haasa’s blog

From my peer review sheet, I learned I have a lot of work to do on my essay before I can turn it in.

My biggest concern with MSE 1 is gathering all of my thoughts and sources and citations and making them all flow well. I might want to conference with Heather sometime next week to help me organize a few things.

Sullivan, Bennett, Hekker and O’Brien.

I think I am going to do my topic on child rearing. I feel like I would have a firm grip on it because there are many different works I can look into to support my arguments. However, I need to figure out what my argument is, and how I am going to refute the other arguments.

There are many different themes in this essay, including; singlehood, coupledom, the definition of a relationship, child rearing (Hekker thinks children need a stay at home mom, Bennet thinks children need straight parents, Sullivan thinks it takes two married parents to raise a healthy child, O’Brien thinks you dont need two parents, singlehood is okay), tradition, the traditional family, define a happy person, all these themes work together. I want to synthesize the ideas of child rearing.

There seems to be a growing trend towards singlehood, however society still pressures people to be in a relationship. Common themes from past works include, talking about the norm, talking about marriage, talking about how society views you and makes you feel. The people in the article talk about how being single can help you to better yourself, and how you should not have to settle for anything. However, it is not really settling, it is more compromising. He needs to reword his argument to make sense. What does settling mean? What relationships are perfect? What person is perfect? All relationships have problems, people need to learn how to compromise. And if you can’t compromise you are bound to stay single for a long time.

In the For gay marriage argument, Sullivan says one of the strongest arguments for gay marriage is a conservative one. And in the Against gay marriage argument Bennett says Marriage is not an arbitrary construct; it is an honorable estate based on the different complementary nature of men and women – and how they refine, support, encourage and complete one another. This is obviously a conservative approach. But Sullivan says ….several cities in the United States have domestic partnership laws, which allow non-heterosexual relationships to qualify for benefits. Sullivan is saying the concept of domestic partnerships chips away at the prestige of traditional relationships but undermines the priorities we give them. Saying that legally it is known they are together, but it is not accepted socially. Which are both logical approaches. Another part of his argument he says imagine dating without even the possibility of marriage. This is a very emotional approach to go about the argument. I think Sullivan does a much better job of defending his argument and pulling in more pathos appeal.

I worked really hard on my draft. I had to move things around and reorganize my paper many times. But the final copy really came out nice. It was hard not to rant on and on about all the things that upset me, but I took a very proactive approach, instead of a reactive one. I’m just really glad to be done with this first essay.

I have to reorganize my paper better and cite some things. I also need to work on my counter argument. I still have some work to do on this paper this weekend.

From the debate we had in class, i decided to write my counter argument against people who also disliked the essay, but thought it should be left in the textbook. Hearing the other side of the argument helped me refute my points better.