Our world is full stereotypes for everything from what foods you should eat to what your sexuality should be to what you should look like based on your race. These stereotypes are engraved into our brain from a young age so when thing are different you don’t understand it and things seem unbalanced. Growing up I never knew much about Indigenous peoples. I grew up in a very white household my mother is Irish and my dad is from Montreal. We are not a diverse family so I never learned much about other cultures or the people who lived in Canada before us. I stared understanding Indigenous people in middle school but even then a lot of things we studied were based on stereotypes. Everything you saw like movies or tv shows or books all have this same image of what these people should be like. Even in grade 10 I still didn’t understand much about first nations people so when they were discovering bodies at residential schools I decided it was time to do my own research. After doing more and more research and learning more about it this year, I have learned a lot more about why they did the things they did and why everyone is so angry about everything. When you care to learn about these things, you quickly learn that all of these stereotypes are from middle aged white men who took one look at these people and their situation and lives and made assumptions. I had this book when i was little that some random person gave to me. It was from the point of view of an Indigenous person. It was filled with stereotypes and incorrect information. Luckily I didn’t read it till I was in high school because i’m not sure how that would have changed my image of these people. I would like to think it wouldn’t but kids are very impressionable. who knows how this can affect a child’s mind. However I now know much more about aboriginal people and am continuing to learn.
There is a lot of stigma around the words feminine and masculine. Dolls and the colour pink are feminine while guns, trucks and blue are masculine. Why is that? Obviously this can be compared to a long time ago when women took care of the family and men went to work but what defines something as a product for women or men. This idea can also be tied into sexuality. If there is a girl with short hair, tattoos, piercings, or rings, she is seen as a lesbian. If a guy likes pink, fruity smells, 
flowers, or iced coffee, they are gay. Actions and likes or dislikes don’t define a person’s sexuality or anything for that matter. There is a preconceived notion of what a gay man looks and acts like. This is often paired with comments like “oh you are too pretty to be gay” or “you are too manly to be gay”. These stereotypes can cause many issues. All presumptions can change a person causing them to conform to societies stereotypes.