"Argumentum Ad Ignorantiam"

In Joy Ritchie's and Kathleen Boardman's "Feminism in Composition: Inclusion, Metonymy, and Disruption," the authors, "in writing this brief critical historical survey" (585), alliteratively consider how feminists have "begun rewriting the rhetorical tradition by reclaiming, refiguring, and regendering 'Rhetorica'" (586).

In doing so, they proclaim that, "the near-absence of feminism from our publications does not constitute absence from the field" (587), implying that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, thus recognizing the logical fallacy that exists when one posits something to be either necessarily true or necessarily false simply because it hasn't yet been proven either one or the other. Contextually speaking, the authors are simply saying that, despite the paucity of evidence in the rhetorical fossil record, woman have been and continue to be re-writing rhetorica.

The only reason why there aren't more women on record as rhetoricians is simply due to the fact that, until relatively recently, they have been effectively barred from doing so.

Let's remember to include everyone in this discourse community because if we don't, we're liable to miss out on the many knowledge opportunities that may be provided by those writers we may, for whatever reason whatsoever, consider unworthy of admission into "Academia."