The Struggles of Life

In today’s world one would think that getting to live in a first world country would be one of the luckiest things to happen to them, but when others are stuck in their own hatred of minority, what conflicts may arise when one has a minority identity. In the opinion piece “Sorry For Not Being a Stereotype” by Rita Pyrillis, published by the Chicago Sun-Times, the non-fiction story tells about Rita’s struggles with others stereotyping her to be an “Indian”, when she is a Native Lakota. As for the Ted Talk of “50 Shades of gay” by Io Tillett’s talks about the battle between the LGBTQ community and the government, where the government was causing people to choose a box, either “gay” or “straight”, if one considered themselves “gay” then the system was trying to take some rights away from those people who were put in a box labeled as “gay”. Because of this Io set out on a campaign to take a picture of the many faces of the people that were losing their rights, however as she was creating her project, she realized that she too, like the government, had been putting people in a box only taking pictures of “gay” people, and “straight” people. There are few similarities between “Sorry for not being a stereotype” and the Ted Talk 50 Shades of gay. Between these two literary arts, the differences are much more apparent like the tone, the topic and the different obstacles they go through.  However, both speak out about the struggles that a minority can face when considered different in our society and how it shows how it can affect them differently in their own way.

There are many obstacles people will face in their life, some people more than others; however, most of the struggles would be given to the human minorities. With the Opinion piece “Sorry For Not Being a Stereotype” Rita experiences two things: the first is stereotyping. as Rita talks about her life and how people tend to stereotype her for example: “‘Sometimes, people simply don’t believe I’m Indian.’ (You don’t look Indian) a woman told me once. She seemed disappointed. I asked her what an Indian is supposed to look like. “You know. Long black hair, braids, feathers, beads,’” (Pyrillis paragraph 6) As Rita talks to this woman, the woman talks about her perspective as to what a Native should look like and this type of stereotyping can be hazardous’ to ones identity because when one is called something they are not, but it continues despite the protest of the protagonist, eventually the person would give up and just accept this. In Rita’s case, she has accepted the title of “Indian”, throughout the Piece Rita refers to herself as “Indian” this is most likely because people have always referred to her as “Indian”.

There are a lot of things wrong in our world; some things we can not change, some things we can. For some people old habits die hard and this can be seen in both Rita’s opinion piece and Io’s Ted talk; however, both instances have their own background and reasoning for the antagonist to do the things they did. In Rita’s story a woman tells her to go back to her own country, and that shows the prejudice that some people may have toward only knowing another’s skin tone.

Unlike Rita’s story, in “50 shades” the discrimination is a little more blatant, as it effects a lot more people and because it became a lot more known. As Io states: “I watched as our world outside of our utopian bubble exploded into these raging debates… and this powerful awareness rolled over me, I was a minority and in my own home country. based on one facet of my character. I was legally and indisputably a second class citizen…” (Io’s) and all of the LGBTQ community was being attacked by the government, who were trying to stop these outsiders with their differences messing with the way the government worked so hard to create.

In conclusion these two literary arts are different because of the people involved, the separate obstacles they must face, the different standard others will have for them, and all of this may be hard for people to deal with people’s expectations, however, one should always follow their own path and represent themselves as to who they are and not care about what others say or do to them.

Work Cited

Wright, Tillett. “Fifty Shades of Gay.” Ted, Ted, December 18, 2018 www.ted.com/talks/io_tillett_wright_fifty_shades_of_gay#t-8226.

Pyrillis, Rita, “Sorry For Not Being a Stereotype.” Opinion articlebgh

Reflection:

For this it was pretty tough for me. I had no clue what i was doing. I was really stuck for most of the project and unfortunately i ran out of time to put good work into this. I wish i could have improved on my ideas and thinking. and I wish I had spent more time in the project its self. certainly not my best work. but i was happy with how it turned out. I know i forgot to tie back some of my points in the thesis. but I was rounding the deadline and i was in a car… over all: I needed to put more time into this, planned it a little better. and re-worked some parts to make it sound better.