Evolving Identities: Gender and Sexuality in Changing American Culture

Abstract

Rhetoric Analysis Essay: Gender and American Identity Introduction Various factors enhance the identification process in human beings. Race is among the significant identifiers that categorize people based on their skin and hair color, among other cultural attributes identifying such individuals as the same racial group. On the other hand, ethnicity serves as another factor that aids in identifying individuals and focuses on linguistics and shared culture while categorizing people. With ethnicity, one can further categorize people sharing the same racial group into smaller groups based on their origin, traditions, religion, and language, among other factors that enhance people's identification with the most similar attributes. However, neither race nor ethnicity considers the gender or sexuality of a person while categorizing individuals in their respective groups. Gender serves as an identifying factor that considers the characteristics of men and women socially constructed with sexuality considering the same characteristics from biological constructions. For this reason, this essay will offer a detailed rhetoric analysis on gender and sexuality as potential identifiers of the American population. Though the population is changing the meaning of gender and sexuality, this analysis aims at providing facts that will offer a better understanding of the meaning and the connection of the two terms. The analysis views the two as potential identifiers of the diversified American population, as argued by Steinmetz in an article titled "Beyond 'He' or 'She': The Changing Meaning of Gender and Sexuality." Steinmetz compiles an article whose title “Beyond ‘He’ or ‘She’: The Changing Meaning of Gender and Sexuality” speaks loud of the author's potentials in appealing to the target audience regarding the relevance of the topic of discussion. Though a short title, the author manages to capture the target audience's undivided attention, whose urge to understand the extents to which gender and sexuality have received changes over time remains defined. With such a high note to kick-start the discussion and arguments within the article, one can argue that the author has defined abilities in pathos's employment to persuade the target audiences to remain focused and go through the entire article to understand the main arguments therein concerning gender and sexuality. Steinmetz's text's primary purpose is to inform the target audience, who are students/young generation, on the need to understand gender and sexuality better, meaning to allow for better identification of each American. The author starts with a very appealing paragraph citing the divided identities amongst American secondary school students ranging from lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender, pansexual, aromantic, asexual, and gender-queer. With such a note, the reader can understand that gender as an identifier goes far beyond the biological and socially constructed characteristics that define women and men. The American population is manipulating gender, meaning that the term accommodates all the American population without causing any adverse effects on the people who believe that they are neither men nor women. For this reason, Steinmetz argues that the gender identity of male and female becomes further explained through whom either gender is physically or romantically attracted to at any given time. One can become biologically identified as a male based on the sex identified during birth, but with time, the individual starts experiencing the female characteristic within him. In such a scenario, the gender identifier tends to experience a different meaning defining the character as neither a female nor a male, thus allowing transgender identification. Concerning such a scenario, the author employs logos to confirm her argument citing that "Young people are pointing to the middle in terms of sexual attraction too, with one survey finding that nearly a third of young Americans see themselves somewhere between 100% heterosexual and 100% homosexual." It is quite open that transgender person does not identify with such a title during their birth. The biological characteristics defining the sex of an individual as either male or female are either the penis or vagina. However, such factors are not the...