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Why Nice Guys Finish Last By Julia Serano

929 Words4 Pages

“Why Nice Guys Finish Last” by Julia Serano attempts to provide an explanation behind the cultural causes of rape culture, and how it can be destroyed. Serano supports her assertions with the rhetorical appeals of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos. In her essay, Serano attempts to make the argument that rape culture can only be destroyed when the predator/prey stereotype perpetuating it is destroyed. Serano’s argument is ultimately unpersuasive as she fails to establish her credibility on the topic, the logic behind her conclusions, or associate the audience’s emotional response with herself. Serano heavily relies on her own authority to make herself credible, leaving her argument ineffective from a lack of appeal to Ethos when her authority does …show more content…

Serano effectively emphasizes herself being transsexual to make herself appear to have a broader, and unbiased, perspective on the way both men and women are treated, providing credibility to her large use of anecdotal evidence later in her essay. However, some may be unsatisfied in Serano’s omission of the limits of her knowledge, leading her audience to question the authority of her claims when blind spots in her knowledge exits. For example, to explain her ability to analyze the predator/prey mindset Serano explains, “In thinking about these issues, I …show more content…

Serano observes the virgin/whore double bind placed on them by societal influences, and then raises that a similar double bind is placed on men: “having experienced this dilemma myself firsthand, I have come to refer to it (for reasons that will be clear in a moment) as the assholes/nice guys double bind. ‘Assholes’ are men who fulfill the men-as-sexual-aggressors stereotype; ‘nice guys’ are the ones who refuse or eschew it,” (Serano 312). In establishing a male double bind to mirror the phenomena effecting women, Serano grants the audience greater insight to her reasoning behind how stereotypes enforce rape culture. However, the false dichotomy Serano creates with the asshole/nice guys double bind fails to support her greater thesis of men being stereotyped as predators, as while the virgin and whore stereotype both cleanly fits into her claims that women in rape culture are thought to only be either sexual objects or prey, only the asshole portion of her double bind for male fits into the sexual aggressor/predator stereotype. As one of the sides of the asshole/nice guy double bind does not reflect the predator stereotype in the same manner both portions of the virgin/whore double bind do for prey, it undermines the reasoning behind

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