Valery Perez

April 28, 2015

Ms. Diaz
English 120
MWA 2 Reflection: Stop Violence Against Women

In sequence 2, our second major writing assignment was to write a position paper
and take a stance on an issue that is important to us. I chose to write about how Fifty
Shades of Grey glamorizes and legitimizes violence against women. I decided to use
MWA 2 for my creative revision as a means to spread awareness and information on
domestic violence through an experimental outlet. In my original draft I did a good job of
expressing why this is such an important issue and why people should stop encouraging a
franchise that promotes abuse and challenge the normalization of rape culture to prevent
violence against women. Other strengths from my paper include the arguments I used to
support my thesis. I used these arguments as examples because I thought they were the
most important of the many controversial issues surrounding the franchise. Although it
was harder to find counterarguments that justify the abuse found in Fifty Shades of Grey,
I managed to use counterarguments that Ive seen used by people on social media.
For my revision I decided to turn the information I found on statistics and
awareness into flyers. The first flyer contains the lines Not because you have a sister.
Not because you have a mother. Not because you have a daughter. Because shes a
person. I became so tired of seeing public service announcements on domestic abuse
targeted to an audience of men that went along the lines of the sister/mother/daughter

concept. Although powerful and touching, I couldnt help but feel that the message these
PSAs were presenting was that, in some ways, women belonged to men. I kept thinking
that the only way that men would care was if the issue directly affected them rather than
caring because she is a human being suffering abuse. I wanted the flyer to hit hard and
leave an impact so I chose to recreate Trevor Browns Bruised Madonna, a rather
graphic image depicting Madonna with a large bruised eye. The second flyer contains
information and statistics on domestic abuse.
With this assignment I learned that I have to improve using different mediums
and genres. I also have to experiment with different writing and composing methods. I
think some of my strengths within this assignment included being passionate about the
topic I was writing about. I think I did a good job of putting my own voice across and
making it clear to the audience what my intentions where. Being able to incorporate
feminism into my artwork is one of my favorite things to do and Im glad I got to do
exactly that in this assignment. I think its incredibly important to put a part of yourself
into your work and I feel like both my creative revision and position paper represent who
I am as a person and what I stand for. I think that qualities such as these will help me
achieve my goals to work in design and the film industry. All in all I think this
assignment definitely helped broaden my approach to writing and composing within
different genres.