A debating tournament last month, hosted by the US’s National Speech and Debate Association - Omar Loubak Mohamed at Spiked:
During the final round, participants were charged with debating the costs and benefits of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But Team A informed Team B that they would not discuss the topic. Why? Because trans people are being ‘genocided’ by ‘MAGA Republicans’. While these wild claims had nothing to do with the IMF, the debaters were still keen to use the competition to make a political point about gender.
Team A then proudly declared that ‘misgendering’ is a form of violence, and that those who do it should face an automatic loss in debate competitions. It was a blatant call for censorship. They then pledged to ‘occupy the debate space until trans debaters can participate safely’, and invited the judges and the other team to ‘affirm’ their ‘performance’.
And so they did. Team B immediately conceded the round, probably because they didn’t want to dispute that trans ‘genocide’ is real and thus be labelled as transphobic. For their part, the judges incessantly praised Team A for their bravery and courage, crowning them the national debating champions.
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