By Rhyen Hunt and Maddy Cahill
The Feminism Kritik is a more broad term for any K that aims to prioritize the ideas of feminism, womxn, and the issue of sexism and improving material conditions in the debate space, rather than who best talks about the resolution. The Fem K can be written in a lot of ways such as standard Fem K, Fem Killjoy, Fem Rage, Fem Performance and Fem IR.
Standard Fem K
The most basic form of feminism argumentation is the typical Fem K. This K can be accomplished predominantly in two ways, but for the most part, they both center around the discourse. The first is by choosing to talk about why feminist ideals are really critical to the debate space, how womxn are disadvantaged in the activity and why the judge should prioritize feminism in the debate space. Debaters who choose to read this style of Kritik typically read authors that have written about the struggles womxn face in the space and what the discourse can do to improve the space. The second is to talk about feminism and why what is happening to the womxn outside of the debate space, in the real world, should be prioritized instead of the resolution. Sometimes these K’s are executed in such a way that starts by talking about what group of womxn the resolution excludes and then talks about the larger problems facing womxn today. These kritiks often cite feminist philosophers, theorists, and current events to compose an argument about why the discussion about womxn in the world and the way we talk about womxn is more important than resolution argumentation.
Fem Killjoy K
Womxn often are described as people that should be happy marrying a nice man, cooking, cleaning, staying home, having children, or taking care of children. Obviously modern womxn are very different than the “traditional womxn”. This K is based around the idea that womxn are expected to get happiness out of their traditional “place”. When womxn have rage and anger surrounding their position and express it publicly they become a “feminist killjoy”. For example, I might have rage regarding sexist structures, sexist men, sexist traditions, or sexist jokes. But expressing this rage disrupts people’s happiness in exchange for exposing the reality of a womxn’s life. In this instance, you are the killjoy! The goal is to disrupt the “happiness” or “peace” of the round by calling out the problematic, insensitive, or sexist rhetoric of the other team. We trade that happiness or peace to regain political consciousness or power in the round and in reality.
Fem Rage K
Rage argumentation is often used by minority debaters to break stereotypes associated with their experience as a minority. For the fem rage Kritik, debaters use rage because it fights the patriarchy through providing womxn with agency and a way to materially ground their resistance. Rage is used as a form of conscious-raising to come together and create new social forms and structures in which individual changes can come to fruition. The anger and frustration move from the personal to the political and becomes a force for shaping a new world absent patriarchy. Many debaters read philosophy explaining how rage has a negative connotation in the context of the femxle identity and why this is a problem and why it's important to break the system in the debate round and outside of the round. Rage is often described as the easiest way to understand the emotions of the debaters.
Fem Performance K
Performance debate is often used to express the experience of minorities within a debate round. It sounds and looks much different than traditional debate because it is meant to be a performance to draw attention. People play music, read poetry and portions of novels, sing, talk about a personal experience, or dance. People do whatever best expresses their experience as that minority. In the case of Fem Performance, this performance would be used to express the experience of womxn in debate and in the real world through non-traditional forms of communication. They can also challenge the ways that performance shape minority experience in debate. For example, masculine presentation is more accepted in a debate than any femxle presentation. It could also challenge the length to which feminist and femxle literature and content are accepted and used in a debate round.
Fem IR K
Feminist International Relations Kritiks focus on what we can do in the debate round and in the real world to implement Feminist International Relations policy. This is a real policy that has been implemented in countries like Sweden and in part Canada and France. The justification for the implementation of Feminist International Relations is first that status quo international relations that rely on statistics and articles are written from the masculine perspective and so they can never make accurate predictions that include all genders. Second, conflict is always likely in the status quo since traditional international relations do not actually take into account the lived experiences of all people. Third, Feminist IR takes a nonbinary gendered lens of international relations that correct historical, patriarchal, racist, and neocolonialist imbalances of power. Fourth, traditional IR practices were built by men for men, so they no longer work in the modern world where minorities participate and thrive. Fem IR solves by focusing conversations of IR around how gender drives state action, forcing us to re-evaluate systemic issues.
