Asexual Awareness Week

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Asexual Awareness Week (AAW) is a organization founded by Sara Beth Brooks and it is dedicated to raising awareness and visibility about the asexual spectrum internationally. It focuses on coordinating a week of asexual education projects including workshops, documentary screenings, social media, and discussion groups.

History

In 2010, Brooks created Bringing Asexy Back, a group of LGBTQ-identified asexual people which worked to create educational workshops for LGBTQ conference settings. From Bringing Asexy Back, Brooks started AAW, which debuted in September 2010.

In 2011, AAW formed a planning committee and established a website. Through the site, AAW raised over 1000 USD in donations which was used to fund advertising and the purchase of the documentary (A)sexual for screenings. Along with visibility projects in the week of October 23–29, AAW also carried out a census of the asexual community, a fifteen question online survey which was filled out by 3436 self-identified asexual people in a month.

In January 2012, Brooks represented AAW with David Jay (AVEN) at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Creating Change Conference, where they presented (A)sexual and lead a workshop. They also liased with Phoenix Schneider, Program Director for the Trevor Project, who then sought to "incorporate some content about the asexual community and around the most appropriate way to talk to youth who identify as asexual or who might be questioning/exploring."[1] Brooks worked with the Trevor Project to provide access asexual positive information for their training materials, as announced by AAW in April 2012.[2][3]

Petitions

AAW has started two petitions to ask FOX news to consider talking to asexuals instead of talking about them[4] and to reconsider their portrayals of asexual characters[5] after a House episode[6] and a FOX News RedEye episode.[7]

Links

See also