Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • Major Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
Video Games & American Culture » March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics

March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics

Video Game Essay Due next week on Canvas–April 7th
Also, don’t forget to do your Weekly Canvas Post…I know you’ve already set your calendar reminders

Plan of Attack

  • Any more from our realism discussion
  • Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth”
    • I originally had a not-so-nice copy of this chapter on Canvas but updated the file
  • Women’s Images in Media
  • Gloria Steinem’s “Why Younger Women are More Conservative”
  • Video Game Essay (Due Next Week)
    • Don’t pad your essays with long quotations and/or images
    • You don’t need to double space your heading or triple space between paragraphs
    • The 7- or 9-page requirement is for your analysis
    • Works Cited and References don’t count towards the page requirement

How not to think about Feminism

Some might argue that feminist scholars are seeing a conspiracy theory, and they just blow things out of proportion. That’s too reductive an explanation. The authors are showing us (with various levels of success) that the media we consume are products of the culture.

We have illusions of gender that the media replicate that we wish to hold onto. We will discuss–at length I hope–gender as an expression. Arguments against transgender individuals don’t hold up when we consider gender an expression. The Constitution of the United States allows for freedom of speech, religion, and expression.

The Beauty Myth

How does a woman achieve the socially constructed status that is beauty?

Some specific points about “the beauty myth”:

  • p. 10: “a violent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women’s advancement: the beauty myth.”
  • pp.10-11: “…contemporary backlash….has grown stronger to take over the work of social coercion that myths about motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and passivity no longer can manage.”
    • Wolf published this in 1991, so things have changed, right?
  • p. 10: Wolf argues that women’s political and social gains–including reproductive freedoms–played a role in creating the beauty myth.
  • p. 12: “The beauty myth tells a story: The quality called ‘beauty’ objectively and universally exists.”
    “None of this is true. ‘Beauty’ is a currency system like the gold standard.”
  • p. 14: Women in competition.
  • p.16: “The modern arsenal of the myth….is summoned out of political fear on the part of male-dominated institutions threatened by women’s freedom, and it exploits female guilt and apprehension about [women’s] liberation–latent fears that we might be going too far.”
  • p.18: “An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slave that ‘justify’ the institution of slavery. Western economics are absolutely dependent now on the continued underpayment of women.”
    • Is it fair for Wolf to compare unequal pay to the institution of slavery?
  • p. 19: “That resurrected caricature [an unflattering image of a feminist], which sought to punish women for their public acts by going after their private sense of self, became the paradigm for new limits placed on aspiring women everywhere.”

Unlike Gloria Steinem’s visit to UNC Charlotte, I found Naomi Wolf’s talk here to reveal a less-than-critical stance on women in heterosexual relationship. She also was borderline abortion shaming and advocated a slut-shaming stance by defending women covering themselves up. She visited in 2010 if memory serves.

Women’s Bodies on Sale

Maybe I read too much into things, but I see so many romantic comedies ending the same way–marriage and/or children. In fact, it’s not even just romantic comedies: there are countless shows and films that follow the “boy meets girl” format. What do we think about this romantic pattern?

Right about now is when we start talking about double standards. The authors we’ve read recently point out that men don’t have the same stigmas attached to them or the same expectations:

  • Things to think about as you contemplate our gender analysis discussions:
    • What are some roles and expectations that women have but men don’t or, at least, don’t have to the same extent?
    • Where do these roles or expectations show up? Be specific. Don’t just say “the media”–that’s a given in this class.
  • Let’s review a discussion on Language and Hegemony.
    • Have you ever thought about language and how it replicates hegemonic practices? What’s the word for a promiscuous female?
    • How about a male?
    • Check out the definition for the word ‘slut’ (if you’re on campus, check out the OED’s expanded definition). What’s the double standard in that word?
  • Where else do ideal(ized) images get reproduced?

Here’s an interesting look at Breastaurants and another one. There’s even an NPR story on Breastaurants.–brings new meaning to economic “bust” (by the way, that’s not my clever joke; it’s in the article). There was a short-lived male version called Tallywackers.

Gloria Steinem’s “Why Younger Women are More Conservative”

Gloria Steinem focuses her attention in this essay on young women. She tells us that young women are more conservative–more likely to go along with the status quo–because they are “in the stage most valued by male-dominant cultures” (230). While you’re free to disagree with her argument, let’s try to consider “the rhetoric of young, conventionally beautiful women” in American culture.

She signed a book for me 26 years ago…almost to the day!

