WP1 Project

Feminist Theory

Yuxin Wang

Writ-2

June 13, 2021

Boys and girls

I am A GIRL, and you are A BOY

Some boys have short hair and some have short hair.

Some girls wear long skirts and some wear jeans

Sometimes boys play with dolls and girls play with car toys.
Boys and girls have different body types.

GIRLS
“But mom I am confused! Why did the teachers bring all the boys to play taekwondo and all the girls must
dance! I hate dancing! I want to join them and have fun playing taekwondo!”

Darling! You have nothing wrong!

Both boys and girls can find their own interests and advantages in a certain field. You do not need to do
the same things as your classmates and friends, as long as you enjoy what you do.

To gain confidence and a sense of accomplishment, this is the most important thing!

Parents:
“I support everything you want to do and we will always be your supporters!”
 Explication Essay: Feminist Theory

Feminist studies is relatively new as an academic discipline, so there still have massive

argument about the feminism theories. The history of feminism was harsh since many of its

concepts were based on different gender norms, which means scholars had to overturn the

current social construct. Breaking mainstream can be a hard and long-time struggle, and plenty

of new ideas will emerge together until people reach a common sense. Moreover, in patriarchal

society, a large amount of traditions and belief unconsciously discipline women to behave the

“virtue” of women. In the peer-reviewed article “Feminist theory in Feminism & Psychology

[Part I]: Dealing with differences and negotiating the biological,” the author H Lorraine Radtke

discusses gender and sex differences as well as biological and feminist psychology relations. The

author claims that the only way for biology stays firmly in feminist psychology is to abandon the

belief that biological forms congenitally. Thus, he describes the history of the development of

feminist theories and analyzing the limitations of feminist psychology. In order to make this

journal article easier to understand and simple to apply, I chose to translate it into a children's

book. This genre has nothing to do with feminism, and indeed, I changed a large number of

elements in the original article. Just as Kerry Dirk said, “ the rules change as the genre

changes.”1 All parts of the rhetorical situation changed when translating my new genre, including

exigence, audience, and constraints. The conventions of children’s book fit my requirements:

light text, light color pictures, and heavy use of illustrations. The effectiveness of this translation

is reflected by its appeal to young children to recognize and develop basic gender cognition and

to their parents to concern about the education towards feminism-related ideas. In addition, the

children’s book will address some of the problems of feminist psychology by breaking the

1
Kerry Dirk, “Navigating Genres,” in Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1, ed. Charles Lowe
and Pavel Zemliansky (Parlor Press, 2010), 258.
boundary between theory and real-life practice. Therefore, the theories in feminism study are

generalized to ordinary people instead of professional scholars.

Since the peer-reviewed article and children’s book are so different, it takes a huge effect

for me to consider which contents need to be rewritten and which contents need to be ignored. In

the peer-reviewed article, the author analyzes several journal articles that were published in

Feminism & Psychology, which is an academic website for collecting articles that are relevant to

the feminist psychology discipline. People who are specialists or anyone who is interested in this

topic are probably the main reviewers of these journal articles. Thus, the most significant

exigence of this peer-reviewed article is to give comments and to explain the writer's own idea

with a professional perspective, to summarize the current situation from history, and to point out

the limitations of feminist psychology. Before introducing the historical movements of feminism

theories, H Lorraine Radtke illustrates that “to be reflexive in this sense means critically

reflecting on how researchers and their methods affect the process of theorizing and producing

knowledge. Theorists open up a space for alternative visions that can be debated and vetted for

their transformative potential in reworking power relations and hence our everyday lives,” which

implies one possible way to enable theories applying in our daily lives.2 Thus, the author is

trying to convince the audience that people must realize that biology is constructed by culture

and society rather than born naturally. However, as my new genre, a children’s book, which uses

simple language and sentences, it is unreadable for children if directly rephrasing all these highly

academic terms and conclusions. Considering the purpose of generalizing the main idea of the

peer-reviewed article, I decided to leave the description of the history of feminism but only

contain the observations. Because children will feel bored if there are so many pages talking

2
Lorraine Radtke, H. “Feminist Theory in Feminism & Psychology [Part I]: Dealing with Differences and
Negotiating the Biological.” Feminism & Psychology 27, no. 3 (August 2017): 357–77.
about the fact, which is not an effective method to spread the ideas. Translating the theories into

a story-telling form is appropriate for kids to gain the basic idea of gender, and therefore

establish a gender equality impression in their mind.

Another effective part of my translation is the change in audience. Translating a

peer-reviewed article into a children’s book requires me to change the audience from an adult

with mature and independent thinking skills to a child with no common sense, no information

about gender and sex. The greatest change I included is the use of words and typeface. A

children’s book must have pictures with cartoon-like characters and informal typeface which

made the book fun to read for young kids. Most importantly, I converted the tedious theory

descriptions into real-life examples by creating the situation of what a child might encounter in

their world that fits the idea of the original theory. Thus, kids can easily understand and learn

from these interesting stories. Moreover, there is more than one audience in a children’s book:

the parents. As the second audience of the new genre, they read children’s books when playing

with their kids and it is also a perfect time to do education and teach kids the right values. I

include the conversation in which both kids and parents are involved, so there will be an

interaction between adults and children.

Addressing the constraints in peer-reviewed article by deliberately choose my new genre

is also a vital part in my translation. As Carroll mentions in his article, “Constraints limit the way

the discourse is delivered or communicated. Constraints may be something as simple as your

instructor limiting your proposal to one thousand words, or they may be far more complex like

the kinds of language you need to use to persuade a certain community.”3 For a long time, the

study of biology in feminism psychology has been out of the public view. “There are constraints

3
Laura Bolin Carroll. “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis.” Parlor Press, 6.
associated with the situation itself” in the feminist psychology field.4 According to the author,

“psychological scientists’ lack of interest in questioning the discipline’s research practices is a

reflection of the privileged position of postpositivism.”5 The theory and the dominant science

have some conflict so that the idea of feminism is difficult to be heard from the others. It is one

of the reasons I choose a children's book to translate. By introducing the basic concepts of gender

and sex into children, I break the boundary between academic research and ordinary people.

In my effort to translate an academic peer-reviewed article into a children's book, three

elements in the rhetorical situation are the most considerable items I considered. Before starting

my translation, I analyze the audience of the two genres and rearrange the concepts and structure

in my new genre. The purpose changed as the audience changed, so I carefully choose words and

tones in a children's book to ensure my translation is easily understood. Moreover, I address the

limitation and potential concern of the peer-reviewed article by applying the concepts of feminist

psychology and gender idea into a daily life experience. Thus, the first and the second audience

can follow the conclusion of professional research.

4
"Rhetorical Situation," College Composition and Communication, National Council of Teachers of
English, 2010, Gauchospace.
5
Radtke
 Bibliography

Dirk, Kerry, “Navigating Genres,” in Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1, edited by

Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, 249-262. Parlor Press, 2010.

Laura Bolin Carroll. “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis.” Parlor Press,

6. https://writingspaces.org/sites/default/files/carroll--backpacks-vs-briefcases.pdf.

Accessed on June 13, 2021.

Lorraine Radtke, H. “Feminist Theory in Feminism & Psychology [Part I]: Dealing with

Differences and Negotiating the Biological.” Feminism & Psychology 27, no. 3 (August

2017): 357–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353517714594.

National Council of Teachers of English. "Rhetorical Situation." College Composition and

Communication. 2010. Gauchospace.