After reading the material assigned for this week and the Youtube video I have come to understand that we complain much about our daily lives. We dont acknowledge the amount of “simple” things we own. Having access to all these resources makes us more than privileged. There are many out there who have it very hard. As the girl mentioned in the video, there are some who have to walk miles to get water and we just have to open the water tap. We are all privileged in our own ways, but we all do not stand at the same level. After I watched the video I reconsidered the multiple times, I have extensively cried complaining why I have it so hard in life?. I tested my self as If I was in that group of people and I recall being more than fortunate to have the opportunity to recieve education and pursue a career. Many who come from immigrant familes are not able to do so, and yet here I am. My parents did not have that privilege because they were immigrants and spanish was their first language. This was not only a barrier for them to suceed, it also brought some other major problems. Overtime this had affected us as a family because we had to separate. I had to stay with my sibblings living in the U.S. After this all, I remain grateful because I have the privilege to recieve a better education. I am able to communicate in both spanish and english. I have access to multiple opportunities and economic resources. I run a better lifestyle than many others back in my native country. There are plenty other privileges I have I did not recall before.
As Marilyn Frye said in her reading, Opression “is a strong word. It repels and it attracts.”. She explains the correct use of the word “opression” or at least how it should be implied. Frye compares opression of women with a bird in a cage. In this comparison she states the opression women live in our society. She explains this is not avoidable, many lives are being shaped and reduced. In my personal experienece I have never experienced opression. I have seen others, like my friends and family experience this vividly. My friend worked at a restaurant, here she had male coworkers. She had told me there was a men that for several weeks had been making some awful comments to her. The man had been harrasing her, at any chance he had. At first he wanted her phone number, he then asked her out. After she told him she was not interested in him. He then proceeded to call her names and spread false rumors. Not this being the worse of all, the man got drunk and sexually harased her. She immediately had reported this to her manager and called the police. once the police got there they said there was not enough evidence to prove it was intentional. Her manager had told her It was her fault because she had giving him the opportunity to behave in this manner, to check up on how she was dressing and to take into cosideration that he was drunk. I felt so upset, I was so incapable of doing something and the authorities did nothing for her. It was unfair for her to be tagged as the guilty one. Just for being her, when she was the victim. It is crazy how can these two men join forces and mold this scenario in favor of the opressor.
In another quotation, ” Many of the restrictions and limitations we live with are more or less internalized and self monitored and are part of our adaptations to the requirements and expectations imposed by the needs, tastes and tyrranies of others”. Within this quote I have a better understanding of what oppresion and privilege is, we are living a life imposed by others, we continously live judged by the outsiders. Those who have the power to say, cover and project. It does not matter if we do or dont do something we will always requiere more or less.
