ADA
Victoria Young
Men who call womyn "girls" and "ladies" came under attack at the Womyn'sfest debate "Womyn are their own worst enemy" at the Maidment Theatre last Wednesday. Four debaters took to the stage: Gemma Gracewood from bFM and MaxTV, and Leslie Hawkin, Young Womyns Co-ordinator at the YWCA argued for the negative. Jackie White, member of the Auckland Representative Debating team and Simone Kahu, a seventh former at Senior College, were the affirmative.
White claimed that womyn would be too strong to hold down if they collaborated with each other and that the factionalism and lack of unity among womyn actually helps patriarchy. White cited a scene from The Sound of Music as an example of how some womyn accept their prescribed roles. When Leisel and Rolf are dancing round the summerhouse singing "Sixteen Going on Seventeen", Rolf sings "You little girl are an empty page which men will want to write on". Leisel replies,"I need someone older and wiser telling me what to do." Ms White said Leisel should have answered, "Shut up with all your sexist bullshit, I'm running off with my governess."
The affirmative went on to argue that men are too weak to have controlled womyn for so long and that womyn who are not politicised and who put up with being called 'ladies' and 'girls' are the real enemy to womyn. It was also suggested that extremist feminists were destroying a "plausible ally" by alienating men.
The negative argued that there are other factors that are the enemy of womyn and to say that womyn are their own worst enemy is to let those other factors off the hook. Womyn will survive and go further because they can keep going even when they are bleeding like a river. Ms Gracewood advanced the idea that womyn are in fact their own best friends and that female doctors, lawyers, healers, fashion designers work to help womyn. Ms Hawkin suggested that the low turnout at the debate was evidence in itself that women were leading busy, successful lives and were far from being their own worst enemy.
Craccum Issue 14
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