so I did my first ever classroom panel today!

[sciatrix]

A while back, I signed up for a thing my campus queer group does where they have people go into classrooms and related situations and answer questions from the standpoint of a Real Live gay/bi/trans/etc. person. Today was my first panel ever.

It was actually a lot of fun! The class was very polite and did not ask the Dreaded Masturbation Question, and I got a lot of questions directed specifically at me. Besides which, I got thanked personally by three or four people for talking about asexuality, which was kind of awesome.

I'm also working on setting up a panel-type thing for Asexual Awareness Week here. Out of curiosity, anyone in travelling distance of Athens interested in showing up and answering questions for that? I figure it's probably going to end up being just me and the other ace in said queer group, who definitely wants to be involved, but the offer to join us is open in case anyone is interested in a bit of fairly low-stress visibility.

Comments

[codeman38]

I'd love to do something like this, if I could get advance warning so that I could arrange transportation to Athens now that I'm no longer in town. (Seriously, why is inter-city transportation in this state so horrible?)

...Maybe I could be invited to participate via Skype or something?

[sciatrix]

Our plan is to get things settled out by about Tuesday, so I could give you at least a week's notice? We need to actually approach the coordinator of Lambda and set up a date and things--R. and I will be doing the planning on Monday afternoon. I'll definitely let you know when more things are finalized?

And yeah, Skype participation is always an option! I don't know how well that would work in an auditorium setting, though.

[codeman38]

I honestly doubt I'll be able to arrange/afford transportation even with advance notice, now that I think about it, but I'd love to get involved in this somehow as an alum.

[sciatrix]

*nods* I totally understand that, even if I'd love if you could make it!

[aceeccentric]

I'm glad your Q&A went well! It must have been nerve-wracking not knowing how people would respond.

Ah, not having the ability to drive. I hope it goes well though! Is it like a panel that'd take place at the LGBTQ club (whose name I still fail to remember)?

[sciatrix]

It was scary at first but it got a lot easier once I warmed up. It helped that there were basically no questions I wasn't anticipating and that I was prepared for questions a level of magnitude more invasive than I actually got (e.g. no one asked me about my masturbatory habits, say). It also helped that I liked my copanelists and that they were both much more experienced than I was.

Yeah, if this goes through it'll probably be a panel that is designed to be open to Lambda people. I don't know if we'll be able to set it up in time for Asexual Awareness Week proper, but I hope we'll be able to organize things okay.

[aceeccentric]

Maybe people on the Internet are more likely to ask the invasive questions than people in a classroom setting. Which is probably a good thing.

I had the mental image of it being at Tate (not that anything is ever just in the open at Tate, but the mind goes there) and my old professors walking in, which would be Extremely Awkward. I wish I could go. But if there's anything I could do from here, I'd be happy to help!

[sciatrix]

I think you've got a point there--I suspect that in a lot of ways it's often easy to pretend a person on the Internet isn't "really" a person, whereas if I'm sitting in front of you in the same classroom it's rather harder to dismiss me in quite that way/

Hah, no, it'll probably be in the SLC or some classroom somewhere, not Tate! I'd be intimidated by presenting there, too.