I've recently been engaged with online discussion on the matter of trans rights. This is a spectacularly unhelpful dialogue where neither side is listening to what the other is actually saying and most contributions consist of calling people names, claiming to be victimised or insisting that their basic human rights are being trampled on.
So that got me thinking: what about a debating club where we talk about the contentious issues in a structured format where sticking to civility and making a good case will be enforced.
This is because I'm concerned that some people may never have to actually defend or think through their causes, nor to find out that debate with people who disagree with you makes your politics sharper, more defensible and better informed. On this issue particularly I'd like to help trans people and trans allies develop better arguments than what is normally expressed on social media.
The trans issue is just one - we could cover a wide range of topics including questions like Should Scotland become independent? UBI yes or no? Should we give up our cars? Immigration etc etc.
The format I have in mind is something like a zoom call with 2 speakers on each side. Priority will be given to disabled speakers. It is a disabled persons club. Priority will also be given to people who support a cause although devil's advocating will be allowed if we want to debate a topic and can't find anyone (cough, Scottish independence).
The Club would recruit people by sending out a form: are you willing to argue for X (from belief or as a devil's advocate)? Are you disabled? Name, Email.
Speakers will be given time to research the arguments, watch Youtube presentations, practice in front of the bedroom mirror or whatever.
The debates will be really structured so that a topic or argument will be proposed, the proposer speak in favour, then an opposing speaker speak against then the zoom call votes and it's scored to one of the sides.
Eg we're debating privatisation.
- Speaker 1 (pro) explains that in a nationalised industry workers inevitably end up just going through the motions because no one has any incentives.
- Speaker 2 (anti) argues that in nationalised industries this simply isn't true and points to many laudable examples of very hard-working public sector workers like our NHS.
- crowd votes.
- Speaker 4 (anti) proposes a new motion that privatisation inevitably leads to corruption of government and parliament by paid lobbyists
- Speaker 3 (pro) argues against but unfortunately gets cross and calls her opponent a rude name causing the convenor to automatically award the point to the anti side.
- crowd doesn't vote, pro side forfeited the point.
At the end the points are totted up for one way to assess the outcome (we won the arguments total) and also there's a general vote on the motion by the attendees on the zoom call (we won the room).
One thing I don't want to happen is for people to give bios. There can be a tendency in disability politics for people to start of with some long rambling justification of why they can be considered disabled. (When I was 13 I was in a car crash and.....). I hate that. It's enough that you state in sincerity that you believe yourself to be disabled and no one should feel they need to provide evidence.
There's an ulterior motive: to train disabled people to be able to argue their case with a view to engaging in politics and civics. Perhaps giving media interviews or entering politics. We're massively underrepresented in the ranks of professional politicians and if the Club can give some future politicians a start in defending their ideas and making their case then that would be a wonderful thing.
This is a sketch of an idea, it will no doubt change on contact with reality but I do very much want to see more disabled people and people in general get to doing politics the right way - by listening to the other person finding where they agree, making the case persuasively where they disagree and winning over people to their cause.
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