Standard Fem K
The most basic form of feminism argumentation is the typical Fem K. This K can be accomplished predominantly in two ways, but for the most part, they both center around the discourse. The first is by choosing to talk about why feminist ideals are really critical to the debate space, how womxn are disadvantaged in the activity and why the judge should prioritize feminism in the debate space. Debaters who choose to read this style of Kritik typically read authors that have written about the struggles womxn face in the space and what the discourse can do to improve the space. The second is to talk about feminism and why what is happening to the womxn outside of the debate space, in the real world, should be prioritized instead of the resolution. Sometimes these K’s are executed in such a way that starts by talking about what group of womxn the resolution excludes and then talks about the larger problems facing womxn today. These kritiks often cite feminist philosophers, theorists, and current events to compose an argument about why the discussion about womxn in the world and the way we talk about womxn is more important than resolution argumentation.
Fem Killjoy K
Womxn often are described as people that should be happy marrying a nice man, cooking, cleaning, staying home, having children, or taking care of children. Obviously modern womxn are very different than the “traditional womxn”. This K is based around the idea that womxn are expected to get happiness out of their traditional “place”. When womxn have rage and anger surrounding their position and express it publicly they become a “feminist killjoy”. For example, I might have rage regarding sexist structures, sexist men, sexist traditions, or sexist jokes. But expressing this rage disrupts people’s happiness in exchange for exposing the reality of a womxn’s life. In this instance, you are the killjoy! The goal is to disrupt the “happiness” or “peace” of the round by calling out the problematic, insensitive, or sexist rhetoric of the other team. We trade that happiness or peace to regain political consciousness or power in the round and in reality.
Fem Rage K
Rage argumentation is often used by minority debaters to break stereotypes associated with their experience as a minority. For the fem rage Kritik, debaters use rage because it fights the patriarchy through providing womxn with agency and a way to materially ground their resistance. Rage is used as a form of conscious-raising to come together and create new social forms and structures in which individual changes can come to fruition. The anger and frustration move from the personal to the political and becomes a force for shaping a new world absent patriarchy. Many debaters read philosophy explaining how rage has a negative connotation in the context of the femxle identity and why this is a problem and why it's important to break the system in the debate round and outside of the round. Rage is often described as the easiest way to understand the emotions of the debaters.
Fem Performance K
Performance debate is often used to express the experience of minorities within a debate round. It sounds and looks much different than traditional debate because it is meant to be a performance to draw attention. People play music, read poetry and portions of novels, sing, talk about a personal experience, or dance. People do whatever best expresses their experience as that minority. In the case of Fem Performance, this performance would be used to express the experience of womxn in debate and in the real world through non-traditional forms of communication. They can also challenge the ways that performance shape minority experience in debate. For example, masculine presentation is more accepted in a debate than any femxle presentation. It could also challenge the length to which feminist and femxle literature and content are accepted and used in a debate round.
Fem IR K
Feminist International Relations Kritiks focus on what we can do in the debate round and in the real world to implement Feminist International Relations policy. This is a real policy that has been implemented in countries like Sweden and in part Canada and France. The justification for the implementation of Feminist International Relations is first that status quo international relations that rely on statistics and articles are written from the masculine perspective and so they can never make accurate predictions that include all genders. Second, conflict is always likely in the status quo since traditional international relations do not actually take into account the lived experiences of all people. Third, Feminist IR takes a nonbinary gendered lens of international relations that correct historical, patriarchal, racist, and neocolonialist imbalances of power. Fourth, traditional IR practices were built by men for men, so they no longer work in the modern world where minorities participate and thrive. Fem IR solves by focusing conversations of IR around how gender drives state action, forcing us to re-evaluate systemic issues.
Breakdown
Link
The Link can either be post-fiat or pre-fiat. A pre-fiat link would be debating the resolution forces us to debate through the lens of traditional international relations which are inherently masculine. Another one would be that the masculine rhetoric used by the opposing side is rhetoric that is often used in policy to oppress womxn. A post-fiat link would be that military presence, for example, is masculine and so this is not compatible with feminist international relations. This is why countries like Sweden rarely use military intervention as a policy.
Impact
The Impact can also be post fiat or pre fiat. The impact, in the Case of a Fem IR, might be that masculine conception of international relations causes the worst forms of violence. The hypermasculinity and militarization of current IR policy is what is leading to not only gendered language but the war and violence in the world.
Alternative
Since you are rejecting the resolution, it is necessary that you have an alternative. If you were reading a Neg Fem IR your alternative may be to vote negative because questioning the masculine conceptions of the aff we are able to embrace a feminist ethic that challenges the inequalities and violence of the status quo. This gives reasoning as to why the resolution doesn't fall under the Fem IR ideology.
