In the article from the Atlantic titled Making Primary Care Trans-Friendly, Keren Landman discusses how transgender people are advocating for easier access to well-informed healthcare providers. She uses mostly formal, professional diction, not using informal language often at all, and speaks with an informative tone that switches between somber and hopeful. This is exemplified when Jaemon McLeod says he "overheard a group of pre-med students joke about the prospect of 'accidentally' administering a fatal overdose of anesthetic during surgery on a transgender patient," (Landman) but not too long after at the end of the section, Landman offers some positivity: "nationwide demand for health-care providers who provide culturally and medically competent care to transgender patients is increasing" (Landman). The sheer length of the article, as well as the aforementioned positivity that appears multiple times, proves Landman's deep emotional attachment towards the subject of transgender-friendly healthcare.
Landman also employs the use of an anecdote at the beginning of the article to provide a brief introduction of Isabel Lowell and illustrate the general theme and topic of the stigma around transgender medical care. In addition, imagery is used as a device, such as when it rains in Lowell's clinic and describes a scene where "she maneuvers around a section of soaked ceiling tile that has fallen on the floor of her clinic’s nursing station." (Landman) and supervises a medical student. It is clear to see that the author is writing in earnest support of proper medical treatment for transgender individuals, and her purpose is to push and spread the idea and message. It presents plentiful worth and value, especially given most of the article takes place in the setting of rural Georgia, where the idea of change is almost unheard of. She makes note of "The invisibility of rural populations—and the reduced health-care access that goes with it" (Landman). This article is a delightful promotion of equal rights. This argument does not only appeal to ethos with its plentiful use of firsthand accounts from McLeod and Lowell, but also provides appeal to logos, as statistics on healthcare are often cited: "In Georgia, 14 percent of the state’s population is uninsured, compared with 9 percent nationally, in part due to the state’s rejection of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act" (Landman). It is also pointed out that rural areas have it particularly rough, as in Georgia there are "about 13 clinics per 100,000 people, compared with 30 per 100,000 nationally" (Landman). Her point is even further strengthened when she brings transgender people back into the picture: "Georgia law does not protect transgender people from job discrimination, and many are unemployed—11 percent (by self-report)" (Landman). Landman's entire argument is incredibly solid, with few gaps in its reasoning--though, if anything, a point of view on the matter from a transgender woman would be helpful, as only a transgender man was interviewed.
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