Blog #5: I don't know if this is what was meant by the prompt.

In Alice Walker’s “Becoming What We’re Called”, Walker examines the harm that can come from labeling. Walker specifically speaks out against the use of the term “you guys” to describe women. To her, calling women “guys” is an act of erasure. To Walker, using “you guys to describe women does not recognize their uniqueness as women. Walker compares the use of the term “you guys” to the act of female genital mutilation, saying that it is the verbal equivalent of that horrible act. She makes this comparison explicitly in words, but when she compares the use of “you guys” with the prevalence of the word “nigger” in rap music, she does it more by proximity, by placing a scene in the botanical garden, where she and her friend encounter the young man singing along with his walkman. By placing that scene after the first scene, where she first talks about the incident where her friend includes her in a group by calling them “you guys”. Other things that she does in the essay to get this idea across is by defining the word “guy” and returning to the first scene at the end of the essay to use the things discussed in the rest of the essay to shed new light on the incident.