Some specific points about Steinem’s article:

  • p. 230: “As students, women are probably treated with more equality than we ever will be again. For one thing, we’re consumers.”
  • p. 230: Young women “have [their] full potential as workers, wives, sex partners, and childbearers.”
  • p. 232: Women “worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career” while college students.
  • p. 232: Women “are still brainwashed into assuming that [they] are dependent on men for [their] basic identities.”
  • p. 233: “Society tries hard to convert women into ‘man junkies’; that is, into people who are addicted to male-approval and presence.”
  • p. 233: Young women may “refrain from identifying themselves as ‘feminist.'”
  • pp. 235-236: “We have to uproot the sexual caste system that is the most pervasive power structure in society, and this means transforming the patriarchal values of those who run the institutions, whether they are politically the “right” or the “left,” the fathers or the sons.

That last quote is important because Steinem isn’t reducing her argument to a trite Democratic vs Republican argument. Patriarchy pervades both.

Videos for the Weekly Discussion Post

Time permitting, we’ll watch the videos for this week’s post:

  • Laci Green’s “WHY I’M A…FEMINIST *gasp*”
  • Some high schooler “Why Modern Feminism Isn’t Needed” Speech

Kilbourne on Images of Women in the Media

This isn’t required viewing but might be of interest.

I have a link to Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women (45 min) from the Media Education database available through Atkins Library. You should be able to watch it if you’re signed in.

Jean Kilbourne’s lecture on images of women in the media has been revised and re-presented for nearly 40 years. If we were to locate her thesis, it would be, roughly, that advertisements condition our feelings–consciously and unconsciously–of what it means to be a woman or a man. Additionally, she points out that although men are sometimes objectified, it’s women who suffer the most from advertising’s objectification.

{Of course, just like what we discussed concerning technology from a social perspective, what influences what? Does the media influence our perceptions of femininity and masculinity, or does society influence the media’s (re)presentations of femininity and masculinity.}

Some specific points about how advertisements “use” women:

  • Women are often shown as submissive, silent, and docile.
  • The images of women are often of manufactured or spliced-together body parts of women.
  • Also, the supermodels or “typical” models are a small percentage of the population but appear as the norm because the type is repeated constantly.
  • There appears to be a recurring pattern of infantilization of women and a sexualization of young girls in advertising.
  • Kilbourne believes that many ads show violence against women (both explicitly and implicitly), which goes along with the preponderance of domestic violence and rape of women in society as a whole.
  • In many ads, men are shown as powerful
  • Most ads conform to (hetero)normative white standards of beauty or power. Women of color seem to be “silenced” and dehumanized more according to Kilbourne.
    • Let’s consider an alternative view of beauty. This suggestion comes from one of your classmate’s and does an interesting job of highlighting different conventions of beauty.
    • Sir Mix-a-Lot on mainstream ideas of beauty.
    • Oh my Becky, look at her…
    • This link might work better tomorrow
  • Most importantly, (I guess I could be biased…) Kilbourne points out that we’re no longer citizens but consumers. Who else claims that?

Although there may be some disagreement, Kilbourne is not the only one who makes the argument that images of women in the media influence how women and girls see themselves. Additionally, she provides empirical evidence for Naomi Wolf’s idea of the beauty myth that women are supposed to conform to in patriarchal society.

I’ve shown or directed students to Kilbourne’s lecture for nearly twenty years (I even watched the first or second one in college), and I’m amazed at the responses I get. I’m especially amazed at the defensive tone many male students have about Kilbourne’s argument. I’ve heard that she’s just a scorned feminist who’s “taking out her frustrations on men” to arguments that she is manipulating her evidence by choosing particularly suspect ads. However, the ads she shows are quite representative of images of women in the media. For examples, see the following “industry” websites:

  • Vogue Magazine
    • Although the prevalence of whiteness has diminished in fashion
  • Cosmopolitan Online
    • More fashion outlets are more open to nonbinary models
  • Seventeen Magazine–Prom!
    • Flirty Text Message Ideas!
  • See a retouching campaign (The interactive page seems to no longer exist…)

One thing I have noticed about the images of women and girls on the magazine sites above that’s different from many of the images Kilbourne shows is that Kilbourne’s selection had many images of vulnerable, passive women and girls. While those images haven’t gone away entirely from my unscientific sampling of magazines (especially perfume/cologne ads), the above sites have an abundance of happy, active women and girls. Everything from new jeans to ice cream seems to make the models happy. I wonder what that says about advertising? These happy women and girls still conform to Kilbourne’s argument that petite, white, airbrushed models are the standard for conventionally beauty images. However, there has been a push for more representations–body size, skin color, neurodiversity–in advertising and modelling.

But her most airtight claim is about the ideal(ized) version of women digitally enhanced and manufactured: Take a look at this Dove commercial for a look at how to construct the “perfect” woman. They can do all kinds of things with Photoshop…makes us, once again, question what’s “real” in media.

Next Week

Obviously, this is a WGST class, so it’s not like we’re going to stop having discussions on gender and sexuality. We’ll be moving onto games of conquest, and I have a chapter from my video game book for you on Canvas. Don’t forget that your Video Game essay is due next week! It’s never too early to start looking ahead to the next assignment…

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