Imagine the reaction if a young white man suddenly declared that he was trapped in the wrong body and, after using chemicals to change his skin pigmentation and crocheting his hair into twists, expected to be embraced by the black community.
We don't have to imagine very hard, since we've got Rachel Dolezal.
Rippon
Logos :: Burkett evokes the ideas of a specialist to support her claims, many of which she supports by citing personal experience or her own cultural analysis.
science has learned about them is that they’re in fact shaped by experience, cultural and otherwise. The part of the brain that deals with navigation is enlarged in London taxi drivers, as is the region dealing with the movement of the fingers of the left hand in right-handed violinists.
Why doesn't Burkett cite evidence to support these claims?
Their truth is not my truth. Their female identities are not my female identity.
SS, TOPS :: The opening anaphora gives this paragraph a certain tone, a certain voice.
How can you describe that tone, that voice?
I have fought for many of my 68 years against efforts to put women — our brains, our hearts, our bodies, even our moods — into tidy boxes, to reduce us to hoary stereotypes. Suddenly, I find that many of the people I think of as being on my side — people who proudly call themselves progressive and fervently support the human need for self-determination — are buying into the notion that minor differences in male and female brains lead to major forks in the road and that some sort of gendered destiny is encoded in us.
Ethos :: In this paragraph, Burkett begins presenting her ethos very directly.
A part of me winced.
SS :: Varying sentence length creates rhythm and drama in writing.
In this case, the author's drawing the reader's attention to her own reaction to the evidence she's just presented. Since Burkett's writing to express her own opinion, this added attention suits the rhetorical situation.
ESPN announced it would give Ms. Jenner an award for courage. President Obama also praised her. Not to be outdone, Chelsea Manning hopped on Ms. Jenner’s gender train on Twitter, gushing, “I am so much more aware of my emotions; much more sensitive emotionally (and physically).”
Evidence supporting Burkett's observations of current public opinions of transgender topics.
was greeted
PV :: This PV is appropriate since the author's trying to describe the general greeting Jenner received from the audience, not any particular person's.
: a cleavage-boosting corset, sultry poses, thick mascara and the prospect of regular “girls’ nights” of banter about hair and makeup.
PUNC :: Good use of a colon to separate a complete sentence from an incomplete sentence, in this case, a list of nouns: corset, poses, mascara, prospect.
“My brain is much more female than it is male,”
Evidence the author employs to support her analysis of the interview.
progressivism
DIC :: What does this word mean?
lionized
DIC :: What does this word mean?
Do women and men have different brains?
ORG, INTRO :: Opening with a question is a quick and usually effective means of engaging the reader.
Note how the author's uses blank space (PB) to separate and focus attention on the opening question.
THE drip, drip, drip
RPT, TRANS :: The author repeats a phrase to emphasize the transition between paragraphs.
words
hghghg
"I like riding Harleys."
, primarily technical problems,
Parenthetical commas.
an apology
I'm sorry.
COMMENTARY
Why is so much writing so bad? Why is it so hard to understand a government form, or an academic article or the instructions for setting up a wireless home network?
In what sense are Pinker's opening questions "rhetorical"?
Big Beaver
Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)
The full title includes an exclamation mark: "Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song)"
