Kathleen Ward
Mr. Walker
English Language and Composition 6
19 January 2017
Popping the Flower and All That Nonsense Can a cherry be popped or a flower stolen? The extensive vocabulary used to label a woman’s sexuality is often more extensive than the knowledge known about the topic in the minds of people who use these band-aid terms. Sex education in schools often portrays the concept of virginity as something greater or lesser than it is depending on one’s perspective. It is either classified too strictly and used as a weapon or it is brushed aside to avoid a few immature snickers. This is how myths begin in school corridors that later spread to the adult world as truth. Unfortunately these playground jokes turn into a harmful
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While this is not always so extreme, it is living on every continent. Cleopatra Ndlovu tells of these accounts in her essay Virginity Testing Raises Many Questions. In Zimbabwe, girls as young as five years old are being tested to make sure they are virgins. “An elderly woman asks her to lie down, opens her legs, and then inserts into her vagina a finger--which has been inserted in other girls ' private parts that day--to see if she is still a virgin,” (Ndlovu). As traumatizing as this is, the abuse is not widespread in the community. Boys are not tested. One could argue that the community is not testing them because there is no way to test men. While this sounds probable, there are issues within the argument. The first being that the tests on women are not accurate in any sense. The second being that men are simply held with different expectations. “Boys, in contrast, are not subjected to such intimate examinations. Boys and men are not even expected to remain abstinent before or faithful during marriage . Their sexual "purity" is not questioned,” (Ndlovu). The double standards are blatantly obvious. The careful watching of women is common in today 's first world cultures as well. Slut. It’s an easy title to lay upon women to degrade them. The word it used by both men and women alike. Being called a slut has become one of the worst things to be considered as a girl. Typically a slut
The Holocaust was the systematic and bureaucratic murder of six million Jews by the Nazi party and its collaborators. During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities targeted many groups of people because of their perceived "racial inferiority" including Gypsies, the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples. Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds. Several authors have written about the Holocaust, but one author that touched many people the most was Elie Wiesel. Through the use of several style devices, Wiesel creates an impressionistic style which reflects the nature of his experiences in the Nazi
"We have the whole government working against us." "They don 't want Americans to figure out that these could be causing health issues, that they haven 't been tested, and they are increasing pesticide and herbicide use"(Chien) claims Food Babe blogger Vani Hari. Opponents of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), led by a brigade of popular TV show hosts and online bloggers, claim that they are unhealthy, unsafe, and untested. GMOs are needed within the growing population because of their ability to increase crop yields, their ability to improve nutrition levels of foods, to cure hunger, and to eradicate diseases.
In The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is about a shocking statistic. That more African American men are in correctional facilities or on probation than were enslaved in the mid 1800s before the Civil war started. She offers her perspective on the mass incarceration of African American men in the US. Taking shots at all she holds responsible for the issues. She explores the social and systematic influence of racial stereotypes and policies that support incarceration of minorities. She explains that minorities are discriminated against legally for their whole lives. By being denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Unable to overcome said obstacles most will
During the time Florence Kelley was advocating for changes, child labor was a popular unrestricted practice. The kids were working making textiles and other items in horrible working conditions. Many states had children working more than 12 hours a day and night shifts while they were not allowed to go to school. Florence Kelley was a United States social worker and a reformer. She fought ferociously for improvements in child labor and conditions for working women. At this convention for the National American Woman Suffrage Association she wants to reach out the women focused on suffrage towards other issues. Kelley used rhetorical strategies to help convince her audience to help her fight against child labor. The use of repetition, imagery, and rhetorical question help get her point of eradicating child labor across to the audience.
Awakening, takes place in 1899, a period in history where traditional gender roles were especially prevalent. Traditionally, women were destined to be housewives. The life of a woman was centered around caring for her children and husband. The success of a woman was not determined by her occupation nor accomplishments, but instead was determined by the livelihood of her family. The protagonist of Awakening, Edna Pontellier, steps outside of the tradition established within New Orleans, as she embarked on her “awakening” in which she tries to find her identity and self- actualization. Throughout the novella, Kate Chopin clearly wished to change
Lesperance- He is Travis’ assistant. He studies the animals, specifically their mating patterns, life expectancies, et cetera. He ensures that they only hunt the animals that are about to die and those animals with no future.
