Be The Magnifying Glass Towards Your Text

Political texts as like any other texts are important to read carefully to understand and analyze. These are mainly objective where the authors try not to be biased and to bring up the positive and negative effects of a topic. These types of texts are mostly based on current and controversial issues. Mary Arends-Kuenning and Sajeda Amin, in their text “Women’s Capabilities and the Right to Education in Bangladesh” have managed to show an epitome of political writings. The main eye catcher of any writing is the title. Good and effective titles draw the attention of the readers to one’s writing and help the readers to get a hint of the content of their argument. As a reader, one should focus on the title. By looking simply to the title of the text “Women’s Capabilities and the Right to Education in Bangladesh” one can easily understand what it is about. To make it clearer, the author divided it to some sections with individual titles. To read this specific text, one should read the main title and all the sub-titles at first which will give the overview of the text. The finest work of the authors is that they have put an abstract at the beginning of the text. It is great opportunity for you to go through the most important information in the text. Then, you should read the introduction and the conclusion which will provide you with authors’ purpose of writing this text and it will help you to connect more with their argument. Now, just skim through it for once and during skimming look for the topic sentences of each paragraph. When you finished reading it for the first time then read it again and this time start annotating it. Mark the information and evidences they use in their support and also for the other side.
Finally, analyze each point and come up with your idea to support or oppose their claim. Think about the references while analyzing, verify those references are reliable or not. If you support the claim, then think about the solutions that are mentioned by the author. This entire process is useful to read a political text and this will involve the reader in the text. Follow the above methods to read the political text properly.
Work Cited
Arends-Kuenning, Mary and Amin, Sanjeda, “Women’s capability and right to education in Bangladesh .” International Journal of Politics and Society, Vol. 15, No.1, September 2001. Print.

One Paragraph Which Can Interpret The Whole Text

In the last paragraph of the first section of the article “More than 100 Million Missing Women”, Amartya Sen recounts that the number of missing women in countries like China, India, or Africa can be estimated through comparing the men to women ratio of these countries with the countries where men and women receive equal care. And the survival tendency of women is declining due to the unequal treatment they accept from their countries.
Sen includes direct ratios and percentages to proof and support his claim. He first supports by implying that women are declining by 6% when he talks about India and China and shows that the ratio there is only 0.94. But later, he further analyzes that the actual difference is about 11% as the ratio of women is 1.05 when men and women get similar care. These clear facts and statistics have been used as strong logos in Sen’s article. If this 11% is being calculated in China, then only in China, this 11% is about is 50 million women. And, this is logical for the readers how more than 100 million women are missing.
Accord
ing to me, this paragraph played an important role to support Sen’s whole article because in this paragraph, he focuses on how he estimated 100 million women as missing. He emphasizes on the ratio and percentages he mentioned, which he uses to convey his idea about this critical issue. And these two ratios and the comparison between the countries give us the idea that the women in India and China are victims of lower treatment and they are deprived of their rights. Sen’s use of logos for his arguments helps the readers to realize his purpose and accept his claim.
Work cited
Sen, Amartya, “More Than 100 Million Missing Women.” Nybooks Archives. Dec 20, 1990. Mar 4, 2013.

Why fiction interrupts a non-fiction text?

In “A room of one’s own”, the author, Virginia Woolf, writes about women in the Elizabethan time. When the writer wanted to know about the prominent women of this era he hardly could find about anyone. At that time, women were not used to contribute much in the profound thoughts of literature. Even if they did anything their involvement was covered by the male dominant society. One old bishop said that “women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare” (42, Woolf). To prove why women of that age were not able to write Shakespeare’s play, the author brings a touch of fiction in his non-fiction text. He tells an imaginary story where Shakespeare’s sister Judith has to suffer like the other women and girls of her time. He tells this story to convey her readers the situation of women of that age. It is very unfortunate that, at that time women were treated like commodities. They did not have their right of freedom, the freedom to choose their profession, the freedom of higher studies, the freedom to refuse to be a bride. They had to do whatever was decided for them by their parents for their future. To bring up the condition of these poor helpless women Woolf relates them with Judith. The reason why he chose Judith instead of choosing another real woman is that he wants to show a family in which one of the children, Shakespeare, was getting every opportunity and the other child, Judith, was deprived of her rights. Both had equal creative minds but only one got to flourish it as he was a son and the other was forced to marry as she was a daughter. Woolf here compares the children of the same family with the same capabilities to show the readers that it was not the fault of women but it was the fault of the unfavorable circumstances for women of that society. Under the same parental guidance, Judith’s talent was buried down whereas Shakespeare was reaching his success. Woolf’s main aim is to convince his audiences that women could not take part in any work of creativity because of their pre-determined fate not because of their lack of knowledge or capacity.
Work Cited
Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” Fort Washington: Harvest Book. 1981. First published 1929.

“Gender” – Don’t misinterpret the word!

