiracist, and antinonoppressive society will be reorganized.
and restores her self-respect. At this point
imperialist demands. Women comprise over half the population; any class issues in the United States are intimately tied to the question of racism; we all live off the labor of workers, often underpaid women, in the Third World; and socialist revolution
is being waged very near us. Personally, I know that it is by my contact with Nicaraguan women, who insist that men and women must struggle together for our mutual liberation, that I have been politically and emotionally renewed. The problems grow
the women's movement must stop turning our anger against each other and learn the
most effective ways to work together for social change. We can focus our anger and harness it, but to do that we must
clearly analyze cause and effect. If theory accompanies anger, it will lead to effective solutions to the problems at hand. We have great
more acute. We know that the Right is racist, homophobic, and sexist. We in
emotional and social power to unleash when we set loose our all too often suppressed rage, but we may only feel free to do so when we know that we can use our anger in an astute and responsible way.
State influence inevitable- only mobilizing focus on reforms can effectively challenge
patriarchy
R. W. Connell 90, “The State, Gender, and Sexual Politics: Theory and Appraisal”, Theory and Society, Vol. 19, No. 5,
(Oct., 1990), pp. 507-544, http://www.jstor.org/stable/657562
Because of its power to regulate and its power to create, the state is a major stake in gender politics; and the exercise of that power is a con- stant
incitement to claim the stake. Thus the state becomes the focus of interest-group formation and mobilization in sexual politics. It is
worth recalling just how wide the liberal state's activity in relation to gender is . This activity includes family policy, population policy, labor force and labor
market management, housing policy, regulation of sexual behavior and expression, provision of child care, mass educa- tion, taxation and income redistribution, the creation and use of mili- tary forces - and
Control of the machinery that conducts these activities is a massive asset in
gender politics . In many situations it will be tactically decisive. The state is therefore a focus for the mobilization of
interests that is central to gender politics on the large scale . Feminism's historical con- cern with the state, and
attempts to capture a share of state power, appear in this light as a necessary response to a historical reality . They are not an
error brought on by an overdose of liberalism or a capitula- tion to patriarchy . As Franzway puts it, the state is
unavoidable for feminism. The question is not whether feminism will deal with the state, but how: on what terms, with what
tactics, toward what goals.5" The same is true of the politics of homosexuality among men. The ear- liest attempts to agitate for toleration produced a halfthat is not the whole of it. This is not a sideline; it is a major realm of state policy.
illegal, half-aca- demic mode of organizing that reached its peak in Weimar Germany, and was smashed by the Nazis. (The Institute of Sexual Science was vandalized and its library burnt in 1933; later, gay men
were sent to concentration camps or shot.) A long period of lobbying for legal reform followed, punctuated by bouts of state repression. (Homosexual men were, for instance, targeted in the McCarthyite period
The gay liberation movement changed the methods and expanded the goals to include social revolution, but still
dealt with the state over policing, de-criminalization, and anti-discrimination. Since the early 1970s gay politics has evolved a complex
mixture of confron- tation, cooperation, and representation. In some cities, including San Francisco and Sydney, gay men as such have successfully run for public office.
in the United States.)
