Reflection Post

Whilst making this blog, I have learned lots on my topic, sexual identities. If I explained and went into detail about everything I've learned, I think I could go on for hours! Especially during my history and Canada post, my knowledge has greatly  improved on this subject.
Some people believe that we shouldn't focus on the discrimination and oppression of minorities (for example, LGBTQIAP people) due to other extremely important issues such as hunger and poverty that they believe are more important. I feel as though working towards eliminating other issues as well as those mentioned does not take away from the importance of them as well.  No matter what the issue is, something that has to do with it will affect you. For example, if you see an ad that works for a cause or your friend asks you for advice; this is why you should educate yourself on subject you and/or people around you find important. In the past, the people who take the time to educate themselves are the ones who later go on to make a difference. Adrian Ravarour, who formed the LGBT youth organization Vangaurd in 1962, is a good example of this.  We've come a long way since then considering Ireland has recently legalized same-sex marriage and was the first country to do so by popular vote. So, are we making change? Country by country, we'll get there soon.
Now, human rights issues are often a sensitive topic, considering many people are subject to human rights violations every day, this is why we need logical thinking when it comes to aiming to solve them. We need to think about not only how we should solve the issue, but how people who are affected by the issue are treated and how they will react. I think that whilst thinking about this, we should all be aware and try to help solve issues, and not just individuals, but corporations which have a humongous impulse on large numbers of people. Not to forget, of course, the government who legalize same-sex marriage and protection laws for people in the LGBTQIAP community.
Even though these groups may have a large influence on our society we can't forget about individuals; it's those people after all that can grow to spark change everywhere. As mentioned in my global citizen post, even just casually mentioning a subject can influence change even just to one person. It can also be something such as standing up for someone who's down; it doesn't have to be speaking out to nations.

Who's Involved, Challenges,a Plan to Help, Canada+ Organizations

Who's Involved?

As you may have noticed, this blog is circulated around the LGBT+ community, so it would be obvious that they would be affected by the discrimination of them, but everyone around these people are affected by this as well (although to a lesser extent). This is because in general our society is very prejudiced against the LGBT+ community, and many people encourage others not to support them as well, this is represented by the fact that up to 40% of homeless youth identify as a sexual orientation other than straight.

Organizations

Thankfully, there is a silver lining to this situation, it's called the Trevor Project. The Trevor Project is one of the many organizations dedicated to fighting against the high suicide rates of LGBTQ youth. This organization was created in 1998 and since then has saved countless lives. Their helpline currently recieves over forty-five thousand calls a years and one day alone (December 6th, 2014) they raised over one million dollars for their cause. They have many famous supporters that range from Miley Cyrus to Barack Obama.

Challenges

There are many challeneges regarding this subject, one of them being personal beliefs. Now, everyone has the right to their own beliefs, but to what extent? Should someone's belief that same-sex couples should not get married get to effect them? Depending on the person, the answer varies. Let's look at it from a different perspective: imagine a if a vegatarian person went up to someone eating a hamburger and told them that they should also be a vegetarian because eating meat is wrong. That would seem ridiculous, right? So why is it happening in the previous situation? For example, one of the only- if not the only- reasons against same-sex marriage currently is religion. But why should everyone else have to pay the price for a fraction of population's beliefs?

A Plan to Help

Can we ever really be done discussing this issue? Who knows? What we do know is that although our society and world is currently getting much better when it comes to acceptance, there is still loads of room for improvement. You can start with yourself. Look at the things you say and do that can be harmful to the LGBT+ community, then ask yourself why you do these things in the first place. In most cases, the answer will be that you have been taught that it is okay, either by people you know personally or society as a whole. You can then proceed to educate yourself about why it is wrong. Then, you can apply what you've learned to real life social situation; think about what you say before you say it (this applies to all situations,regardless of topic). You can also correct your friends and family if they say something that could be harmful to LGBTQIAP people. This is just the minimum though. If you want to, you could speak out in public about this topic and inspire others in the community to get involved.

Canada

Since Canada was the fourth country to legalize same-sex marriage, you'd think it'd be pretty progressive when it comes to LGBTQIAP rights, and you'd be correct! But it wasn't always like this. Way back in British North American time, homosexual activity resulted in a death penalty, but was decriminalized in 1969. When same-sex marriage was legalized country wide, it was already legal in eight provinces and one territory. Canada was the first country outside of Europe to allow same-sex marriage.  Canada is popularly seen as one the most "gay-friendly" countries in the world and discrimination regarding sexual  orientation is banned here (with exceptions to religious groups).

Global Citizen and Your Importance

A global citizen is a person who is in involved in our developing world and contributes to the development of our world, preferably positively. A global citizen should be willing to stand for issues they believe are important and raise awareness of the issue for others to do the same. In the world we live in, we are all global citizens whether we recognize this or not. My reasoning for this is that we all (consciously or subconsciously) care about and advocate for issues we believe are important, whether it's something as small as what's being served in the cafeteria to something as huge as human rights violations. You may not think you're doing much by casually talking to your friends about society's problems, but you may plant ideas in their mind that were never there before. You may not think it's important enough to advocate the world about it, but they might.

