Boyz II Men- End of the Road (Blog Post 10)

    The exigence being addressed is ending slut-shaming and rape culture, a problem across the world that just is not spoken about very often. By placing myself within the Slutwalk Movement, I am saying that sexual assault is NEVER okay no matter what a female is wearing and that rape victims should NEVER be blamed for being the victim of such a heinous crime.

     Since slut-shaming and rape culture are talked about so little in the media, the most important rhetorical goal is to inform the public and change the preconceived notions. The persuasive function of transforming perceptions of social reality is so important in fighting my exigence because getting the public to realize that the preexisting meanings of "slut" and "rape" are flawed is a majority of the battle. Once people realize that directly or indirectly participating with the perceptions of the past and present is toxic to combating the exigence, then they will understand what movements like Slutwalk are fighting for. Change is difficult, but changing people and the way they think is even more difficult. 

    I used the language strategy of framing and the language tactic of slogans to reach my transform perceptions of social reality. Framing is important for social movement identity. Framing can take a phrase, that alone has a general meaning, and make it into a linguistic weapon specific to a movement. A popular phrase for the Slutwalk Movement is "Because We've Had Enough", which by itself could mean a number of different things. Slutwalk framed the phrase into meaning that the concerned many have had enough of slut-shaming, victim-blaming, and a flawed rape culture. Slogans are one of the most important tools of altering social perceptions because they are brief but packed with so much meaning. The average person is not going to sit through an entire video presentation nor read an entire manifesto, but the vast majority of people will take three seconds of their time to glance at a slogan. Many slogans are catchy or controversial, making the person think longer about what they have just seen. If people think long enough then they grow curious as to what they movement is about, getting further informed and changing the way they previously thought. 

    I chose to go with the genre of slideshows. This genre allows for a series of independent images to stand alone while still being connected to the overall theme. More specifically, a powerpoint presentation lets me stay on an image as long as I want before switching to the next one, whereas a video would have to be paused and played repeatedly. 

    The constraints of a powerpoint are that the information put on each slide is limited and there is not much room for creativity. For a concise message though, a powerpoint is most certainly best. I not only created a powerpoint, but I also blogged the PDF version of it onto the Slutwalk: Toronto official blog. Making my work accessible to anyone and everyone. Powerpoints help me transform perceptions of social reality by giving images of slogans that are framed to fight slut-shaming and rape culture.