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Around the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, in countries such as the United States and Australia, gay community based organizations and state health services
have entered a close - if often tense - long-term relationship.' In a longer historical perspective, all these forms of politics are fairly new. Fantasies
like Aristophanes's Lysistrata aside, the open mobiliza- tion of groups around demands or programs in sexual politics dates only from the
mid-nineteenth century. The politics that characterized other patriarchal gender orders in history were constructed along other lines, for instance as a politics of kinship, or faction formation in
agri- cultural villages. It can plausibly be argued that modern patterns re- sulted from a reconfiguration of gender politics around the growth of the
liberal state. In particular its structure of legitimation through plebiscite or electoral democracy invited the response of
popular mobilization
Complete rejection of institutional logic crushes alt solvency
Crenshaw 88 Kimberle CRENSHAW Law @ UCLA 1988, RACE, REFORM, AND RETRENCHMENT:
TRANSFORMATION AND LEGITIMATION IN ANTIDISCRIMINATION LAW 101 Harv. L. Rev. 1331 L/N
Questioning the Transformative View: Some Doubts About Trashing The Critics' product is of limited utility to Blacks in its present form. The implications for Blacks of trashing liberal legal ideology are
troubling, even though it may be proper to assail belief structures that obscure liberating possibilities. Trashing legal ideology seems to tell us repeatedly what has already been established -- that legal discourse
, trashing offers no idea of how to avoid the negative consequences of engaging in
reformist discourse or how to work around such consequences. Even if we imagine the wrong world when we think in
terms of legal discourse, we must nevertheless exist in a present world where legal protection has at times been a
blessing -- albeit a mixed one. The fundamental problem is that, although Critics criticize law because it functions to legitimate existing
institutional arrangements, it is precisely this legitimating function that has made law receptive to certain demands in this area. The
Critical emphasis on deconstruction as the vehicle for liberation leads to the conclusion that engaging in legal discourse should
be avoided because it reinforces not only the discourse itself but also the society and the world that it embodies. Yet Critics offer little beyond
this observation. Their focus on delegitimating rights rhetoric seems to suggest that , once rights rhetoric has been discarded, there exists a more
productive strategy for change, one which does not reinforce existing patterns of domination. Unfortunately, no such strategy has yet
been articulated , and it is difficult to imagine that racial minorities will ever be able to discover one. As Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward
point out in their [*1367] excellent account of the civil rights movement, popular struggles are a reflection of institutionally determined logic and a
challenge to that logic. 137 People can only demand change in ways that reflect the logic of the institutions that they
are challenging . 138 Demands for change that do not reflect the institutional logic -- that is, demands that do not engage and
subsequently reinforce the dominant ideology -- will probably be ineffective . 139 The possibility for ideological change is created through the very process of
legitimation, which is triggered by crisis. Powerless people can sometimes trigger such a crisis by challenging an institution internally , that is,
by using its own logic against it. 140 Such crisis occurs when powerless people force open and politicize a contradiction between
the dominant ideology and their reality. The political consequences [*1368] of maintaining the contradictions may sometimes force an adjustment -- an attempt to close the gap or to
is unstable and relatively indeterminate. Furthermore
make things appear fair. 141 Yet, because the adjustment is triggered by the political consequences of the contradiction, circumstances will be adjusted only to the extent necessary to close the apparent
This approach to
legitimation and change is applicable to
civil rights
contradiction.
understanding
the
movement. Because Blacks were challenging their exclusion
from political society, the only claims that were likely to achieve recognition were those that reflected American society's institutional logic: legal rights ideology. Articulating their formal demands through legal
Rather
than using the contradictions to suggest that American citizenship was itself illegitimate or false, civil rights protestors
proceeded as if American citizenship were real, and demanded to exercise the “rights” that citizenship entailed. By seeking to
restructure reality to reflect American mythology , Blacks relied upon and ultimately benefited from politically inspired efforts to resolve
the contradictions by granting formal rights. Although it is the need to maintain legitimacy that presents powerless groups with the opportunity to wrest concessions from the dominant
rights ideology, civil rights protestors exposed a series of contradictions -- the most important being the promised privileges of American citizenship and the practice of absolute racial subordination.
order, it is the very accomplishment of legitimacy that forecloses greater
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
1AR
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
A2: War Focus
Preventing nuclear war is the prerequisite to solving systemic impacts
Folk 78 Folk, Prof of Religious and Peace Studies at Bethany College, Jerry, “Peace Educations – Peace Studies: Towards
an Integrated Approach,” Peace & Change, Vol. V, No. 1, spring, P. 58
Those proponents of the positive peace approach who reject out of hand the work of researchers and educators coming to the field from the perspective of
negative peace too easily forget that the prevention of a nuclear confrontation of global dimensions is the prerequisite for all other
peace research, education, and action. Unless such a confrontation can be avoided there will be no world left in which to build
positive peace. Moreover, the blanket condemnation of all such negative peace oriented research, education or action as a
reactionary attempt to support and reinforce the status quo is doctrinaire. Conflict theory and resolution, disarmament studies, studies of the
international system and of international organizations, and integration studies are in themselves neutral. They do not intrinsically support either the status quo or revolutionary
efforts to change or overthrow it. Rather they offer a body of knowledge which can be used for either purpose or for some purpose in between. It is much more logical for those who
understand peace as positive peace to integrate this knowledge into their own framework and to utilize it in achieving their own purposes. A balanced peace studies program should
therefore offer the student exposure to the questions and concerns which occupy those who view the field essentially from the point of view of negative peace.
