Feminist Retorical Practices as they relate to Patrick

I think that it was Merlin who first posited the question at the beginning of the semester about "How does this [feminist rhetoric] relate to me?"  At the time I wasn't sure how to answer that question.  The easy answer would be to say that "it all matters." 

I have to think of my reality, though.  That reality is that I am a semi-privileged white male who grew up reading the likes of Stephen King and Tom Clancy.  I had nothing against female authors but it wasn't my style...  How does this relate to me?

What Royster and Kirsch have done is to gently reintroduce feminist rhetoric back into mainstream.  I like that they gently do this because again, in my position I think that I sometimes feel that when any group who isn't mainstream tries to introduce themselves into the mainstream they sometimes do so in such a forceful way that it almost turns me off to whatever it is "they are selling."

More than that through the course we have managed to sum up what Royster and Kirsch did in the conclusion by realizing that without feminist rhetoric we aren't seeing the full and complete picture.  There are so many new and varied types of rhetoric that are unfolding as both technology advances and history catches up.  As Royster and Kirsch put it, by reintroducing women to the mainstream we are realizing the many ways in which rhetoric can exist and flourish.

How does this relate to me?  I just finished up interviewing people who are homeless for my capstone project and I might ask myself the same question.  I think the answer is that without all the myriad ways in which a story can be told, we'll never have the full and complete picture of what it means to understand rhetoric and in doing so, we lose valuable writing along the way...