Presentation for LGBTQ+ Group

[Widget]

A leader of the GSA at my school recently asked me if I would be interested in giving a 10-15 minute presentation introducing the concept of asexuality to the rest of the group. I was super excited by the request, and accepted immediately. I was wondering what you all consider to be the most essential points to get across to people who have heard very little about asexuality. I am definitely going to speak about the differences between the romantic and sexual spectrum, but I welcome additional ideas!

[Starfall]

Maybe talk about the different identities within the asexual spectrum? Explain the difference between asexual, demisexual and grayace? (Those always confused me.) Bear in mind you will likely get people wanting to ask you uncomfortable questions like 'Have you had sex?', 'How do you know you're asexual if you haven't tried it?', 'Do you masturbate?', etc. Don't feel compelled to answer questions like this. It's understandable for people to be curious, but no one would ask an allosexual questions like this. The internet is the place for questions of this type. You can answer them if you feel comfortable, or you can point people in the direction of AVEN.  

[timewarp]

To be honest, before I joined the forum, the frequently asked questions on the front page were more than enough for me. I would have been overwhelmed by the kind of discussions that you can see around the forum sometimes.

 

If you like I could find out if there are some presentations that you could use. There have been many events over the years, so we must have some material.

[Sennkestra]

Some of the core things I try to include in all presentations are:

• A quick definition of asexuality
• A giant disclaimer about how definitions are just guidelines and that instead of focusing on the technical wording of any given definition, what's most important is whether "asexual" is a useful word for someone
• A quick introduction to the idea of the "Asexual spectrum"  - can say something like "sexuality isn't black and white - sometimes there are grey areas where people don't fit neatly into an "asexual" or "non-asexual" box
• A discussion of the idea that there is more than one kind of attraction (ex. romantic vs. sexual) - you can also introduce things like being aromantic, heteroromantic, etc. here
• A mention that the ace community is incredibly diverse and that there's a lot of variety in ace experiences, especially when it comes to things like whether they want relationships, how they feel about sex, etc.

The other two thing I recommend are 1. leaving lots of time for Q&A, because people will always have tons of questions, no matter how comprehensive your presentation is, and 2. providing information on where people can learn more (examples include links to AVEN, blogs like the asexual agenda, links to local ace groups, etc.) Printed handouts are great for this. People often like to follow up afterwards, and you can't fit everything into 10 minutes, so it helps to bring up other opportunities for more in-depth learning.

 

Other things that are useful to include if you have time:

• Discussions of common problems aces face ("why do you need to organize? Do you even have problems?" is a common question)
• An introduction to ace community symbols, like the flag
• A brief history of asexual community history
• Discussion of ace community stats or demographics
• Personal stories from ace people (from presenters, or quotes from others read aloud)

 

Also, if you are looking for materials or inspiration, I have some examples from presentations I did a couple years ago: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zbCIRVSFVlFq_DEKIl6c-Vu304fyGz_aGjjCOsz65wg/edit#slide=id.g104d41292f_1_22

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mjM7FuxHFzDHMDFU5XDq1uYRU0rpXpd2fU9xaGHKEFg/edit#slide=id.p

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B09cGNemDhB8Y2FHXzFKbzRoMGc/view?usp=sharing

 

Some of these are out of date, so they'd need to be refreshed a bit (especially the list of resources), but I'd be happy to share the original files with you / help update the information if you think anything there would be useful.