George Walker Bush, the American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. The oldest son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush, he was born in New Haven, Connecticut. After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard business school in 1975, he worked in oil businesses. In 1977 he married Laura Welch and unsuccessfully ran for the House of Representatives shortly after. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas Gubernatorial Election. He was elected president in 2000 after a close and controversial election against
Social worker and reformer, Florence Kelley, in a speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, passionately criticizes the insufficient child labor laws at the turn of the twentieth century. Kelly’s mission is to persuade civil rights activists to exercise their power and petition for more child labor protection. She adopts the use of startling statistics, sympathetic language, and illustration of responsibility of the female listeners to enact change in child labor laws.
Early detection of breast cancer is finding the cancerous cells before they spread to any other part of the breast. “Early detection means using an approach that allows earlier diagnosis of
Everyone is given a gender the moment they are born. At birth they are either one of two genders: masculine or feminine. This gender everyone is assigned affects many of our day to day actions and our looks. However some people may evolve differently as they grow up and may not fit the rigid boundaries set for the sex they were assigned at birth. In recent years there has been a boom in a third considered gender: the transgender population. However with the boom comes the argument of to what extent should transgender people be protected by the government. Throughout the existence of transgender people, the rights of transgenders have been
In “Everyday Use”, Alice Walker presents an everyday average family which involves a single mother with two daughters, one who seems to have life handed to her, and the other who is shy and lacks confidence in herself due to a family tragedy. Alice Walker gives some interesting stories behind each of her main characters: Mrs. Johnson, Dee (Wangero), Maggie, and Hakim Akbar (Asalamalakim). Among the characters in the story, Mrs. Johnson stands out because she loves her daughters equally, she accepts them both, and she overcomes her conflict with Dee.
Valenti argues that virginity does not possess a definition that is "medical, but subjective" (Berks, Meyers 2014, 335) and is only defined by who you ask. Her main focus of this article is to highlight how little the term virginity actually means do to the lack of a factual definition nx how virginity is almost always directly connected to women. When considering male virginity, my first thought is of the movie Forty Year Old Virgin. Valenti discusses the ways virginity is not defined but is used to critisize women and categorize them as 'pure' or "damaged goods" (Berk, Meyers 2014, 336) Valenti's argument is that women are effectively programmed to believe they can be defined by the status of their virginity though it is clear as to how it
The woman stated that despite the fact that she had sex with multiple partners over the course of a year, she still considered herself to be a virgin until she experienced her first orgasm with a partner. This particular anecdote, resonated with me as I strongly related to what this woman was saying due to experiences in my personal life. Blank’s response to the woman was strikingly humorous with her initial thought being that she fell through a permafrost rabbit hole and missed a couple things about life. Blank’s skepticism stemmed from her belief that virginity was something that had no gray area, and once you have sexual intercourse, you are no longer a virgin. The author concluded that the woman was sort of in denial and went along with the narrative of saying a virgin to make herself feel better about having sex she did not enjoy or even fully consent to.
Alice Walker is an African American essayist, novelist and poet. She is described as a “black feminist.”(Ten on Ten) Alice Walker tries to incorporate the concepts of her heritage that are absent into her essays; such things as how women should be independent and find their special talent or art to make their life better. Throughout Walker’s essay entitled “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” I determined there were three factors that aided Walker gain the concepts of her heritage which are through artistic ability, her foremothers and artistic models.
The subject of virginity in the United States has changed immensely throughout the years. With the emerge of new social aspects such as feminism and gay rights movements, the value of the term has altered meanings. (Carpenter, 2002) Numerous studies were conducted in the 1970s and 1980s on sexuality. The results indicated that “young women, while more permissive than in previous decades, continued to value virginity,