Summary Of What Makes A Woman By Burkett

In her Op-Ed, an article opposite the editorial page, “What Makes a Woman,” Elinor Burkett conveys her viewpoint about how certain experiences can shape a woman. Women are not defined by their physical appearances, but what they have undergone in life. This is done so by the uses of ethos, pathos, and logos. In her argument, Burkett says, “Their truth is not my truth. Their female identities are not my female identity. They haven’t had to cope with the onset of their periods in the middle of a crowded subway, the humiliation of discovering that their male work partners’ checks were far larger than theirs, or the fear of being too weak to ward off rapists.” The anaphora used in this excerpt emphasizes the struggles that women have endured that make them who they are today.

Due to the fact that she is a woman, Burkett is rather sensitive towards how people characterize her gender and makes the reader feel sympathy and she says, “I have fought for many of my 68 years against efforts to put women — our brains, our hearts, our bodies, even our moods — into tidy boxes, to reduce us to hoary stereotypes.” Burkett has spent a large portion of her life putting effort into how others viewed women and the transgender community is putting all of her effort to waste. Also, Burkett says, “The ‘I was born in the wrong body’ rhetoric favored by other trans people doesn’t work any better and is just as offensive, reducing us to our collective breasts and vaginas.” Burkett is conveying her feelings towards the transgenders’ excuses saying that although they claim that they have always been a woman on the inside, they are not entitled to calling themselves as such because they haven’t faced the difficulties that women who have always been a woman