Role of the Ballot
The Role of the Ballot is the most important aspect in a K. When extending a K you always extend this first. The role of the ballot tells the judge what their ballot means when they vote for you. In the case of the Fem IR, The Role of the Ballot is to interrogate the root cause epistemologies of the rhetoric and policy of the resolution as a manifestation of male dominance. This sets the stage for the evidence below, which the first talks about discourse coming first in the debate space and the second is that womxn are excluded from policy discussions in the way that policy functions as a whole, so by voting for the K you are bringing the womxn back into the conversation.
The Link can either be post-fiat or pre-fiat. A pre-fiat link would be debating the resolution forces us to debate through the lens of traditional international relations which are inherently masculine. Another one would be that the masculine rhetoric used by the opposing side is rhetoric that is often used in policy to oppress womxn. A post-fiat link would be that military presence, for example, is masculine and so this is not compatible with feminist international relations. This is why countries like Sweden rarely use military intervention as a policy.
Impact
The Impact can also be post fiat or pre fiat. The impact, in the Case of a Fem IR, might be that masculine conception of international relations causes the worst forms of violence. The hypermasculinity and militarization of current IR policy is what is leading to not only gendered language but the war and violence in the world.
Alternative
Since you are rejecting the resolution, it is necessary that you have an alternative. If you were reading a Neg Fem IR your alternative may be to vote negative because questioning the masculine conceptions of the aff we are able to embrace a feminist ethic that challenges the inequalities and violence of the status quo. This gives reasoning as to why the resolution doesn't fall under the Fem IR ideology.
Role of the Ballot
The Role of the Ballot is the most important aspect in a K. When extending a K you always extend this first. The role of the ballot tells the judge what their ballot means when they vote for you. In the case of the Fem IR, The Role of the Ballot is to interrogate the root cause epistemologies of the rhetoric and policy of the resolution as a manifestation of male dominance. This sets the stage for the evidence below, which the first talks about discourse coming first in the debate space and the second is that womxn are excluded from policy discussions in the way that policy functions as a whole, so by voting for the K you are bringing the womxn back into the conversation.
Responses
Prefer Reforms to Traditional International Relations
Our country and the world are much too entrenched in the traditional international relations norms that it would be almost impossible to implement Feminist International Relations in reality. Instead, we can focus our efforts on reforming international structures in place in order to include womxn and minorities. As international relations become more modern
Answering and Interacting with the Kritik solves for Discourse
Interacting with a feminist Kritik is solving for discourse as we are talking about the impacts of Fem IR and womxn in round. You can still vote for us because we are debating and discussing the policy.
War/Conflict in the International Sphere creates Gendered Violence
This response functions on the post-fiat level because you are still debating what happens within a resolution context. War and Conflict are harmful toward womxn because the violence affects womxn in war zones the most.
The manifestation of policy is more important than it’s intrinsic masculine quality
This response functions on the post fiat level. It means that it doesnt matter if the policy is intrinsically masculine as long as it is a good policy. For example, if a policy created under traditional IR stops extinction, it's still good.
Permutation (depending on the alternative)
If the Alt is to prioritize Fem IR and you can prove that you do that through rhetoric, your implementation of the resolution, etc. you can solve for the Role of the ballot.
Our country and the world are much too entrenched in the traditional international relations norms that it would be almost impossible to implement Feminist International Relations in reality. Instead, we can focus our efforts on reforming international structures in place in order to include womxn and minorities. As international relations become more modern
Answering and Interacting with the Kritik solves for Discourse
Interacting with a feminist Kritik is solving for discourse as we are talking about the impacts of Fem IR and womxn in round. You can still vote for us because we are debating and discussing the policy.
War/Conflict in the International Sphere creates Gendered Violence
This response functions on the post-fiat level because you are still debating what happens within a resolution context. War and Conflict are harmful toward womxn because the violence affects womxn in war zones the most.
The manifestation of policy is more important than it’s intrinsic masculine quality
This response functions on the post fiat level. It means that it doesnt matter if the policy is intrinsically masculine as long as it is a good policy. For example, if a policy created under traditional IR stops extinction, it's still good.
Permutation (depending on the alternative)
If the Alt is to prioritize Fem IR and you can prove that you do that through rhetoric, your implementation of the resolution, etc. you can solve for the Role of the ballot.
Credit:
VBI
Wake forest Feminist Killjoy K
Feministkilljoy.com
“LONGING FOR THEORY:” PERFORMANCE DEBATE IN ACTION by Dana R. Polson
Cara Day and Neo Curry
Sample Kritiks
Use Verbatim to open these. Also, although these Kritiks are a helpful start, you should optimally write your own shells using these as a guideline.