DEEDS NOT WORDS #28playslater #day6
DEEDS NOT WORDS
A crowded and stuffy classroom of an independent school in Cambridge. Senior school debate club. A harried COACH comes in. She hands a pile of index cards to a student and indicates that she should pass them out. She writes on the whiteboard “THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT LAWS IN SUPPORT OF FEMINISM ARE NECESSARY TODAY”
COACH
OK so this is the new topic for the exhibition debate. I gotta tell you I loved compulsory nonmilitary service in year 13 as a topic but you guys. You didn’t love it. I just feel like you haven’t lived long enough to know that the experiences you have now will shape the way you think for the rest of your lives and if you had to spend a year with people from different classes and ethnicities and religions, we would all find a way to be British that was uniting and not dividing. Being British would be a virtuous part of our identity. So good. But you know we’re doing this one because well who has the first card?
DEANNA indicates she does.
COACH
Read it.
DEANNA
Two hundred and fifty million women alive on the earth today were married before they were 15 years old.
DEANNA
That is so gross.
COACH
Next card.
DEANNA
Wait.
COACH
Yes?
DEANNA
They don’t get to pick them or anything.
COACH
What did women used to be under the law?
CHARLIE
Property
COACH
Yeah the law used to be that you were like a dish or a mule. They could do what they liked with their own property, including marrying them off. Old habits die hard. Maybe one funeral at a time. But people are still alive who act like women are property. Next card.
DEANNA
But that is so unfair.
COACH
Yeah. You think so? Next card.
CHARLIE
In the UK today women are paid 81p for every £1 a man makes for the same job.
DEANNA
WHAT?????
A more senior student, the Head Girl, intervenes.
RACHEL
That can’t be right. For the same job?
COACH
Yeah.
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
But they would have recourse under the Equalities Act.
COACH
Sure if they got the information and were wealthy enough to sue.
DEANNA
For the SAME JOB!!!!
COACH
So those are the arguments in support of the resolution. We need to oppose those arguments.
CHARLIE
Who could oppose them?
COACH
That's why I made the resolution about whether the law needs to be changed. Of course all this garbage needs to do. But I think it's fair to argue that laws can’t dictate culture and what needs to change is the culture before the laws.
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
You can argue that feminism is inherently biased.
COACH
How is it biased?
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
Even by its very name. It’s not the equality movement, it’s feminism. It favours one gender.
CHARLIE is nervous that his mom, the COACH, is going to kill the ASSISTANT COACH, MALE.
COACH
Well a rebalancing needs to happen.
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
My concern is that if this rebalancing comes by law it comes by quotas. Yes? So you put women on the boards of corporations by quotas and you put women in Parliament by quotas. And then they will always know that the only reason they achieved their position was because of a quota, not beause of their own merit.
CHARLIE
(quietly) Mom.
COACH
Umm.
DEANNA
I would be getting married NEXT YEAR.
DEANNA
Gross.
COACH
(a bit nervous and self-conscious) Do you think David Cameron wakes up at night and stares at the ceiling and thinks, God, I only got to be prime minister and screw up the UK because I am white, wealthy and an Old Etonian? I mean we don’t worry that David Cameron has these sort of imposter neuroses because a certain circumstance beyond his control handed him his power. Yet you’re worried that women will feel unworthy. How exactly are they less worthy if they are brought in with a quota system?
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
Also I think another good argument for the opposition is the backlash. Are women really better off with feminism? Look at the violence and objectification.
COACH
(gnawing the scenery like a rat on drywall) So would you go so far as to say that you don’t think feminism is a good idea at all?
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
Let me think.
COACH
(a fervent prayer) Help me Oprah. Help me Oprah. Help me Oprah.
CHARLIE
Mom.
End of play
A crowded and stuffy classroom of an independent school in Cambridge. Senior school debate club. A harried COACH comes in. She hands a pile of index cards to a student and indicates that she should pass them out. She writes on the whiteboard “THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT LAWS IN SUPPORT OF FEMINISM ARE NECESSARY TODAY”
COACH
OK so this is the new topic for the exhibition debate. I gotta tell you I loved compulsory nonmilitary service in year 13 as a topic but you guys. You didn’t love it. I just feel like you haven’t lived long enough to know that the experiences you have now will shape the way you think for the rest of your lives and if you had to spend a year with people from different classes and ethnicities and religions, we would all find a way to be British that was uniting and not dividing. Being British would be a virtuous part of our identity. So good. But you know we’re doing this one because well who has the first card?
DEANNA indicates she does.
COACH
Read it.
DEANNA
Two hundred and fifty million women alive on the earth today were married before they were 15 years old.
DEANNA
That is so gross.
COACH
Next card.
DEANNA
Wait.
COACH
Yes?
DEANNA
They don’t get to pick them or anything.
COACH
What did women used to be under the law?
CHARLIE
Property
COACH
Yeah the law used to be that you were like a dish or a mule. They could do what they liked with their own property, including marrying them off. Old habits die hard. Maybe one funeral at a time. But people are still alive who act like women are property. Next card.
DEANNA
But that is so unfair.
COACH
Yeah. You think so? Next card.
CHARLIE
In the UK today women are paid 81p for every £1 a man makes for the same job.
DEANNA
WHAT?????
A more senior student, the Head Girl, intervenes.
RACHEL
That can’t be right. For the same job?
COACH
Yeah.
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
But they would have recourse under the Equalities Act.
COACH
Sure if they got the information and were wealthy enough to sue.
DEANNA
For the SAME JOB!!!!
COACH
So those are the arguments in support of the resolution. We need to oppose those arguments.
CHARLIE
Who could oppose them?
COACH
That's why I made the resolution about whether the law needs to be changed. Of course all this garbage needs to do. But I think it's fair to argue that laws can’t dictate culture and what needs to change is the culture before the laws.
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
You can argue that feminism is inherently biased.
COACH
How is it biased?
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
Even by its very name. It’s not the equality movement, it’s feminism. It favours one gender.
CHARLIE is nervous that his mom, the COACH, is going to kill the ASSISTANT COACH, MALE.
COACH
Well a rebalancing needs to happen.
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
My concern is that if this rebalancing comes by law it comes by quotas. Yes? So you put women on the boards of corporations by quotas and you put women in Parliament by quotas. And then they will always know that the only reason they achieved their position was because of a quota, not beause of their own merit.
CHARLIE
(quietly) Mom.
COACH
Umm.
DEANNA
I would be getting married NEXT YEAR.
DEANNA
Gross.
COACH
(a bit nervous and self-conscious) Do you think David Cameron wakes up at night and stares at the ceiling and thinks, God, I only got to be prime minister and screw up the UK because I am white, wealthy and an Old Etonian? I mean we don’t worry that David Cameron has these sort of imposter neuroses because a certain circumstance beyond his control handed him his power. Yet you’re worried that women will feel unworthy. How exactly are they less worthy if they are brought in with a quota system?
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
Also I think another good argument for the opposition is the backlash. Are women really better off with feminism? Look at the violence and objectification.
COACH
(gnawing the scenery like a rat on drywall) So would you go so far as to say that you don’t think feminism is a good idea at all?
ASSISTANT COACH, MALE
Let me think.
COACH
(a fervent prayer) Help me Oprah. Help me Oprah. Help me Oprah.
CHARLIE
Mom.
End of play
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