We take into account of gendered violence---it’s still getting better.
Zack Beauchamp 13, Editor of TP Ideas and a reporter for ThinkProgress.org, "5 Reasons Why 2013 Was The Best Year
In Human History," 12-11-2013, No Publication, http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/12/11/3036671/2013-certainlyyear-human-history/, DOA: 10-1-2014, y2k
5. There’s less racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination in the world. Racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination
remain, without a doubt, extraordinarily powerful forces. The statistical and experimental evidence is overwhelming — this irrefutable proof of widespread discrimination against African-Americans, for
the need to combat discrimination denial shouldn’t blind us to the good news. Over the centuries,
we live in the least
discriminatory era in the history of modern civilization. It’s not a huge prize given how bad the past had been, but there are still gains worth celebrating. Go back 150 years in
time and the point should be obvious. Take four prominent groups in 1860: African-Americans were in chains, European Jews were routinely massacred in the ghettos
and shtetls they were confined to, women around the world were denied the opportunity to work outside the home and made almost entirely subordinate to their husbands, and
LGBT people were invisible. The improvements in each of these group’s statuses today, both in the United States and internationally, are
incontestable. On closer look, we have reason to believe the happy trends are likely to continue. Take racial discrimination. In 2000, Harvard sociologist Lawrence Bobo penned a
comprehensive assessment of the data on racial attitudes in the United States. He found a “national consensus” on the ideals of racial
equality and integration. “A nation once comfortable as a deliberately segregationist and racially discriminatory society has not only abandoned that view,” Bobo writes, “but now overtly
instance, should put the “racism is dead” fantasy to bed. Yet
humanity has made extraordinary progress in taming its hate for and ill-treatment of other humans on the basis of difference alone. Indeed, it is very likely that
positively endorses the goals of racial integration and equal treatment. There is no sign whatsoever of retreat from this ideal, despite events that many thought would call it into question. The magnitude,
The norm against overt racism has gone global . In her book on the international anti-apartheid movement in
The belief that racial
discrimination could not be tolerated had become so widespread , Klotz argues, that it united the globe — including governments that had strategic interests in
steadiness, and breadth of this change should be lost on no one.”
the 1980s, Syracuse’s Audie Klotz says flatly that “the illegitimacy of white minority rule led to South Africa’s persistent diplomatic, cultural, and economic isolation.”
supporting South Africa’s whites — in opposition to apartheid. In 2011, 91 percent of respondents in a sample of 21 diverse countries said that equal treatment of people of different races or ethnicities was
important to them. Racism obviously survived both American and South African apartheid, albeit in more subtle, insidious forms. “The death of Jim Crow racism has left us in an uncomfortable place,” Bobo
writes, “a state of laissez-faire racism” where racial discrimination and disparities still exist, but support for the kind of aggressive government policies needed to address them is racially polarized. But there’s
two massive studies of the political views of younger Americans by my TP Ideas colleagues, John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira, found that
millenials were significantly more racially tolerant and supportive of government action to address racial disparities than the generations that
reason to hope that’ll change as well:
preceded them. Though I’m not aware of any similar research of on a global scale, it’s hard not to imagine they’d find similar results, suggesting that we should have hope that the power of racial prejudice may
be waning. The story about gender discrimination is very similar: after the feminist movement’s enormous victories in the 20th century, structural sexism still shapes the world in profound ways, but the cause
The U.N.’s Human
Development Report’s Gender Inequality Index — a comprehensive study of reproductive health, social empowerment, and labor market equity — saw a 20 percent
decline in observable gender inequalities from 1995 to 2011 . IMF data show consistent global declines in wage
disparities between genders, labor force participation, and educational attainment around the world . While
enormous inequality remains, 2013 is looking to be the worst year for sexism in history. Finally, we’ve made astonishing progress on sexual orientation and gender
identity discrimination — largely in the past 15 years. At the beginning of 2003, zero Americans lived in marriage equality states; by the end of 2013, 38 percent of Americans will. Article 13 of the
of gender equality is making progress. In 2011, 86 percent of people in a diverse 21 country sample said that equal treatment on the basis of gender was an important value.
