Andrea Dworkin Response

In order to be completely credible in her sometimes audacious statements about equality, the nature of men, and sexism, Andrea Dworkin herself comes out as a victim of rape. While that was guaranteed to be a touchy subject it definitely gave her the power to affect an audience of 500 men and maintained a level of Ethos in her argument. When bringing up instances about rape and abuse, Dworkin by no means sugar-coats anything. She is biased. She is harsh in her use of language. And quite honestly she does a good job of drawing an emotional response. For example she directly calls out to an audience of men saying that they rape and that is why equality does not exist. Bold to say the least, but emotion is emotion and she draws it out creating Pathos. By using statistics drawn from the amount of reported rapes and assaults every Dworkin is able to bring about the Logos of her argument. Besides the underlying aspects of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, Dworkin also takes advantage of various figures of speech to solidify her claim. Perhaps the technique most used throughout her piece is repetition. More specifically she uses the tool of asyndeton, stating “It is done here, it is done now, and it is done by the people”. In the context of this sentence she is very directly accusing every man of committing crime against women. Anaphora is a figure of speech also used by Dworkin. On the essay’s third page she consistently starts sentences with the phrase “It means” then continues to use that repetition to cement an idea. While Andrea Dworkin has her own way of going about interacting with people who are entirely different than her, I would approach such a situation quite differently. Instead of straight-up bashing the opposite for what they are, I would work towards a middle ground. That is, some kind of understanding that leaves neither side as a clear winner or loser. In order to change an individual’s opinion I would take things a little bit slower instead of rushing as