At the beginning of the semester, I had a general idea of what Rhetoric and Civic life were. I knew that activism was a part of it, and it was how you were involved in activism. I didn’t fully understand just how complex it is with the different lenses and perspectives that affect the message that is being conveyed in one form of media. I used to think you were either active or you weren’t which I don’t necessarily think is true anymore. Everyone has beliefs and chooses to act on those beliefs in different ways.

Rhetoric and Civic life are far from black and white, which is another part that I learned through the semester. At the beginning of class, when I thought about civic engagement or rhetorical criticism, I thought of black and white issues where there was a wrong side and a right side. With the skills that I learned in the class, I now see that other problems are not so clean-cut because they affect so many people and have so many perspectives. And even the issues before that I was very set in my opinions on them, I realized there are deeper layers to every problem that I wasn’t seeing before.

 

I had a few ideas come to mind when considering public controversies. A category could be government controversies. For example, immigration, civil rights, freedom of speech, and censorship. An overarching topic could be applications of Constitutional rights and the different philosophies of interpretation (strict or loose). This might be too broad of a controversy so it might be better to narrow things down to one amendment like freedom of speech, religion, etc. Immigration over the years would be interesting to do because immigrants are the backbone of this country, but our ideas of immigrants have changed. Like how in the 1920s, Irish immigrants were treated with disdain, while today it is immigrants from the Middle East and Mexico who are treated with hostility.

Another place to explore controversy is social controversies. These could include the evolution of AI or reparations. A particularly interesting debate would be between public and private schools and their funding. I feel like I can relate to this topic personally being from an area where the public school was underfunded, and the financial situation was exasperated by the nearby private school taking students and teachers. There are multiple levels to this topic that would be interesting to explore including government funding, money per kid, and schools funded by property tax.

I have decided to use the Lavender Scare (1950-1960s), the Stonewall Riots (1969), and gender laws being debated in today’s era (2020-present).

For the Lavender Scare, my artifacts will be Executive Order 10450, signed by President Eisenhower. It marked the beginning of the Lavender Scare by issuing an investigation into all federal employees on whether they posed a “security risk.”

Another artifact for this time period will be this newspaper clippings of propaganda against the gay community:

For the final artifact of this time period, there is an interview with one of the victims of the time period and the effect the paranoia had on the community in general. It is by NPR: The Lavender Scare : Throughline : NPR

For the Stonewall Riots my first artifact will be the clothing laws that prohibited cross-dressing (requiring 3 articles of clothing that match your assigned sex in order to avoid arrest).

For my second artifact, the written account of the night from Martin Sherman’s “A Hot Night” or the newspaper READ The 1969 NY Daily News Piece on the Stonewall Riots – “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Stinging Mad” (back2stonewall.com) from the time.

 

My last artifact will be images from the riots themselves to show the violence shown towards the community.

For present day I will be using the 19 states that have laws banning gender affirming care 19 states have laws restricting gender-affirming care, some with the possibility of a felony charge | CNN Politics.  The laws themselves will be my artifacts.

For my second artifact it will be an advertisement Is This The First ANTI-WOKE Advert? Watch Promo Wins Plaudits For Standing Up For Women’s Rights – YouTube. The official title is “Erase.”

And finally, a podcast by Candace Owens, specifically this one Is Homosexuality Ruining Western Civilization? – YouTube.

Overall, my turning points tie into LGBTQ+ with government and how that effects the public perceptions and opinions on the community.

Queer history is something very important to me because it is not talked about enough.

Public opinion of the LGBTQ+ has varied throughout history but there are some key points where queer folk were either strategically ignored, shown open aggression, or accepted.

Some examples of key turning points could be the Stonewall Riots of 1969 that would later evolve into the Pride parades that we know today.

Other interesting turning points are the Lavender Scare 1950-1973 where gay men particularly were seen as threats from communism,

or how the government let the AIDs epidemic devastate the queer population in the 1980s while society blamed AIDs wholly on the LGBTQ+.

There is also Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay man to run for office. It put the community in a very public eye. He was shot before the election.

A very interesting aspect of queer history that I only recently learned about was the first Institue for Sexual Research in 1930, committed to providing gender affirming care, and other gender studies. Known as a safe place, it was some of the first scientific studies on what it means to be homosexual and transgender. It was burned in one of the first book burnings by the Nazis, completely erasing its existence to society until recent.

There are plenty of artifacts on the Stonewall Riots including images, articles, and a few videos of Marsha P. Johnson: a key figure in the riots. There was even a movie made about her in 2017. This is the same for Pride. There are multiple videos, interviews, ads, clothing brands using the rainbow symbol, etc.

For the Lavender Scare, there are very compelling, very recent, interviews of men who went through it. It is extra shocking because of how young they still are which really highlights how recent this persecution was.

For the AIDs epidemic, there was a recent documentary on the tribute concert to Freddie Mercury where artists of the time who knew him used the opportunity to spread awareness for the epidemic. The music itself could be considered an artifact.

Similar to Marsha P. Johnson, Harvey Milk also has a movie titled “Milk” as well as images from his campaign.

The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft has recent articles and images of some of the first documented trans and nonbinary folk.

Then, of course, there is also when gay marriage was legalized in the United States in 2015. This is the most visible and accepted that LGBTQ+ people have been in history.

 

Since these artifacts differ so much in scale, context, and median, I will be using the block method.

Intro: simple background for both of the artifacts.

Thesis: The use of the trust and visual rhetoric lenses within both artifacts’ changes with the context and scale of their situations to better affect their audiences.

Body 1: How the article uses pathos to evoke fear and how it also uses logos to create patterns as evidence to back up their claims.

