Appeal: false equivalence
From Ryad TRIGGERS Miami Girls After Saying THIS... 2026-10-19 22:20.
- #262336:31upheld a speaker not yet confirmed psogos: false equivalence (+1) tempered from major to minor
The council upheld the call: a speaker not yet confirmed gave away 1 point.
“It's a similar situation in a relationship. You don't always get to ask questions about why a man is asking you to do something…”
Diogenes: He equates obeying God's command in fasting with obeying a boyfriend, though the standing of a divine command and a fallible man differ in exactly the respect the argument needs.minor: His whole case for female submission rests on this parallel, and the difference between God and a boyfriend is obvious on the record.
Herodotus (partly): I ran no web search. The speaker names aren't known and the site has no other records, so this rests on the transcript alone. S22 is almost certainly S1 from the opening, because at 36:20 he says "the same way you asked me earlier, why do you fast?" In the opening (00:35–01:04) S1 said he fasts "because God prescribed" it, and that Christians also can't give every reason for their practices. So the fasting analogy is his own consistent move, and he did draw the parallel the callout describes. The callout is fair on substance: a divine command and a boyfriend's request differ in authority and fallibility. In mitigation, he hedged in the same breath ("not necessarily blind faith"). He also added that the woman "chose" the man as leader, and that he would explain his own objections rather than just give orders. That is an argument about consent, not a pure equation of God and a man. So "false equivalence" is a real weakness, but "major" may overstate it. The bench graded it minor (Aristotle, Plato); the referee had major.
- Aristotle uphold: On the record: S22 is the voice S1 from the opening: he declared that he fasts "because God prescribed" it, that believers cannot give every reason for their practices, and that men lead while women are subordinate. He has held that since, and the called line is the same fasting analogy applied to a boyfriend, so it fits his position and does not depart from it. He calls obeying a boyfriend "a similar situation" to obeying God's command in fasting. The two differ in the very respect his point needs: God's command can be followed without stated reasons because God is infallible, and a fallible man's cannot. He needs the likeness to conclude that a woman "doesn't always get to ask questions". His hedges ("not necessarily blind faith", "you are selecting him") soften the equation but do not remove it, so I keep the label and lower the severity to minor.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "false equivalence". S22 likens obeying a divine command without knowing every reason to a woman obeying her boyfriend without asking why. The commander differs in the very respect the argument needs: God, whose commands carry authority, against a fallible man whom she chose. The conclusion that she should not question him needs that likeness. He softens it with "not blind faith" and "perhaps he knows what's best", but he never answers why a man's say-so carries the weight of God's.
- Plato uphold: On the record: S1 opened by saying he fasts because God prescribed it, not because every reason is known, and has held that men lead and women submit; the called line carries that same analogy into relationships, so it does not depart from his position. The speaker explicitly likens obeying God's command to fast with a woman following her boyfriend's instructions without asking why. A divine command and a fallible man differ in exactly the respect the analogy needs, and that difference is plain on the record. He did hedge ("not necessarily blind faith") and added that she chose the leader. The hedge doesn't remove the equivalence he drew, but it lowers the severity to minor.
Appeal this callout
Appeals come only from the debaters themselves. Sign in with Google to start; you'll then prove which debater you are, once.