Its Good To Know Your Opinion Matters

So, the conference went well. it was basically done like a workshop. I believe most of the people involved were part of like the american psychological institution or something like that, one of the activities they had were a list of different words like homosexual, heterosexual, faggot, dyke, breeder, two-spirit, gay, queer, and other words. the task was for people to discuss what words they think are green, yellow, and red. for okay to say, iffy, and not acceptable. it was really interesting to hear peoples opinions and basically in the long run it all had to do with peoples perception and the context that it is used in. for a great example "queer" can be used as an AWFUL derogatory term that is really not okay to say. but also, people that i know identify as queer when they dont want to be put in a box (which we also talked about at the conference). It was only Ryan and I on the actual panel and at first I was worried I would not know what to do with the questions they gave us because at first they seemed pretty generic. But then people also asked questions for us to answer, and ryan gave me good topics to discuss. I got to talk about Outloud alot so I really appreciated that I got the chance to do that. Also, holly, the leader of outloud was at the conference and I am so glad, because I LOVE HER. Everyone was really nice at the conference and I felt like I got my point across really well. My main point is the necessity for sexual health education in high schools. that is a point that really needs to be adressed in general, because quite frankly the sexual health in high schools sucks. they give definitions, with no statistics, and no ways to seek info/materials of/for sexual health and sexual health education. I felt really welcomed even though i may have seemed rather nervous at first, and I probably was. I am still not used to being involved in advocacy for glbt rights even tho I work so much with outloud. Alltogether I am really glad i had the experience to do this it was really good to get my points across and feel as if my opinion matters. I have not gotten alot of that in the past, so hopefully this is the start of a good trend.

xx