The Debate pt 2: Why a thick skin and a sharp tongue should be our new weapons of choice

Contemporary Design Culture: Week 9

Following on from last week, The Great PDT Debate has come and gone and left me with mixed feelings to say the least.

First off, I loved the experience through and through. Having never opted for a speech during Second-Level English this was a perfect opportunity to learn a new skill and lay out my opinions in a systematic and engaging way. My debate partner and I decided to pursue this debate as it was an important issue to us and we wanted to express our opinions and findings to the class. We never expected to enjoy writing it so much. I began by conducting some research where I found some incredibly rich interesting facts and information. I never knew how many products in our daily lives wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for female designers. Gathering our content revealed a lot about the state of equality in our modern world, while it is improving it’s nowhere near where it needs to be. Women are undeniably marginalised in the design industry and this HAS to change.

We were well prepared, we had rehearsed, we were passionate and ready to deliver this debate to the class in an articulated manner. We were being opposed by two males from our class, who probably didn’t benefit from female input with the debate topic. Over the years I have educated myself in the fight for female equality and female empowerment across all industries. This, and being partnered with a woman, meant our debate would be educated, passionate and heavily populated with facts and statistics. It was going to be a deep insight into the toxic patriarchal world, everyone has become so accustomed to, and tear it to pieces. We wanted to break down the wall of misogyny to rubble, armed with only our own intelligence and hard work, we weren’t about to resort to cheap tactics that “strong” men in power avail of when threatened by a woman’s right to equality.

The debate went really well, although there were a few technical issues as it was an online debate. We fought our corner and delivered a message of truth and equality The opposition hadn’t fully researched certain aspects and so didn’t build an argument as steadfast as ours. The result of this was obvious during the rebuttals. We called them out on their main points and corrected them on certain issues. It became clear their main argument was that it’s better for woman now than it was 50 years ago, unfortunately the motion they were arguing was that men and women are equal and women are represented in design so essentially they were arguing against themselves.

So for a moment we thought we had it. What we didn’t account for was actually detailed in one of our own debate points, in a class of 46 designers only 11 of them are women. Unfortunately it didn’t matter how compelling our debate was the vast majority of males voted for the two lads opposing us. At first the feeling was disappointment in ourselves which grew into frustration at parts of the male population of the class and eventually into an unwilling acceptance and reluctant tolerance that many of the males in society will stick together and try and put down females out of fear and intimidation. This was painfully obvious in the comments section.

While our debate was taking place, there was another war raging in the comments section. It mainly hinged on a few males attacking the concept of female equality. A regrettable agreement with the opposition’s point that females need to work harder and “step up to the mark” if they want to be accepted and represented, also that women don’t deserve scholarships to aid them in breaking through into a male dominated industry. Mind boggling, I know, unfortunately you cant argue with ignorance so we ended up losing the (class voted) debate to two men who appear to be under the illusion that women are already 100% equal and are fully represented in industry which we all know couldn’t be further from the truth. It was clear a radical shift in thinking is needed but we never would’ve thought that such a shift would be needed in our own class.

Losing the debate was a.… truly enlightening experience. I feel now, we have only grown from the experience. A thick skin and a sharp tongue are our new weapons of choice when tackling such issues. As perfectly put by Jane Gleeson “it’s not about fighting [to break through the glass ceiling] it’s about continuing to do so” and going forward, that’s what we’ll be doing.

“Would they still call me a ‘Diva’ if I was a man?”

Zaha Hadid (1950-2016)