You may be asking yourself what you have to do with any of this, and that's a fair enough question honestly. Take my blog topic for example: sexual identities. By reading my blog (or learning information on this subject through other sources) you can educate yourself and eventually educate others on this subject. This could maybe spark some interest in their minds and cause them to do something great for the contribution to putting a stop to the  discrimination of lgbtqiap individuals. In other words, by subconsciously spreading awareness on a subject, you could be indirectly changing the world. Express your opinion (as long as it does not hurt anyone) because you never know what could come out of it.

History

There has been many ups and downs since the beginning of time when it comes to LGBTQIAP people. Yes, since the beginning of time itself there are known instances of gay couples. For example let's go back all the way to 5000 BCE: there has been rock art discovered that portrays homosexual male couples. Fast forward to approximately 1700 BCE: female figures have been interpreted into domestic relations. In 7th century BCE are the first known instances of  illegality of same- sex marriages in Greece, but life long partnerships were extremely common.
For the sake of this post I will be skipping history between then and 1933, which is the year which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party began their rise. Between then and 1945, up to 15 000 homosexuals were sent to Nazi concentration camps and approximately 9 000 of them passed away there. It was not until 2002 that the German government appologized o the gay community.
In 1994, LGBT history month was set to February.
The Netherlands were first country to legally allow smae-sex marriage (2001) and the first same-sex marriage happened on April 1, 2001. (Canada was the fourth country to legalize same-sex marriage, this happened in 2005.) As of today, eightteen countries allow same-sex marriage.

       (Countries coloured in navy blue have legalized 

same-sex marriage as of 2014)

                                           

Explanation

Topic Explanation

Sexual identity may seem like a daunting topic, or a fairly simple one depending on how you look at it. No matter how you look at it though it is a complex and elaborate subject and many people may not fully understand it or feel completely comfortable talking about it. Due to this I would like to explain and clear up some uninformed information about people with a sexual orientation other than straight. 

Definitions:

Homosexual: Attracted to people of their own gender. (Lesbian/gay women and gay men)

Bisexual: Attracted to two or more genders (Typically men and women but frequently involves non- binary people (people who do not identify as neither male or female) as well)

Pansexual: Attracted to people regardless of gender (gender does not affect who they are attracted to and can be attracted to any gender)

Asexual: Does not experience sexual attraction (Can experience romantic attraction)

• Grey- asexuality: Sometimes/rarely experiences sexual attraction
• Demisexuality: Only experiences sexual attraction after having a strong connection with someone.
                                                

My aim for this blog is to educate and inform people about  people who identify with one of the above.                                        

Mission Statement

Search Results

1. sex·u·al o·ri·en·ta·tion

   noun

   1. a person's sexual identity in relation to the gender to which they are attracted.

My mission for this blog is to inform and educate readers about the sexual identities in our world. There are many people everywhere that are misinformed about how many sexual identities there are and how different they all are from each other. There are many reasons for this and one of them is the representation- or lack thereof in the case of many identities- in the popular media. When/ if they are represented in television shows and/or movies, more often then not, it is not accurate to them (this does not include heterosexual people as they are accurately and wholly represented). This results in many stereotypes that  people commonly mistake as true. The acronym that is used as an umbrella term for many sexual identities is lgbt, but this does not even come close to covering all of them. The one that more closely depicts all the identites is lgb(t)q(i)ap, but most people do not ever learn most if any of them.
                                                      *(The 't' and 'i' stand for transgender and intersex and do not fit under the term sexual identities as they are words that identify someones gender identity, therefore will not be covered on my blog.)

Some sexual identities:

• Heterosexual 
• Homosexual
• Bisexual
• Pansexual
• Asexual (grey asexual, demisexual)

 How many of those did you recognize and know about? Probably not all of them. This goes to show how many are erased from right under our noses. Nearly all of these sexual identities are harmfully stereotyped by the media and normal people. For example: homosexual or gay men are often viewed as feminine or girly. Homosexual or lesbian women are seen as masculine. Bisexual women are seen as promiscuous and bisexual men as "secretly gay".  Pansexuals are "attracted to literally everything" and asexuals just "haven't found the right person yet". Some of these stereotypes apply to more than one identity and i could go on as there are endless stereotypes that are pinned on people for no reason other than who they are attracted to.

In conclusion I have so much knowledge that I would love to share with you on this subject and I encourage you to stand up to the stereotyping and misrepresentation/ under representation of sexual orientations other than heterosexual. It is by far so unfair and overall dangerous for the people that fit into this category and needs to be stopped as soon as possible.