As such, Part Three raises conversations about three key questions:

• How Can Gender Be Defined?
• Is English Sexist?
• Does Pornography Cause Harm to Women?

The first section provides readings that will stimulate your thinking about the category of gender: Are men and women fundamentally similar or different? Have men historically had advantages not afforded to women? Are there really only two genders, or are the lines that divide men and women, both biologically and culturally, more porous than they might seem at first glance? Or to the contrary, does the blending of genders represent a dangerous challenge to the ways that we organize our culture? Questions such as these should give you a great deal to write about, both from personal experience and in relation to that which you read.

The second section focuses those questions more specifically around the ways that the genders are portrayed in the English language. The writers in this section explore the ways in which gender roles can be influenced by the ways we talk and write. Through analyses of the language as it relates to gender, these readings ask whether language creates, or reflects, the realities of gender roles. They also ask whether it is appropriate to rid our language of those facets that create gender stereotypes, or whether doing so amounts to creating a "language police."

The third section explores an issue that reverberates across many other issues: the effects and availability of pornography. Since restricting pornography and its use is a form of censorship, doing so raises red flags for many civil libertarians. However, since pornography may force women into submissive roles and even stimulate violence against women, the free speech issue here is in dialogue with questions about the consequences of allowing pornographic images, which are often degrading, to be disseminated. This section features a wide variety of perspectives on the topic, including a dialogue carried out in the writings of several authors who wrote publicly back and forth to one another on the issue.

One of the central ways that gender and gender roles have been portrayed to us is through the images we encounter in a wide variety of arts—from paintings and drawings to the lively arts of theater and cinema. The "Visual Conversations" section in this part provides you with a sampling of such images—images that portray what it means to be a man or a woman. These images suggest, both directly and indirectly, the stereotypes associated with gender, and comment upon the effects of those gender roles. By studying these various artistic portrayals of gender images, you can generate a great many ways to consider, and write about, this topic.

Since gender issues are at the heart of our societal conversations, these readings should provide you with a wealth of topics for your own writing. These issues will also demand that you consider personal experience along with the experiences of the other gender as you write, and so will lead you to compose in ways that are sensitive to multiple perspectives.