European Community Treaty bans discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, and, in 2011, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution committing the council to documenting and exposing
all of the major shifts from 2007 to 2013 in Pew’s
“acceptance of homosexuality” poll were towards greater tolerance, and young people everywhere are more open to equality
for LGBT individuals than their older peers. Once again, these victories are partial and by no means inevitable. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and other
forms of discrimination aren’t just “going away” on their own. They’re losing their hold on us because people are working to change
other people’s minds and because governments are passing laws aimed at promoting equality. Positive trends don’t mean the problems are
discrimination on orientation or identity grounds around the world. The public opinion trends are positive worldwide:
close to solved, and certainly aren’t excuses for sitting on our hands. That’s true of everything on this list. The fact that fewer people are dying from war and disease doesn’t lessen the moral imperative to do
the worst parts about
the world are treated as inevitable, the prospect of radical victory over pain and suffering dismissed as utopian fantasy. The
overwhelming force of the evidence shows that to be false . As best we can tell, the reason humanity is getting better is because humans
something about those that are; the fact that people are getting richer and safer in their homes isn’t an excuse for doing more to address poverty and crime. But too often,
have decided to make the world a better place. We consciously chose to develop lifesaving medicine and build freer political systems; we’ve passed laws against workplace discrimination and poisoning
children’s minds with lead. So far, these choices have more than paid off. It’s up to us to make sure they continue to.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
ROB – Generic
Don’t buy their link args – there are women that support the plan – their evidence cherry
picks advocacy groups – there are women’s groups SPECIFICALLY dedicated to
supporting legalization
Rucke ‘14
(Katie Rucke is a MintPress staff writer and investigative report specializing in the war on drugs, criminal justice, and
marijuana legislation. Rucke has been recommended by the Wikileaks organization as a trusted journalist in 2013, “Why
Women Fight For Marijuana Legalization,” 4-1-14, http://www.mintpressnews.com/women-fight-marijuanalegalization/187863/, accessed 10-25-14) PM
Though the stereotypical marijuana user is often a man, marijuana, in fact, has specific healing properties for women. It can
treat menstrual cramps, ease pain from contractions during childbirth and even function as an aphrodisiac. Despite
marijuana’s female-specific benefits, support for marijuana legalization among American women — whether it be medicinal
or personal use — has long lagged behind that of men by about 5 to 10 percentage points. But as marijuana’s medicinal
powers for children gain international attention and myths associated with the drug and those who use it are debunked,
female support for marijuana legalization is increasing. Women are coming out of the “cannabis closet” in order to prove
marijuana is not just for boys and using the substance doesn’t make women bad people or inadequate mothers. Kyndra Miller
is a founding member of the marijuana legalization advocacy group the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws’ subgroup the NORML Women’s Alliance, the first female-specific marijuana legalization group. Miller says that just
like the women who banded together in the 1920s to end the prohibition of alcohol, efforts to legalize marijuana in the United
States require the influence and support of women, who make up slightly more than 50 percent of the voting population.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
State/Lisa Brown
Their argument that women are barred from politics is wrong
Kathy Barks 12, Staff Reporter @ AP, "Democratic Lawmaker Performs 'Vagina Monologues' On Statehouse Steps," 6-182012, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/18/lisa-brown-vagina-monologues_n_1607632.html, DOA:
10-25-2014, y2k
LANSING, Mich. — A state lawmaker who says she was barred from speaking in the Michigan House because Republicans objected to her
saying "vagina" during debate over anti-abortion legislation performed "The Vagina Monologues " on the Statehouse steps – with a hand from the
author. Eve Ensler, whose groundbreaking play about women's sexuality still packs theaters 16 years after it debuted, oversaw Monday night's performance by Democratic state Rep. Lisa Brown, 10 other lawmakers and several actresses. Capitol
facilities director Steve Benkovsky estimated about 2,500 spectators – women and men – watched the play in downtown Lansing from lawn chairs and blankets. Billed on Facebook as the "Vaginas Take Back the Capitol!" event, the combination play
and protest included political signs and chants of "Vagina! Vagina!" Ensler, who flew in from California, where she's overseeing production of her new play, said she was thrilled to be involved and likened the punishment meted out by the Republican
leadership of the state House to "the Dark Ages." "If we ever knew deep in our hearts that the issue about abortion ... was not really about fetuses and babies, but really men's terror of women's sexuality and power, I think it's fully evidenced here,"
Ensler told The Associated Press by phone Monday before arriving in Lansing. "We're talking about the silencing of women, we're talking about censoring people for saying a body part," she said. "Half of these people who are trying to regulate vaginas,
they can't even say the word." Brown made her comments during debate last week on legislation that supporters say would make abortions safer but that opponents say would make it much harder for women to get abortions. While speaking against a
bill that would require doctors to ensure abortion-seekers haven't been coerced into ending their pregnancies, Brown told Republicans, "I'm flattered you're all so concerned about my vagina. But no means no." Brown was barred from speaking in the
House during the next day's session. House Republicans say they didn't object to her saying "vagina." They said Brown compared the legislation to rape, violating House decorum. She denies the allegation. "Her comments compared the support of
legislation protecting women and life to rape, and I fully support Majority Floor Leader Jim Stamas' decision to maintain professionalism and order on the House floor," GOP Rep. Lisa Posthumus Lyons, of Alto, said in a statement last week.
