Rhetorical Analysis

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On September 20th, of 2014, Emma Watson gave a speech wanting to put out the inequality that women face these days. The speech took place in New York in the United Nations Headquarters. The reason for her speech was to notify people of her new HeforShe campaign she is apart of. In Emma Watson’s speech, “Gender Equality is Your Issue Too”, Watson applies speech rhetoric to prove that women should have equal rights and to persuade not only women, but also men to fight for gender equality.
The inequality of women and their rights has been around for a long period of time. The United States passed the Equal Rights Amendment on March 22, 1972 which allowed, “women the right to vote in America, this amendment was created to provide women with equal …show more content…

She not only mentions ways of how she has seen discrimination, but also how she has felt it. She gives us some childhood examples such as, “When I was 8, I was confused for being called bossy because I wanted to direct the plays that we would put on for our parents, but the boys were not. When at 14, I started to be sexualized by certain elements of the media. When at 15, my girlfriends started dropping out of sports teams because they didn’t want to appear muscly. When at 18, my male friends were unable to express their feelings” (Emma Watson’s UN Speech). Emma Watson says, “Having seen what I’ve seen, and given the chance, I feel it is my responsibility to say something” (Emma Watson’s UN Speech) which indicates that by using sentimental stories she was able to get the trust of the audience. Watson also says that she “want(s) men to take up this mantle so that their daughters, sisters, and mothers can be free from prejudice, but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too, reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned, and in doing so, be a more true and complete version of themselves” (Emma Watson’s UN Speech). By using that quote she is showing how truly she cares about this campaign and how she wants a

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