“What Makes A Woman?” By Elinor Burkett
Reading Response Essay
“What Makes A Woman?” By Elinor Burkett
Reading Response Essay
My mother always told me than one of my most significant flaws is thinking that things that
are obvious to me are just as apparent to everyone else.
Take, for example, my fifth year of primary school. At the beginning of the semester, the
headmaster waltzed into our classroom, bearing good news.
We were going to have a “miniature” student council! There would be a board complete with a
president, a vice president, and all the titles we would hear about -but not wholly understand- on
“edgy,” past bedtime, television shows.
We were told we had to sit for a writing test, and whoever got the highest score would get to be
the council’s president. Now according to what the headmaster said at the time, the council
president was a big deal. If you got the job, you would get to monitor the class when the teacher
was out and jot down the name of noisemakers. You would also be the one who the teacher
sends to fetch chalk during class! Can you imagine the power a twelve-year old would derive
from all that responsibility?
Obviously, little me wanted that, badly. And therefore, I got the highest score.
Little did I know, the president had to be a boy. It was a minor detail that the headmaster forgot
to mention; he thought it was obvious. Everyone in the class thought it was obvious, except for
me: the girl with the Civic Education professor as a mom, and the high hopes of becoming the
first astronaut/lawyer in the world as dreams.
And so, I became vice-president, second best to the male. And I never completely forgot that
incident.
To say women have been fighting for equality for a long time is an understatement.
That was a principal belief I seemed to share with Elinor Burkett as I read “What makes a
woman?”; an article published in the New York Times in June of 2015 and appearing in the
American University of Beirut’s custom published Reader for Academic English: Pages Apart.
The piece addresses Burkett’s myriad disapproval with the motion for the transgender
movement. Particularly concentrating on how transgender women like Caitlyn Jenner voice their
identities and boast femininity in a way that tries to redefine the word “Woman.”
According to Mrs. Burkett, the transgender community that’s being led by big names in