According to the Longman Dictionary of American English the term “Gender” means “the fact of being male or female” (425). And from the same dictionary the meaning of the term “Sex” is “the condition of being male or female” (927). So, what is the difference between gender and sex? Does it really have any difference? It surely does. From the definitions, we can see that the only difference in the definitions is that in case of gender it is written fact and in case of sex it is written condition. But who decided that gender is a fact. Who made it fact? The society made it fact. The society taught men how to behave like a man and how he should be presented in front of the society. In the same token, the society taught the women how to behave like a woman and she should be presented in front of the society. One can’t be a perfect man or woman from his or her childhood. It is the society who shapes them as society’s want. The only thing which is decided from their birth is their sex. Sex is the biological term to differentiate a man and a woman. Whereas gender is the outward sign to express a person’s femininity or masculinity through one’s appearance or behavior. The society which makes a man, man and a woman, woman is the society which includes the person’s own parents, friends and relatives. One is trained properly about the tiny details of the gender one should follow. The training may consist of the way of clothing, walking, talking, sitting, eating and so on. So, it is the society which is creating variances among men and women as their roles are predetermined by the society. But who gave the right to the society to make these rules of being a man and a woman? From my point of view, the only difference between a man and a woman is the biological difference. Society is no one to tell a person to adapt manhood or womanhood. One can’t expect from a person particular characteristics. It entirely depends on the person how he / she want to be.

Work Cited
Longman, Pearson. “Gender.” “Sex.” Longman Dictionary of American English. ed.4. 19. Feb. 2013. Print.

Plato – Belongs To Which Side Of The Coin?

Feminism is a term to assure that the rights given to a male and a female are equal in all cases. Plato a great writer of 5th century has written a lot of fictions. One of his greatest fictions is Symposium. Though the concept of feminism is totally new as it was not there in the society where Plato used to live, so we can’t judge if he was a feminist or not. Is Plato a feminist? – a controversial question. We can’t say that he was a feminist or not but we can ask ourselves if there is any hint of feminism in Plato’s Symposium. In Symposium, he talks about a party in one of the character Agathon’s house where all of the guests are men. In the party, the guest and Agathon himself discuss about the definition and the origin of Love. They all play a vital role in enlightening their own definitions. One of the guests is Socrates; he explains his definition of Love from a woman’s point of view named Diotima. Once Diotima shares her opinion about Love with Socrates and Socrates enounces Diotima’s opinion with others in the party. And, I think, among all the definitions in Symposium, Diotima’s definition is the best one to describe the meaning Love. Though in the whole Symposium there is no role for a woman as a speaker but one of most important and effective definition is given by a woman. In this way, Plato indicates a color of feminism in his writing. However, when each person in Symposium talks about Love they clearly undermine women’s characters. Almost all of them say that the actual Love is the Love between a man and a man. They further say that the Love between a man and a woman is only for sex. There is no depth in the man-woman relationship. Here, Plato states women’s role in a negligible way. But we can’t also infer from that Plato is an anti-feminist. So, what is Plato? I think, he may be a normal philosopher like all other philosophers in Greek. He focuses on his writing, not on promoting women’s rights or criticizing them. So, he is not a feminist or an anti-feminist rather he is a great writer.

Love – Beautiful or Ugly, Mortal or Immortal, Wisdom or Ignorance?

The Symposium presents a series of speeches describing the real meaning of Love. Diotima shares with Socrates the process by which one can attain the final visions of the mysteries. And in the discussion Socrates shares Diotima’s point of view with others who are present in Agathon’s party. In Socrates speech, he talks about the origin of Love. He tells everyone that “Love is in between mortal and immortal” (485, Plato). According to Socrates (Diotima), Love is a Spirit like a bridge between two worlds who conveys the “prayer and sacrifice from men to gods, while to men they bring commands from the gods and gifts in return for sacrifices” (486, Plato). To explain his speech more he mentions the story of the birth of Love. According to the story, there was a celebration of Aphrodite’s birth and in the party there was Poros, the son of Metis. He drank a lot and fall asleep in Zeus garden. There was a beggar named Penia by the gate. She came up to a plan to remove her poverty forever and she lay beside Poros at the garden to have a baby. And in this way Penia got pregnant with Love (486, Plato).
As a result, Love is always with need like his mother’s nature and far away from beauty. Like his father, he is a searcher of wisdom and beauty. So, “Love is never completely without resources, nor he is ever rich” (486, Plato). He also tells that “Love must be a lover of wisdom and, such, is in between being wise and being ignorant” (487, Plato). Love is the combination of his father and mother according to Socrates (Diotima).
Each speaker leading up to Diotima’s argument unveils one layer of what love is and what it can be, Pausanias introduces dualism, Eyximachos introduces balance, Aristophenes emphasizes physical unity, and Agathon speaks of creative unity, but it is up to Diotima to tie all these elements together and then take us to the top by showing that though all these are forms of love, true happiness lies in the contemplation of the essence of Beauty (or the Good) itself, which can be known only by the mind, and which is the final goal of the human experience of love.

Singular Vs Plural- What to choose?

“No verb is singular because it is the school that acts, or the tribe, the group, the species or every verb is singular because the only I there is is a we.”(4, Doty)
Generally, when we talk about a class we initially mean all the students in that class though we use singular verb for it. We use singular verb because we talk about all the students as a united class. In this article, through this line Doty might have wanted to express the unity among the mackerels. They all were there for each other even they were dead. Though they had particularly separate entities, still they didn’t have any individuality. Their souls were inseparable. There was no existence of singularity in them. They were “all for all”. But all of them together were one and singular which made them even more special. That’s why Doty said, “the only I there is is a we”.
Doty also connected the human beings through this line, like the fishes there was also a “school of humanity”- though it was an example of unity, but there was nothing like that in between them.