My last post, The Problem with the Societal Ideas of Gender, was originally a synthesis essay for my English class that was eight pages long. It argued about how someone could deflect gender norms and the expectations to be this or that which can oppress a certain gender. It contained the same arguments of outsiders as my blog post, except they were more elaborate. It gave solutions that pertained to education, the role of men, and respect. It was a lengthy eight page essay about gender equality and equity that I somehow managed to turn into a 1,170 word blog post, which is about a 3-4 page MLA formatted essay, a.k.a. a much easier essay to get through to read.
It was difficult to even start the blog post. I didn’t know how to start my argument or what I should leave in and take out. What was relevant? What would get my point across? What was my main point and purpose of my argument? I began the same way I began my eight page essay: feminists have been fighting for equal representation in high positions in careers, but work-life balance proves them incompetent. And just like my essay, I steered my argument in a completely different direction than I expected myself to. As a feminist myself, I believed the role of men in families and the need to educate oneself on the matters are both extremely important solutions to a problem I thought I was addressing.
However, I realized that was not what I wanted to argue at all. After much contemplation, I threw both solutions out. What I found was that I believed in the respect for each other as a human being to be able to achieve any sort of equality or equity among us. This is what shortened my 8-page essay into a more concise blog post. Because I found my own single argument during the revision, I was more direct in what I said by repeating “To me…” It felt more personal, which could make my argument more persuasive.
By cutting out certain parts of my essay, I realized many of my sources for my essay’s argument were not relevant to my updated argument. Many of those sources were also readings in our English textbook, but for a blog post, using only readings would probably bore my reader, you, to death. To resolve this issue, I had to find images, comics, videos, and statistics that would strengthen, not only the ease to read the post, but also my entire point of expectations, hypocrisy, and consciousness. For the video, I knew I wanted to put a TedTalk in because usually, the speaker advocates for an issue more elaborately and effectively than I ever could. At first, it was difficult finding the perfect one. However, after a couple of hours of searching, I found one that was relevant to my blog post.
(Here is the video at the time she says it to make it easier for your own access, but watch the whole video also if you can because it is very thought-provoking.)
The thing was though, it was only one line. When looking for the perfect video, I didn’t know what I was looking for. All the videos I found didn’t fit my argument even if I agreed with what they said or not. Then Martha Mosse said that one line that I found fit perfectly with part of my argument, women are not considered women when acting outside of their gender roles. After passing this obstacle, I continued on with the rest of the blog post.
For my other sources, I block-quoted the quotes since they were important enough to emphasize. They, for the most part, exemplified the ends of the spectrum of “yes, ambition please” and “no, ambition is good, but what are the consequences”. I also felt that the two had very intriguing points to think about and made my argument stand out.
Overall, it was quite difficult turning a very long essay into a pretty short blog post. However, throughout this process, I found my true voice in the argument I was presenting. Hopefully, if you are not familiar with the topic, you will find some thought-provoking insights that could enlighten your views on societal issues and could cultivate a consciousness that was not there before.