I'm overwhelmed by how much attention we're
getting around the world," she told Monday's crowd. Before the play began, Ensler joined Brown and Byrum on the Capitol
steps and called for an apology from the Republicans who barred them from speaking. " These women stood for our
rights ," Ensler said to applause. "The vaginas are out. We are here to stay." The speaking ban lasted only through Thursday, when lawmakers left for a five-week break. But the incident has garnered attention
internationally and on social media, where the hashtags (hash)vaginagate and (hash)sayvagina are attracting a flurry of posts. Susie Duncan, 68, watched the play while holding a
placard handed out by the American Civil Liberties Union reading, "Vagina. Can't say it? Don't legislate it." " I hope this will
spur people to go vote ," the East Lansing resident said. "We've got to change this." Brown says it isn't just women who are upset with the House
GOP leaders' actions. "I've heard from a lot of men. It's not just women who are speaking out ," she said. Her father and
mother attended the play. The Women Lawyers Association of Michigan – whose 650 members include men – criticized taking
away Brown's and Byrum's right to speak. The group said it wasn't taking a position on the bills in question, but on the lawmakers'
free speech rights. "Representatives Brown and Byrum had a right to have their constituents' 150,000 voices recognized on June 14, 2012. They were neither vulgar nor disrespectful," the group wrote in a Monday release.
Democratic Rep. Barb Byrum, of Onondaga, said she also was barred from speaking last Thursday because she referred to vasectomies during the debate. "
"When the minority is silenced, justice cannot prevail and democracy suffers."
Lisa Brown says that people should vote---electoral engagement is necessary to check the
male-dominated violence.
Lisa Brown 12, serving her second term as a state representative for Michigan, representing the 39th District, which
includes Commerce Township, West Bloomfield and Wolverine Lake, "Lisa Brown: Silenced for saying (shock!) 'vagina' ," 621-2012, CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/21/opinion/brown-kicked-out-for-saying-vagina/, DOA: 10-25-2014, y2k
As Republicans continued to throw mud against the wall to see what stuck, they only made it worse for themselves .
Thousands of women, not only in Michigan but across the country and even around the globe, saw exactly what was going on.
What they saw was a male-dominated legislative body going to great lengths to silence two women who dared speak in opposition to a measure that would limit
access to our health care. They saw it, and they didn't like it. Among the people watching this unfold was Eve Ensler, who wrote the award-winning play, "The Vagina Monologues."
Ensler, who has worked for nearly 20 years to empower women and undo the shame many of us are taught to feel toward our bodies, didn't just see a group of mostly male legislators freaking out about
"vagina." She saw them trying to shut women up at the same time they were trying to pass laws about our health. She wouldn't stand for it. That's why she came to Lansing this week to lead a performance of
In the aftermath of this, Rep. Jim Stamas,
whose job it was to issue the edict against me , said he "honestly had no idea it would become such an issue." I find it
amazing that a fellow legislator wouldn't understand why it's outrageous not to just silence me, but my 90,000
constituents. I hope he and his fellow Republicans get it now. If not, the election this November will surprise them even
more .
"The Vagina Monologues." Thousands of men, women and children showed up to see it and show their support for Byrum and me.