How should we read political texts?

And answer to this question is so easy since there are three significant reasons. We must read political text in a political way means that the reader must be engaged in to the text as well as the listeners and writers—due to the fact that each word of political texts is for the sake of all of them, to give a massage about controversial issues which it matters for the whole members of a community. First of all, we should know that political texts are so direct. It means that when you are reading a political text you can understand it easily because the diction and syntax of the text is chosen to be understood by whole members of society. For example it is like voting that everyone can and must engage in it. Also it is different from novels and stories or as a whole from fictions because it is so direct and it does not need lots of interpretations. In fictions there are lots of thinking about the issue because it assumes that the author wants to distort the fact for the readers and they usually makes it difficult for readers to get the main point. On the other hand I should say for fictions writers usually design their word’s world and they really make a fictional world for only one main point to mostly work on pathos rather than logos. Conversely, in political text from beginning to the end we are aware of the main point and we know that something is wrong in the society we needs reaction.

Secondly, about the tone and purpose of the political texts, there are some differences. For example in “Setting Themselves Apart” by Carolyn K. Lesorogol, the writer makes lots of example and facts to both begin and end her points so clearly. Her purpose is to make the issue clear for the reader till they can understand and think about it to maintain the existence of the issue. Another point is that they, the writers themselves, make some interpretations of what they said contrary, to fictional or non-political text that the readers’ job is to interpret about different points. So it can be assumed that the writer of political text has a different tone and purpose. Mostly the tone of political text is serous and sharp due to not allowing other interpretations of what they want readers accept through facts. And their purpose is to inform and persuade people to make an action or to weigh if they have such this problem in their own society or not.

Lastly, in political text the author appeals to logos mostly to hint at pathos but a serous pathos means that persuading toward actions. For instance, in “Women’s Capabilities and the Right to Education in Bangladesh” by Mary Arends and Sajeda Amin, writers make lots of anecdotes and narrations of villagers to show the truth and to appeal to their authorities and credibility. They bring lots of facts, surveys, statistics, and totally hard evidences plus cultural value and assumptions of a region to show the significance of a covert but gradual fact. Contrary to other genres of writing, in political text using figurative language or imagery or in other words makeup of the text is meaningless.

So as conclusion, I would say that reading political text is easy and more persuasive and informative than other genre, due to its link or welding which it has with the civilization and human social life, and in a society you are not alone to decide on the issues, there are lots of other brains to decide and guide to a better life; so politics speak for a group not individual. Also these types of text must be read in a political way, means through facts and present evidences in order to aware people of the important issues.

works cited

Arends, Mary, and Sajeda Amin.” Women’s Capabilities and the Right to Education in Bangladesh – Springer. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 01 Sept. 2001. Web. 05 Apr. 2013.

Lesorogol, Carolyn K. “Project MUSE – Setting Themselves Apart: Education, Capabilities, and Sexuality Among Samburu Women in Kenya.” Project MUSE – Setting Themselves Apart: Education, Capabilities, and Sexuality Among Samburu Women in Kenya. Anthropological Quarterly, Summer 2008. Web. 05 Apr. 2013.

An Intricate Conclusion for Simple Conflicts on “under development”: 100 Million Missing Women!

The writer, Amartya Sen, in his article “More than 100 Million Missing Women”, recounts the point that the cultural, including religious, backgrounds of the respective regions are surly important; otherwise economic causes for women’s deprivation have to be integrated with other—social and cultural—factors to give depth to the explanation (Sen, 11). Writer adopts a serious tone by using variety of hard evidences: survey, facts, statistics, and narrations as well as using enthymemes and syllogisms, examples in previous paragraphs to make a strong fact in this paragraph which had been supported and proved in previous paragraphs. He also lionizes cultural assumptions and values in different regions to support his claim about the role of culture and its effects on the low ratio of women to men, but in some region the high ratio—means a negative correlation of culture and the related ratio for example in sub-Saharan, to persuade and inform the readers, who are mostly intellectuals, about this issue. He qualifies the fact that women’s status is not good everywhere in the world, but it is worse, due to lots of intricate but connected factors, in Asian and especially in Southeast Asian countries by making comparison between East and West.

On the other hand he questions that even in different parts of a country the ratio of women to men fluctuates greatly; for example in sub- Saharan African (a poor region) the ratio of women to men is higher than other parts and the outside employment is more prevalent than in North Africa (Sen, 11). It shows that there is a negative correlation between economical factor and the ratio of women to men which is high in comparison to other parts of Africa which makes the issue more complicated.

