Dismantling Opinion

I strongly disagree with the fact that we are essentially being asked to analyse someone's opinion piece and to tear it apart piece by piece. Firstly the fact that an opinion piece counts for marks is ludicrous because if we have; stated our opinion and backed up the reasons for us having those opinions, our lecturers should not be giving us any less than 100% on principle because you can't mark based on content when the content is our opinion.

In the spirit of keeping my DP however, I will have to partake.

This is a reply to an opinion piece posted on http://outtaurspace.blogspot.com/.

You say, "Looking at other universities students still die because they are scared of what other people might say to them about their sexual status." I can't recall the last time I came across an article in a newspaper (if ever) which said that someone had died because they were scared of what other people said about their sexual status. Maybe you did not mean "die" in a literal sense, but that’s what it comes off as so you might want to look at rephrasing that.

You go on to say that people walk around campus and call themselves lesbians but when they go home they are not. That commented is purely unadulterated speculation. What are you basing this assumption on? If you have a friend who did this and you could back up your argument by explaining the situation with your friend it might give some credibility to your argument. As you do not do this, you fail to convince your audience that this actually happens thus this comes across as a weak argument.

The rest of your opinion piece follows this same trend. Your argument is based on assumptions which you have provide no evidence for and as such does not hold up. This means that you do not establish authority as a speaker, your argument i laced with assumption and your argument is often illogical.

This is your opinion and as such it should be respected, but if you want others to share your opinion you will have to come up with much stronger an argument.