Rhetorical Analysis (Final Draft) Essays (1377 words) - Rape

Skylar Rose Goodman Professor Vinisky Rhetorical Analysis November 16, 2018 The topic of rape and sexual assault has recently become a more common conversation in recent months as allegations against many powerful people, in both politics and the entertainment industry, come to the public eye. This is a very important conversation that needs to happen, and it is unfortunate that so many people had to be hurt and victimized before the conversation really began. In 2010, sexual assault was not as much of a hot button topic as it is today. A few short years ago, the topic of sexual assault was not brought up in civil conversation; it was a discussion that was avoided entirely. A subtopic of sexual assault is the question of who the blame lies upon for the assault occurring. Rebecca Camber, an English journalist, wrote an article in early 2010 discussing the views of people polled and the opinions of those who work professionally in both law enforcement and victim services. Camber's article is rhetorically effective, even if the reader does not share h er underlying assumptions. The article was written for an English news source, however the findings from the studies mentioned are likely to still apply to an American audience. Camber found that roughly 50% of women believed that the victims of sexual assault played a part in their own attack. Camber used these statistics and other appeals to display that although this opinion may be frequent, it is not a true conclusion of who is at fault when someone has been victimized. The purpose of this article is to show how many people truly believe that victims' are at fault for being attacked and then to discredit these ideas with testimonies from those professionally involved in the discussion of sexual assault. The occasion and inspiration for writing this article is that Britain has the lowest conviction rate in Europe of rape; only one in fourteen rapes reported end in a conviction. Throughout the article, Camber mentions that the experts she quotes are advocates for education in schools about sexual assault and sexual violence. Camber herself supports the idea of sexual violence education in schools. Both the intended audience and actual audience that this article was written for are of English nationality, as The Daily Mail is an English publication. The actual audience is victims of sexual assault, with the intent of showing them that although the public may have an opinion about sexual assault and those victimized by it, those who are educated on the topic have a much different opinion. The professional opinion is that the victims are not to blame, continuing the rhetoric of "never blame the victim". The intended audience is those who blame victims of sexual assault in an attempt to have them question their viewpoints, to shed light on how widespread the idea is and how harmful it can be to victims and the efforts to end sexual violence. The tone of the article is derogatory towards those with the opinion that victims are at fault for being assaulted while also praising victims for surviving and validates them for their struggles. Rebecca Camber is a crime correspondent and an English journalist for many news outlets. (Muck Rack.) Some of the publications Camber has written for include The Daily Mail , MSN UK, New Zealand Herald, The Star (South Africa), Business Report, and Daily Voice . (Id.) The Daily Mail, where this article was originally published, is a British daily middle-market newspaper published in London and has an online source as well, reaching an international audience. (Wikipedia.) Camber herself writes many articles on controversial topics, such as sexual assault, terrorism, and other crime related topics. This gives Camber credibility as she has written of similar topics before, and often writes with another journalist who also specializes on the topic written about. In this article, however, Camber is the sole author. Camber's article is mostly logically oriented in presenting the information. Camber uses many statistics and facts from various sources. The majority of the article is information from these mixed sources displayed in quantitative form, showing mostly percentages of polls and surveys of both males and females. This is significant due