Rape: A Bigger Danger Than Feminist Know Analysis

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Rape: A Bigger Danger Than Feminist Know
Camille Paglia a thrilling humanities professor at Philadelphia University of the Arts. Known for her controversial books and essays wrote a selection for the New York News Day in 1991 titled, Rape: A Bigger Danger Than Feminist Know (578). In this selection Pagila takes a stance on rape and who is really to blame for it. Paglia’s thesis, which states “ Feminism keeps saying the sexes are the same. It keeps telling women they can do anything, go anywhere, say anything, wear anything. No, they cant. Women will always be in danger” (579).
Paglia opens her article with the line “Rape is an outrage that cannot be tolerated in civilized society”(578). She talks about how feminists have forced rape to be …show more content…

The first strength that I saw in this was her credentials. Credentials, specified by the Longman Reader is “…experiences you’ve had that make you knowledgeable about the issue being discussed”(493) Paglia’s credentials is that she is a professor of humanities at Philadelphia University of the Arts. (578) Humanities is the study of humans and their cultures. Paglia’s credentials allow her to be an expert on date rape and the reason we do the things we do. An example from her essay that shows that she has the credentials to talk about these things is when she talks about women and how they don’t know what they want. She says “Today’s young woman don’t know what they want… feminism has not brought sexual happiness” (580). Here you can see that Paglia uses her credentials and her study of woman to come to a conclusion, that women do not know what they want in this world. This is Paglia’s strength because this is ethos. Ethos, specified by the Longman Reader means “credibility” (493). Credibility in this sense has to deal with being knowledgeable in what you’re talking about. Paglia does this by not being over creditable in her essay, she hints at her credibility at times in the paper but does not bombard the reader with …show more content…

The first weakness I found was her Tone. Tone, specified by the Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers is, “not what you say, but how you say it” (Troyka 151). Paglia’s tone is this essay is a very extreme and emotional tone. In her essay she states “A girl who lets herself get dead drunk… fraternity party is an idiot” (580). She is very harsh in what she is saying in this essay, usually with an essay like this you would want to create a language that would allow the reader to agree with you and to understand what you’re saying. But, she is just bashing any types of girls that go to a fraternity party and that tone should not be used to convey her point. The reason the tone in this kind of essay is a weakness is because of ethos. Ethos like described earlier is credibility of the writer. (troyka 148). Paglia is not able to be trusted because of her tone. She used a very strong an extreme emotional tone and pushes the reader away and makes them disagree with her even more and makes her lose her

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