Rhetorical Artifact

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Trans women in athletics are creating a severe problem within athletics. They hold a biologically unfair advantage when competing against and amongst cisgender women. A descriptive analysis, a rhetorical study, and an examination of unique constraints on the rhetorical artifact of a board of directors’ testimony reveal how this artifact works to illuminate the subject of trans women in athletics. The disparity in the performance of trans women’s physiological advantage is readily apparent regardless of undergoing gender-affirming treatments. The artifact in question aims to persuade the audience by shaping their beliefs. This is a YouTube video featuring a speech by Paula Scanlan during an NCAA board conference. The speech discusses Lia Thomas’s …show more content…

She opens up about her experience and her fellow teammates’ experience and how it affected her and her teammates. She is seeking positive change for all parts of the sport and the sport. The rhetorical artifact is a narrative story sequence that uses logical casual cause/effect with topical parts. As the artifact is a testimony video, discern the sequence, topical, and logical portions of the video. The video is a testimony, a story, her journey, a personal experience unique to the person giving it. She shares her struggles, her trauma, as well as her fellow peers’ similar trauma. The video follows the sequence of effects, which is then written with casual logic. Within the video, the artifact uses the Resource language of Formality and Informality, which is split into a portion of 80 percent Formality and 20 percent Informality. This is supported simply by, again, simply by the nature of the artifact. As it is a testimony, the formality of the speech is evident for most of the speech. However, within the speech, there are portions of informality within the speech where they are more emotionally …show more content…

The video is both a portion of justificatory and logical, leaning more toward justificatory. Again, Paula spoke to the board of the NCAA, telling her testimony and speaking to her teammates. She helps paint the picture of how little the NCAA and the University of Pennsylvania cared about the feeling of the biological woman in the program conforming to Lia Tommas’ gender identity. This conference as a whole sheds light on the damage that is being done to women’s sports categories around the world of swimming and other sports and how, by turning a blind eye, we are killing women’s sports. The well-being and the fair participation and survival of not only women swimming but all women’s sports that are being affected by Trans athletes dominating their gender category. If any man can claim to be a woman and compete in women’s sports, why have women’s sports at all? If the argument is that there is no difference between men and women, why is there gender separation within sports? We cannot continue to allow the destruction of women’s sports. We are robbing the opportunity for women to compete on equal ground within their gender

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