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Jim Tarter's Some Live More Downstream Than Others

1247 Words5 Pages

What Jim Tarter argues in his essay, “Some Live More Downstream than Others” is that some people do not care about the well-being of others based on the lack of environmental justice in our neighborhoods. As well as there being little concern about females with cancer. To an extent, I’m persuaded by the argument he makes, but not so much by how he believes that cancer is an issue for feminists. The essay is introduced by Tarter discussing how he had cancer and survived it. He also explains how he comes from a “cancer family”. Since his family has had a history of developing some type of cancer. As it turns out, the cancers he and his family had developed may not have been an issue with genetics. It may have been affiliated with the environment they lived in. Due to this, Tarter uses both his and his sister’s, Karen’s, experience with cancer to reflect on the work of a biologist named Sarah Steingraber and explore the environment’s role with cancer. Tarter also reflects on the works of Rachel Carson as well as Audre Lorde, who both have similar studies towards cancer. Not only does Tarter reflect on the works of these three people. On top of that, he also discusses Steingraber’s and Carson’s …show more content…

At one point in his essay, he makes a wild accusation in that Steingraber was a feminist cancer activist when she clearly never was (p. 831). Also, I believe that his argument about how cancer is a feminist issue is very one-sided. As he points out, it’s true that cancer will affect women more often, and it’s also true that women’s breast cancer research should be better funded, but he doesn’t point out that there are cancers that affects male’s ability to have kids. To be fair, however, he does give credible information that persuades me into believing that cancer is linked to the environment. In this case, there was a link between the polluted river and his family’s history of cancer (p.

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