Thursday, April 18, 2013

Natalie Meier – Another Level of LGBTQ* Education Student Voice

Student Voice:


Natalie Meier – Another Level of LGBTQ* Education

I’ll be honest: before I came to college, I truly thought that asexuality was only an
expression. “I don’t have sex; I’m asexual.” It was a common phrase that I had heard
a lot, especially coming from a small town. But asexuality, as I quickly found out, is a
real identification, often discounted by society.
I recently found a documentary while flipping through Netflix called (A)sexual,
which featured San Francisco’s own resident, David Jay, an asexuality activist and
the creator of AVEN, the Asexuality Visibility & Education Network. David makes it
his mission to improve the visibility of individuals who identify as asexual, to create
a community of asexual individuals so they don’t feel so alone, and above all, to
educate others about asexuality.
To some people, asexuality falls somewhere under the LGBTQ* umbrella. To others,
it does not. According to the YouTube summary under the (A)sexual trailer, 1% of
the world’s population identifies as asexual. To me, just 1%, 0.5% or even 0.001% is