“In the face of an increasingly conservative federal judiciary, arguments against sex discrimination rooted in the 14th Amendment are under threat, and existing protections are vulnerable to being rolled back” (Bleiweis).

“The Constitution was written by and for white men with means, which reserved its principle of equal justice under law for the sole benefit of the authors and their privileged peers. This meant that women and people of color, among others, were openly regarded as less than full citizens and thus excluded from many legal protections because of their sex, race, and/or ethnicity” (Bleiweis)

Body 2: How the advertisement uses pathos for excitement and determination, as well as how it uses logos to create patterns to back up their claims.

“I believe that we will win.”

“We will be four-time champions and keep winning not only until we become the best female soccer team, but the best soccer team in the world.”

Body 3: Analyze why these choices were made and how it effects the delivery of their message. Possibly go into the visual similarities here as well but I might place them in the respective paragraph bodies if it makes more sense.

Conclusion: Re-state the thesis in a different way and review the overarching themes made by the comparison.

*As I’m doing this, I see the point method as well, we’ll see what I actually end up doing when I start to write the essay.

 

The artifact that I will be comparing in my essay is the article “The Equal Rights Amendment: What You Need to Know” by Robin Bleiweis:

The Equal Rights Amendment: What You Need To Know – Center for American Progress

This article utilizes the trust lens with ethos, pathos, and logos as well as a little bit of the visual rhetoric lens.

The main differences between the two are of course the median (one is a short video and the other is an extensive online article).

But whereas the “Never Stop Winning” ad is focused on the issue of equal pay and discrimination based on sex in sports,

the Equal Rights Amendment is a Constitutional Amendment that would affect the entire nation.

These are very different scales and as a result the article’s use of pathos differs from the advertisement.

The advertisement is meant to be inspirational and gain support like a sports team would gain fans: through getting pumped up.

The article uses pathos in a more serious fashion.

Because the stakes are considered higher with the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the main emotion utilized by the article is that of fear.

It lists out the possibilities for discrimination in law based on logos patterns that have upheld discrimination in the past.

This creates a mood of grim determination in the audience to want to support the passage of the amendment.

Some similarities between the article and the “Never Stop Winning” advertisement are their use of logos to establish patterns that support both of the messages.

They also both use powerful images meant to evoke pride and inspiration:

The article uses a striking image of RBG on the title page, and the advertisement uses images of equally strong women meant to inspire the same way the article does as well.

These similarities and differences are important to each of the audiences because the advertisement is coming from a place of triumph with more work ahead, whereas the article is fighting through illegitimacy.

The similarities show that both are fighting the same fight, but just that one is on a much bigger level then only equal pay in one field.

My artifact is the “Never Stop Winning” ad Nike released after the Women’s National Soccer Team won their fourth World Cup in 2019.

The lenses that best fit the video are Rhetorical Situation and Trust lens. Click here to see for yourself.

In terms of Rhetorical Situation, their exigence was the fact that executives claimed “lack of revenue” as an excuse for denying the women’s team equal pay as the men’s team,

but during this time period, their jersey revenues were skyrocketing with girls and boys buying their merchandise.

They exhibited Kairos by taking advantage of their relevancy in the sports world and using their platform to speak up for equality.

But the most important part of the ad was in the delivery of the message.

The advertisement acknowledges the atmosphere of the audience and looks to capitalize on the inspiration in a way that directs the emotions to cheering for equality as well.

The demand is depicted as hopeful yet strong. It builds with the repetition of the chant as well as the list of accomplishments and future accomplishments of women and girls.

They highlighted the constraint of being talked about infrequently and used it as another call for change while also outlining all the reason they shouldn’t be forgotten about in between the four years of the World Cup.

As for the Trust lens of the advertisement, the video creates logos by listing all the accomplishments of the women and how it relates to their wants for the future.

With the repetition of each pattern of success, the intensity of the speech picks up, effecting the audience’s pathos in making them feel empowered.

Finally, the want for these outcomes of equality spotlights the team’s character in wanting change for the benefit of everyone. Thus, satisfying ethos.

As a class we have been using women in sports as an example for rhetorical criticism a lot. As a result, when having to identify a rhetorical situation being addressed in an advertisement, I immediately went to the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team.

After winning their fourth World Cup title in 2019, Nike released an ad titled “Never Stop Winning” celebrating the team’s incredible accomplishments, as well as addressing some deep-rooted problems within the soccer establishment.

Click here to go ahead and give it a watch.

The team recognized the rhetorical situation in that they were gaining fame that rivaled the men’s team but were still being paid significantly less. Their exigence was the fact that their jersey revenues were skyrocketing with girls and boys buying their merchandise and tuning in to watch the women’s team play.

Executives had always claimed “lack of revenue” as the main excuse for denying the women’s team equal pay in the past. With that excuse completely shattered, the team took the opportunity to use their platform.

They exhibited Kairos by taking advantage of their relevancy in the sports world, something that is hard to achieve as a women’s team because of the biases in the sports community, specifically the soccer community.

But the most important part of the ad was in the delivery of the message. All of America was hyped up for the WNST to continue to win. The advertisement acknowledges the atmosphere of the audience and looks to capitalize on the inspiration in a way that directs the emotions to cheering for equality as well. The demand is depicted as hopeful yet strong. It builds with the repetition of the chant as well as the list of accomplishments and future accomplishments of women and girls.

They highlighted the constraint of being talked about infrequently and used it as another call for change while also outlining all the reason they shouldn’t be forgotten about in between the four years of the World Cup.

And it worked. Not only did they get equal pay after a court settlement, but I also remembered the ad after four years. And there were Covid years in there too.

One thing is for sure, the Women’s National Team certainly made an impact with their rhetorical situation no one will be forgetting anytime soon.