Response to the Guerrilla Girls

While waiting to get into the Guerrilla Girls presentation I was talking to Professor Morrissey and was informed that usually the group performs on the street and surprises people. He was curious as to why the event was so planned here; any thoughts?

As to the content of the presentation, I was impressed by their artistic approach to rhetoric: without gorilla masks on, who would listen to them? And so, no matter who the audience, the Guerrilla Girls use an approach that preserves their anonymity as individual people and reserves an identity for them as a group and as a movement. Their ethos comes in great part because of their lack of an identity. It also comes through the knowledge that the same women who campaign for their rights and the rights of other women are also working and producing in a very real sense. Because I know that they have jobs, I assume that they really feel strongly about what they're saying because they act as Guerrillas in addition.

The use of logos was there in most cases, although there were instances where statistics were given and not backed up. None of the statistics given were outrageous, though they may have been sobering or humorous. After all of this, the Guerrilla Girls themselves admit that they rely heavily pathos in order to clinch their arguments. Rather than let the facts alone speak, the Guerrilla Girls offend, then make their audience laugh. It's a very simple principle, but easier said than done. For a group of "radical feminists," I think they have some of the most effective rhetoric I've seen so far this semester.

In saying that I am not aspiring to call myself a feminist; I don't like using that word because it is often used or connotated in a sexist way against men who are not perpetrators of chauvinism. However, I feel very strongly about many of the same issues the Guerrilla Girls do, and also believe that change comes about only when the equilibrium in a society is solidy shaken and then forced to recalibrate. The Guerrilla Girls are a shaking force, if you will, and they are proud to be feminists. And I am proud of them and glad for what they have done for women around the world by making societies aware of the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle repressions that women are or have been shackled under. I've been alive for exactly as long as the Guerrilla Girls have been a group and so I'm afraid I can't quite understand all of what they fought for because I've been given more rights than they were given when they were my age, because of their movement and others like it.