So paragraph 11th of his article works as a conclusion to his points and whatever he narrates in his whole article with an overall conclusion; he concludes his argument that there is no final conclusion over this controversy issue because there must be more complicated reasons, which leads to have a statistic of 100 million missing women—due to the fact that in different regions there are different reasons such as social, cultural and economic facts which could have different effects in different societies to have such different ratio of women to men which makes it more complex to analyse the deprivation and survival of women.

Sen, Amartya. “More than 100 Missing Women.” Nybooks Archives. Dec 20, 1990. Mar 4, 2013.

Poor Judith

In “A Room of One’s Own”, Virginia Woolf narrates that women could not be educated at the time of Shakespeare; they were isolated at home and waited to get marry at an early ages, while men could be educated and have a job. A woman at the time of Shakespeare must be submissive to her father and then after marriage to her husband. Virginia wanted to see or even imagine that what would happen if a woman at least had the right, but no, not a right a chance to be educated or maybe she had this question in mind that why women were not educated, why they did not have a room for themselves to write like Shakespeare. In “A Room of One’s Own”, Virginia suggests that a woman needs money to have a room in order to write fictions (Woolf). She means that in order to write, at least you need a room, means money to support yourself and your life, to have a calm mind without being worry and then enter your stories and write. She writes about possibility and to prove the proverb that impossible is impossible. To say that being as genius as Shakespeare for a woman at his time is impossible due to difficulty of life for a “woman” that even the society did not want to face a woman as a writer. There were two possibilities or underlying messages: one was that women could be even better than and more intellectual than Shakespeare, secondly it was impossible for a woman to be genius as Shakespeare!

There was a correlation between possibility of being as genius as men and the impossibility of being as genius as men before eighteenth century; for example, imagined Judith Shakespeare was as genius as her brother and had as wishes as her brother, and as passion as him to realize her dreams; but she could not reach her wishes because she was a woman. The writer imagined that if a woman wanted to have a shadow or a sign in the world’s history especially at eighteenth century and before that time, she would reach to even that point to not have any wishes and killed herself: the life would be unbearable for her. On the other hand, the author chooses to write fiction about an imaginary woman because there was no real woman at the time of Shakespeare- they were just died wandering bodies with no wishes; she wanted to give them a soul to motivate them, to search for their lost dreams.

Work Cited
Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” Fort Washington: Harvest Book. 1981. First published 1929.

Taking For Granted

She was a woman with surrounding voices of identity; she seemed to be lost in her clever eyes that search for her real “who I am”. In this world everything or whatever we do seems like escaping from each other, from being called woman, girl, wife, feminine. Now women woke up to get their rights even their ancestor’s rights. But there is a problem that when you stand up for something you must be careful to not go in a false way to decide that there must be no sign of men in this world. We must go to the past to solve problems to that exact time which someone saw the differences between men and women, to answer every seemed silly question of the mind.

There are two terms sex and gender which are signs of a crow’s like voice, even crows learn from us “humans” to imprison the productive gender of their own body and digest one’s one sided interpretation of the word “woman” in a woman’s eyes in a tricky way that she herself would never consider; she now accepted everything because of her love, because she is honest, human, and pure. Sex and gender means just “men” let them whatever they want call them; the point is that I am the freest one who I, a woman, am meditating to kill the evils by burning myself. There is a social construction for the sake of men there is no space for me to even ask questions of why the moon is not blue and the earth is dark. In social construction, sex is equal to gender because cloths could hide the sex but it appears the gender to say who dominant is or who the best is. So it is me the mother of my future daughter who must be imprisoned, who I will do plagiarize by following her grandmother and kill my daughter’s life by accepting others mistakes and do not leave any space for question. These are social construction and taking things for granted but not with guarantee that how much they would work for us. Social construction in my country means stepping carefully on the tired road of domination due to one thousands eyes that following you, judging you, expecting you to be their definition of “woman”.

As result everything in society mixed and people are trying to get their rights to prove something for themselves that “I am!” Some women changed their sex to change their gender in order to answer to that everybody’s silly questions and to do whatever they want, to be free! Some other changes their gender to change their sex to save their life; their only wish is to be alive. It is the problem of social construction when it sinks people in banal issues to be away of important points of every second of life, they force women to be women.

Works Cited

Lorber, Judith. “Night to His Days”: The Social Construction of Gender, in Paradoxes of Gender. Copyright 1994. Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press.

Is Plato a Butterfly?

