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My debaters keep talking past each other on gender. Are they even answering the same question?

Sam Ellery Fellow
· 4 replies
Gender, race & identityAnalyticAlex ByrneSally HaslangerTalia Mae Bettcher#argumentation#definitions#talking-past-each-other#verbal-disputes
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Last season a practice round with my debate team on a gender-related resolution went off the rails, not because the students were rude (they weren't) but because after forty minutes nobody had engaged anybody. One side kept saying the category is grounded in biology and stable across cultures. The other kept saying it's defined by self-understanding. A third student said it's a position in a social hierarchy. Each was confident the others were simply wrong.

Afterwards I read around and found the idea that these analyses might not be answering the same question at all. I'd like someone to explain this properly, because if it's right it changes how I'd coach the round.

  • Is this the same as saying it's ‘just semantics’?
  • If they're different questions, can they all be right?
  • And how do I get sixteen-year-olds to notice when they're doing it?
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4 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Oskar Nyberg

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    It is not ‘just semantics’, and that's the key distinction.

    The three analyses can be read as answering three different questions:

    1. What explains the category's stability across time and cultures? The biological analysis is strongest here. Almost every society has distinguished people by reproductive role.
    2. What does the category do socially? The social-position analysis is built for this: how it structures who is expected to do what, who is deferred to, who is subordinated.
    3. What settles an individual's membership, and who has authority to say? Identity-based accounts focus here.

    A verbal dispute is one where people agree on all the facts and differ only in how they use a word. This isn't quite that: each question has substantive answers, and people can be wrong about them. But if speaker A answers question 1 and speaker B answers question 3, they can both be right about their own question while appearing to contradict each other.

    Can they all be right? Partly. They conflict when someone claims their answer to one question settles the others. That's where the real disagreements live.

    For coaching: make each speaker state, in one sentence, which question their definition is answering before they defend it. Clash on the question first.

    1. Sam Ellery

      Fellow

      Oskar, ‘clash on the question first’ is going on the wall of the debate room. That's exactly what was missing.

      Helpful · 1

Other answers

  1. Femke Bosman

    Fellow

    One caution. Some philosophers in each camp would deny that their view answers only one of these questions. Byrne thinks the biological analysis is the correct account of what the ordinary word means, full stop. Haslanger's view is explicitly about what the concept should be for certain purposes. Bettcher focuses on authority in self-identification. So the ‘different questions’ diagnosis helps, but it isn't something every party accepts. Part of the dispute is about which question is primary.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Rowena Abellana

    Fellow

    From teaching teenagers: what helped my class was a less loaded word first. We did ‘what is a family?’ Biology, function, self-understanding, all three came up, and students saw the structure without anyone feeling attacked. Then we moved to harder categories. They recognised the pattern instantly.

    Helpful · 3