Saturday, March 06, 2021
On debating and complicity. I read an article that mentioned two Cabinet ministers attended the very 1988 intervarsity debating tournament at which Attorney-General Christian Porter is alleged to have raped 'Kate', a woman who later committed suicide. This says a lot about the schools and university debating scene. I think a lot about where former debaters end up in life and it’s often law, politics, or government, or as we see here, a combo of all three.
I was a university debater and met a lot of arrogant and entitled young men through this scene. I was never a brilliant enough debater (I represented Unimelb at Australasians tournaments but never Worlds) or politically assertive enough to make the bros feel threatened. Also, I was in a weird position because RMIT had no debating society so I joined the one at Melbourne, where I always felt more like a tolerated guest than a real member.
And I feel ashamed now that my politics at the time were so bland and noncommittal: I internalised the debating mindset of arguing both sides of any argument and I allowed myself to be steered towards the Right by these bozos, and to ridicule the Left, because I wanted to be liked and accepted.
But still I noticed how women would be undermined by being sexualised or belittled for being unattractive, and non-alpha men and international students would be bullied. I put a lot of this down to MUDS’ toxic reputation, which I compared unfavourably to MAD at Monash, which I felt was friendlier and more egalitarian, but who knows really.
It would not surprise me at all to learn of more alleged rapes at school and university debating functions.