In today’s world there are lots of interpretations of the sad word feminist. According to Maggie Humm in Dictionary of Feminist Theory “Feminist is someone who has both a doctrine of equal rights for women and an ideology of social transformation aiming to create a world for women beyond simple social equality”( Plato’s Feminism). This definition of feminist is fallacious due to deciding that Plato is a feminist while there was not any concept of even this controversy word at that time. There are some evidences which lead us to an ideal way, a philosophical way of considering materials. As in symposium and other works of Plato he was searching for the best and ideal form of everything, we can decide that he is not a feminist. He is wandering about completion of both genders male and female, to combine two bodies into one to make one ideal soul. There is one main argument about who the best is or who is superior; which helps us to get that Plato is not a feminist. According to article “Plato’s Feminism”, Plato did two things in his philosophy. One is that he actually altered the nature of women to show that they are inferior but “there is possibility of improvement to be like a man” (Feminism and Plato). Second is that he is inconsistent in his comments on women and criticizes women severely. Somewhere else in the same article, “Plato argued that different natures have different functions and that justice is when everyone performs the correct function” (Spelman4, Plato’s feminist). It means that he mixed the both genders into one to make a perfect being. And then he argues about the role of control in both genders that if a person has a coward personality means that he could not control his desires but “like a woman”! Symposium’s speakers interpreted every bad human’s qualities to womanish and womanish means inferior, evil, not ideal.

And what is ideal? This interpretation of Plato’s women status put his whole life and philosophy and even his theory of form under the question that what is the theory of form when you think of ideal for something which lacks ideal. In the world of ideals no one is neither a man nor woman but an ideal in its form. There is no concept of equality in the Theory of Forms because when something is swallowed by every dimension of world’s and mind’s eyes, there is no need to have that concept; while he increases the women’s status through Diotima in symposium. She is the best speaker and interpreter of symposium. The best favour of that special night. The king but not the queen of the whole burning butterflies; while Plato is not a feminist we can conclude that he is a humanist who just searches for ideals but again like some other philosopher had been lost between interaction of ideas and responding toward the world outside the circle of sun’s heat.

love means me!

There is a map of honesty, map of truth, map of love’s origin. There is a road which shows us humiliation of what we are, a path which leads us to the peak of everything to claim goodness, even pretend or no, want to be the god of our eyes. And, have you ever been in a person’s place of what the fate, or the God, typed for him/her to taste the real favour of love! In symposium the whole story surrounded two significant points. Diotima and Socrates said that “love is something between mortal and immortal; love is something between wisdom and ignorance” (487b). Love means me that I am writing for my sake; otherwise if I do something else means the real love or to be lost, to die because of happiness. And the second point is that what is the story of reproduction which attaches us to the animal beings? When two people are in love they do something with zeal and eagerness (489b). So they mean pregnancy as an immortal thing for a mortal animal to give birth to beauty. Here love means to sink in desire’s desert just for the sake of ones him or herself, love means to do, to write, to breathe, and to love for the sake of ourselves. They want to live forever to be immortal so there is a mean with the name of reproduction just to replace old with young. Reaching to the basis of love needs a long journey, it needs meditation, to be the god, to be the love.

I want to be the god, to be the love if my desire was being forever. Here the point is speaking about ever, forever. But is this a real love when I would fall in love with something or someone because I want? In the world of love there is no word for want, for willing or for wish. I mean to have a love; to do nothing for it but for its happiness; to let it sleeps if it wants! let it to live, not to kill it because of me. I accept if there is some existence of words like gay or lesbian or let them whatever they want to call the love but I want to be careful of love itself. A real love in the world of gays is not to have a worldly connection but to help your love to walk really walk on the river.

corpse

Kamala, the great poet of heart, knows everything like a bird that flies far and far from dishonesty. I see her questions, her tears which dried and insert wrinkles on the beaten body of the paper, to show unfairness of one claimed soul in two bodies. She dreams in one, writes in two languages like mixing melodies to say her but their faults. She wants to speak to the whole world maybe she is planning to upset the world as it did for her not many years ago, to reveal her secret, to make the whole not only my being or her being but that unknown story of human journey a seclusion. I feel sympathy not with her but with her poem itself when the words feel unsafe to be chosen, to be died. Words want more value, more picture of a free prison, a free verse. She searched for her beauty it was her fault, to catch her desire, to avoid blindness. She did not wait for love to show its ideal eyes, it was her fault. Kamala wanted to be loved but not a lover, to see symptoms of a cute cancer and then taste it and savour it forever. She must write like a tree, merciful to give, to really give her shadow with closed eyes. She must walk on her poem with bare foots to sense the hell, to be alive really alive.

“Dress in sarees, be girl/ be wife” (35-36), she is worried, she had been lost not many years ago but near to modern types of poem, near to that era of human competition for their worldly or animally desires to point directly at God’s eye to say that I opposed you, you which I claim that I, am I. she is crying at me, at you, at our status. She is speaking, complaining to a powerful author to whom she doubts about Her existence. The power of her room went out at the exact time of reaching to the busy points which changed her mind; she became calm and pretty, and then wanted to be again a submissive gender of love to again endure everything just because of her tears.