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Tess Catalano "Take Back the Night" and other academic essays, 1982

Take back the night rewrite assignment Page 5

all live, and from which all men benefit. we are taught from birth, by our parents, our friends and their parents, by our grandparents, by schoolteachers and babysitters, by professors and colleagues, by Playboy and Ms., by the Des Moines Register and the Daily Iowan, we are taught: that boys wear blue, are more important, get the jobs, earn the money, lift the weights, kiss the bride, and beat the wife. We are taught that girls wear pink, are more supportive, clean the house, breed the children, nurse the baby, wash the clothes, and never let an ugly thought enter out pretty little heads. Yet, when this total and consummate system goes awry -- and it has, it is, and it will -- when this excuse for civilization slips up, and one woman raises her eyes, her hand, her fist -- then men rape. They beat and abuse in order to teach and maintain the control they have so thoroughly soldered in our brains. Thus, any and all attempts to disrupt a separatist, woman-only event, an event where women are trying to speak out about the barbarism in which we are forced to exist, is an attempt, by men, to maintain the power that violently oppresses women.
   There are no excuses.

[handwritten]
Certainly the difference between the two versions is striking. The much more direct, incisive, absolutist prose here does indeed become a test of persuasive rhetoric’s usefulness as a channel for anger. The consistency of the tone, the rigor of the expression will certainly hold a reader’s attention (by the way, the more staccato style makes the fragments seem appropriate, and there are hardly any comma splices). Of course, as class discussion proved, you are going to get varied responses. But whether they agree with you or not, you put your readers on the spot.

Saving...

all live, and from which all men benefit. we are taught from birth, by our parents, our friends and their parents, by our grandparents, by schoolteachers and babysitters, by professors and colleagues, by Playboy and Ms., by the Des Moines Register and the Daily Iowan, we are taught: that boys wear blue, are more important, get the jobs, earn the money, lift the weights, kiss the bride, and beat the wife. We are taught that girls wear pink, are more supportive, clean the house, breed the children, nurse the baby, wash the clothes, and never let an ugly thought enter out pretty little heads. Yet, when this total and consummate system goes awry -- and it has, it is, and it will -- when this excuse for civilization slips up, and one woman raises her eyes, her hand, her fist -- then men rape. They beat and abuse in order to teach and maintain the control they have so thoroughly soldered in our brains. Thus, any and all attempts to disrupt a separatist, woman-only event, an event where women are trying to speak out about the barbarism in which we are forced to exist, is an attempt, by men, to maintain the power that violently oppresses women. There are no excuses. [handwritten] Certainly the difference between the two versions is striking. The much more direct, incisive, absolutist prose here does indeed become a test of persuasive rhetoric’s usefulness as a channel for anger. The consistency of the tone, the rigor of the expression will certainly hold a reader’s attention (by the way, the more staccato style makes the fragments seem appropriate, and there are hardly any comma splices). Of course, as class discussion proved, you are going to get varied responses. But whether they agree with you or not, you put your readers on the spot.