Page 184 - The Language of Composition 4e Teacher Edition Sample.indd

Questions

4
TRM Suggested Responses 1. Claims and Evidence / Reasoning and Organization / Style. Much of this essay consists
Suggested responses to the questions for Identity of negative descriptions of what it means to Paul Theroux to be masculine or a man. Why
this reading can be found in the Teacher’s does he offer such strong images and assertions?
Resource Materials. 2. Claims and Evidence / Reasoning and Organization. Do you agree or disagree with
Theroux when he writes, “It is very hard to imagine any concept of manliness that does not
belittle women, and it begins very early” (par. 5)? Explain.
3. Rhetorical Situation / Reasoning and Organization. How does Theroux prepare his
DIFFERENTIATION readers for the turn the essay takes in paragraph 12 when he says, “There would be no point
Copyright (c) 2023 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used for this sample chapter.
in saying any of this if it were not generally accepted that to be a man is somehow — even
Connections to World now in feminist-influenced America — a privilege”? What does this statement reveal about
Q1. If you think it is appropriate for your Theroux’s overall purpose in this piece?
students here, you might bring up the 4. Claims and Evidence / Reasoning and Organization. Theroux’s essay was written in
phrase “toxic masculinity”: that was not a 1985. Which of his points are outdated? Which ones do you think remain true today?
term when Theroux wrote the essay, but
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.
does it fit his evidence? You could ask stu- 2 from The Myth of Male Decline
dents to create, or research, a contempo-
rary definition of toxic masculinity, using Stephanie Coontz
Theroux as a template or starting point. Stephanie Coontz (b. 1944) is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on
Other, more recent, essays later in this Contemporary Families, a nonprofit, nonpartisan association of family researchers based at
Conversation section go in that direction, the University of Texas at Austin. The following excerpt is taken from an op-ed Coontz wrote
too, though, so you might choose to save for the New York Times in 2012.
this discussion for later.
croll through the titles and subtitles of transformation in the distribution of power over
S recent books, and you will read that women the past half-century. Fifty years ago, every male
CLOSE READING have become “The Richer Sex,” that “The Rise of American was entitled to what the sociologist
Women Has Turned Men Into Boys,” and that we R. W. Connell called a “patriarchal dividend” —
Q3. Related to the question posed in num- may even be seeing “The End of Men.” Several of a lifelong affirmative-action program for men.
ber 3, what is the rhetorical effect of this the authors of these books posit that we are on The size of that dividend varied according to
quote and, especially, of Theroux’s use of the verge of a “new majority of female breadwin- race and class, but all men could count on wom-
the declarative statement “There would ners,” where middle-class wives lord over their en’s being excluded from the most desirable jobs
be no point in saying any of this if it were husbands while demoralized single men take and promotions in their line of work, so the
not . . . accepted that to be a man is . . . a refuge in perpetual adolescence. average male high school graduate earned more
privilege”? How is it, then, that men still control the than the average female college graduate work-
most important industries, especially technol- ing the same hours. At home, the patriarchal
TRM ELL Essential Guide Handout ogy, occupy most of the positions on the lists of dividend gave husbands the right to decide
the richest Americans, and continue to make where the family would live and to make unilat-
An ELL Essential Guide for this reading more money than women who have similar eral financial decisions. Male privilege even
can be found in the Teacher’s Resource skills and education? And why do women make trumped female consent to sex, so marital rape
Materials. up only 17 percent of Congress? was not a crime.
These books and the cultural anxiety The curtailment of such male entitlements 5
TRM Vocabulary Handout they represent reflect, but exaggerate, a and the expansion of women’s legal and
Stephanie Coontz, “The Myth of Male Decline,” The New York Times, Sept. 29, 2012. Copyright © 2012 The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used under
Vocabulary in Context exercises based on license. https://nytimes.com/
challenging words from this reading can be 290
found in the Teacher’s Resource Materials.

BUILDING CONTEXT
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The Center for American Women and
Politics of Rutgers University maintains a
fact sheet with updated information on the
number of women in Congress in case you
would like to get the most recent data.

290 chapter 4 / Identity

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