In this article, which is authored by Sarah Frass as a sophomore with the help of many of her friends, she is majoring in sociology and women's as well as gender studies.
In "Trans Women at Smith: The Complexities of Checking "Female," Sarah Frass discovered the difficulties of trans women at Smith College, a women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts. In 2015, Smith announced a new admission policy allowing trans women (persons who were assigned male at birth but identify as female) to apply and enrol at the college. Many people initially welcomed this policy as an achievement for trans rights and inclusion. To argue convincingly for the inclusion of trans women in Smith College's community, Frass employs several rhetorical strategies:
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This has been achieved by only fifty percent of trans students in secondary schools. The audience's understanding of deductive reasoning is encouraged by the following statistic, which shows that real obstacles exist that hinder transgender students from accessing necessary materials like current academic records.
The author shall seek to gain the reader's attention by providing them with these observations and increasing their interest in this subject. The writer of the article also appeals to the reader's emotions by relaying the experiences of transgender kids who have experienced prejudice, harassment, and physical violence in K–12 schools. The author's use of sharp words like "aggression" or "harassment" enhances the article's emotional appeal.
Frass also uses a philosophy to set itself up as an honest source on the subject. She makes note of the fact that she is a transgender woman and a Smith College graduate, giving her first-hand experience with the discriminatory practises of female-only environments towards transgender people. Frass is building trust and positioning herself as a spokesperson for this issue by using her own
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In order to engage its audience, establish its credibility, arouse emotions, and support its claims with evidence, Fras masterfully uses ethos, pathos, and logos.
Fras shows her ethos as a trans woman who has faced exclusion from all-women's environments like Smith College with her own story. She cultivates a sense of belonging and compassion for her audience through the sharing of experiences and perspectives, but she is also able to demonstrate ability in this area. In support of her argument, she also relies on credible sources and effectively uses statistics. She mentions, as a case study of the structural difficulties trans people have in getting into higher education, the statistic that just 16% of trans people acquire a college degree.
In addition, Fras uses pathos, particularly a sense of empathy and compassion for trans women who are fighting for their basic human rights, in order to provoke strong emotions in her readers. In order to create a sense of urgency and illustrate the emotional burden of being denied access to higher education because of gender identity, she uses vivid descriptions and personal