Throughout my paper, I put the words gender and sex in two different colors. These are terms that our society tends to use interchangeably, but that actually have very different meanings. I am hoping that this visual mode will make it clearer to the reader which word I am using and why since most are probably used to using them interchangeably. Another way that I try to clear up the confusion of these terms is by including a short YouTube video that explains the definitions and differences between many of the gender and sex terms that I use throughout my paper. I include this video early on with my introduction so that the reader can familiarize themselves with these terms before they get into my argument. This video is short and user friendly, utilizing almost all of the modes of communication at once.
I use several pictures within my essay. The first pictures that I use are a picture of political graphic t-shirt and an example of Beyoncé wearing a traditional African-inspired dress. These pictures give an example of the political fashion that I talk about in my essay. I also include a side by side comparison of male and female pelvises when I talk about the conclusions that the government drew from the scientific differences in pelvic size and shape. This picture helps illustrate to the reader that the anatomy would in fact support the government’s claim that women are designed to bare children. This image demonstrates that there are in fact differences among the binary sexes that society uses to support the binary understanding. Along with this diagram I included a political cartoon of a caveman overseeing a woman carrying the world and telling her to give him more children. This is an exaggeration of my point that society has used scientific differences as reasoning behind tiers of power. When I talk about the proven diversity of sex, I include a graphic clearly shows all the different ways that human sex can vary. This graphic is in alignment with my argument, that sex can also be presented as a spectrum.
Throughout my essay I put some of my key statements in bold. These tend to be my claim sentences because they guide the reader toward the main ideas I am looking for them to take away from each paragraph. Bolding sentences gives natural spacing to my essay, utilizing the spacial mode to ease comprehension. I also spaced out my argument around the pictures, video, and diagram so that the text and visual mode matched up. I hyperlinked the articles that I used to support my argument when I introduced them. Now if the reader is interested in learning more about my source they can easily access it for more background information. In my title, I color “male” and “female” in blue and pink since society associates these words and colors together. Then I put “or” and my explanation of the “or” in green to show that there may be alternative.
