My Body, My Closet By Anne Peterson

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Recommended: Essay on disability and our media culture

“My Body, My Closet” has detailed evidences that are relevant to her thesis. All her evidences are up-do date and verifiable. However, Peterson has a slight slant when providing her her supporting quotations and statistics. The evidences that Peterson details in her essay revolve around the discrimination against disabled people, and their role in society as well as social media. All these aspects of the argument were thoroughly explained by quoting or paraphrasing different sources then citing hem with parenthesis at the end of the textual evidence. Peterson includes data and statistics, stating that: “The unemployment rate for people with disabilities is 13%”(), as well as evidence to her opinion of social media on disabled people: “It is …show more content…

She then cites sections of the book she might have used in parenthesis after each piece of evidence. At the end of her paper, Peterson includes a “Works Cited” page, which lists seven references she used. By using this page, Peterson allows us, as readers, to understand and analyze her evidences as well as how reliable they might be. Her personal experience serves as evidence as well, and is extremely detailed—describing all parts of her struggle in depth. Peterson’s evidences also relates to her thesis. This thesis, in short, is her statement: “Despite looking decidedly ‘normal’, I am, in fact, a de facto member of the ‘other’” (9). She then spends the rest of the essay describing the many ways she is discriminated against. All of her evidence seems to support this thesis and her purpose of the essay. She speaks about social media and its influence in portraying disabled people, of the unemployment and victim rates in disabled women, and provides some examples of how many villains in day-to-day movies and shows are mostly disabled. All these and more evidences used in the book support Peterson’s thesis and purpose—all of them discuss how having a disability made Peterson and others in her situation a part of the “other”. Her personal experience on media and …show more content…

Peterson uses the Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of Labor, and the US Bureau of labor statistics. These sources are from the government, and therefore are constantly updated and verified by professionals. The other sources that Peterson mentions, such as the Gallup poll that she mentions on page three are all relatively recent to her essay. The poll is from 2011, which is only two years before Peterson wrote this essay. The “Works Cited” page includes all the sources cited and can easily be double-checked and verified by the audience. All of these sources are up-to-date, and can be easily verified. The Gallup poll that she mentions on page 3 is also something which was taken in 2011 which is fairly recent. Peterson’s evidence is slightly slanted, since the usage her use of a personal story as the main basis of her essay can make her biased towards the topic. She might have gone through unique experiences as a disabled person, and other people facing disabilities might have gone through much more contrasting experiences. Because of this fact her view on the situation as well as her thoughts on misrepresentation can vary vastly because of how vast people’s disabilities are and how each person views that and reacts to their environment. On a personal level, the author feels as if she is unequal in her society and cites evidences from

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