To start your analysis of a text, use the questions below. Ask each question and write up notes. Then, look for themes, prominent ideas, or anything that “jumps” out at you. You do not have to include the answer to every question in your final product, but using the questions can help you to identify what you want to argue the text does, for whom, and/or how it does that.

For Example:

1. Constructions: How is each gender (male, female, intersex) depicted? Make sure to look at all those represented. What stereotypes do you encounter? How do people of different groups interact in the text? What relationships do you see? Who is not present?

2. Norm and Norma: What is presented as standard, normal, appropriate, desirable, and taken-forgranted about being masculine? What is presented as standard, normal, appropriate, desirable, and taken-for-granted about being feminine? What is presented as standard, normal, appropriate, desirable, and taken-for-granted about being intersexed? What does that tell us? If the “norm” in this text were the “norm” in everyday life, would it change anything? How? Does this challenge, support, or rework our understanding of the nature of gender?

3. Audience: Does the text ask you to be masculine, feminine, or a combination as an audience? What other identities does this implied audience have? Does one type of identity matter more than the others? How do you know? If you were not part of the intended audience, how would the message in the text change for you?

4. Ideology and Identity: What ideology is advanced? That is, what is the argument about how gender should function? Is it convincing? What relationship does each gender have to the larger society in the text? What does the text help us to understand about power? Is the text supporting the status quo? Resisting it? Both?

5. Rhetoric: HOW does the text ask you to think the things it’s suggesting? Consider aesthetics, positioning of the audience, the values called upon, and the argument and textual form.