Truth Questions

1)
What Sojourner Truth is responding to in her powerful oratory at the Women’s Rights Convention are the people that counter argue against her claims of deserving women and civil rights and the nonbelievers who consider her not only not a female, but not a human being as well. Through this direct address, Sojourner Truth responds to the issues facing her gender as female that corresponds with current law forbidding certain liberties for females while combating the wrongs and immoralities done in slavery that prohibits any kind of freedom to the enslaved black individual.

2)
The examples in Truth’s argument are personal incidents that happened in her life that give her the evidence and the “foundation” of her argument in acquiring the equal rights as any white woman. Her examples show that she is equally qualified to be treated with as much respect and decency as any other woman because she has done the required tasks to becomes the “true” woman, bearing children and becoming a mother, while exceeding those limits to new heights that were considered masculine- plowing, planting, getting whipped with intense ferocity suit only for a powerful man, eating as much food as a man would when starved. These examples of being of equal status with a man, if not higher, are the source of Truth’s argument stating that she deserves the equal rights every white woman has and then some with her extensive background experience of being both the feminine figure as well as the masculine one. She wishes to have men help her in her time of need and come to her aid when needed, but because of her sin color, they cannot and will not do such thing. She repeats the saying “Aren’t I a woman?” to emphasize that, despite her color pigmentation, she is still a female and should be treated with as much fragile care as any other white woman would. The examples provided by Truth show that she is still a female and even with her being a slave, she is still a woman with no less value of innovation. She has been though and gotten over obstacles that normal women in that society could never defeat, and justified in getting rewarded with the trivial token of respect and decency of being feminine.

3)
If I were in the audience during Truth’s speech, I would have had the perception that she was a strong woman who had done a great amount of rigorous work to gain such muscle and strength suited for only a man, while commending her on getting up and telling her personal story as a slave and speaking out about her troubles she has in being ostracized as a female due to her skin color. I also would have thought her voice would have sounded masculine and strong due to the detail and little side notes displaying the actions done during and after Truth’s speech. I doubt Truth could counter my perception based on the simple fact that they are mostly obvious observations, but I think she might have went into detail about how her manly features should take away from that fact that she is female and should be respected as such.