Women You're great!

As we all know, today in more than sixty countries across the world is international women's day. In honour to that, motion in our debate session today was This house will not observe international women's day.

In today's session there were only 4 debaters, so we had to debate only first half of debate. In position there were Dita and Reinis B but in opposition side were Kristaps and Jānis S. The main goal of this post is to develop extension making skills for debaters.
Both teams until tomorrow have to send in extension of other team. For example Kristaps and Jānis S. has to send in extension for governments case and Dita and Reinis B. has to send in extension about oppositions case. After first half of debate I gave feedback to debaters so hopefully they will fix mistakes they have made in the first half of debate.
To make this picture more clear it would be honest to readers to explain what is extension as well as tell what debaters were debating in first half of debate. Full feedback about debate will be given when there will be both extensions.

Extension is a new point of view in debate while still roughly following the 1st Governments or the 1st Oppositions line.
In the first side of debate governments first speaker was Dita who came up with the stand that Man always has to remember his women, not only in one "special" day. Propositions first argument was

1. We should not observe traditions which comes from Soviet Union. Dita mentioned that we still have other days to celebrate. Basically the main point of first argument of position was that USSR were bad and we have to ban everything what is associated with it.
   
2. There will be equality in the world if we won't observe women's day. Dita said that there is still other days what we can celebrate i.e. St. Valentines day. She said that Men's day is not celebrated as much as women's day, so we can not give more privileges to women. She mentioned that women has mothers day in May and it is enough with it.

First speaker of opposition was Kristaps who came up with stand that there has to be equality on the world - and women's day is one of the ways to it. As rebuttal to Ditas 1st argument Kristaps mentioned that Women's day does not come from USSR and it was created earlier and USSR just adopted this idea. And even if it would be from USSR a lot of people in whole world does not associate this day with USSR. Kristaps pointed out that Men's day is only for men who served in Red Army and mothers day is only for those ladies who has children.

1. This plan will deny emancipation of Women. Oppositions first argument was that this is one of the days when women can feel greater than men and days like these are necessary in our world where women often are discriminated i.e. lesser salaries, violence against them. In the conclusion of his speech Kristaps mentioned that women's day is symbol of emancipation.
   

Third speaker of this debate - Reinis B. - came up with some kind of rhetoric question which was about equality but he did not give an answer to it. He told us that tulips are mostly red and red color reminds about USSR and this is bad.
3. Disappointment. Government's third argument was that men who will forget to give tulip or something else to his women will disappoint her and we don't want it to happen, so we must ban women's day at all.

Last speaker of this half - debate was Jānis S. who came up and said that women's day is important to women and we have to observe it. He said that St. Valentines day is ignoring single ladies and mothers day is ignoring ladies without children. In his rebuttal Jānis said that women's day is important and all men should remember it.
2. Oppositions second argument was about Positive emotions what we have to give to women each year. Jānis said that both sides will get positive emotions - woman will feel important that her man remembered her, but man will feel good because he gave this tulip to his woman. In the last second of his speech Jānis mentioned that before some years when this tradition was illegal in Latvia men gave flowers and presents to their women any way, so this plan won't change anything.

This is all about this debates first half. As I mentioned before feedback about all the speakers will be given after they will send in their opponent extensions. I understand that we can not judge structure of speeches, timing, points of information, etc. but we can practice to analyze debate as well as critical thinking.

You all are free to add comments about first half of debate or suggestions about extensions.