An Overview of Diversity Awareness

Exposure to diversity is essential for success in our world. While diversity can be anything from ethnicity to economic status to religion to sexuality to shape, our brain has the ability to make connections and discover how differences interact and function in our world. When we give ourselves the opportunity to work with diversity, we learn from one another.
We find so many differences and similarities between each other. Science tells us our brain functions by the transfer and interaction of neurons; in order to remember things, our brains must be exposed to information multiple times. Essentially, learning about and from others benefits us on a worldly scale, but the more new knowledge we retain and the more connections built between exploring differences and similarities, the overall smarter we become.
Though diversity refers to our differences, it also reveals our similarities. Diversity not only helps us to make connections or learn from each other but also makes us think outside of your own perspectives and look at things in different light. Our brain recognizes the difference between us but also recognizes the similarity to past knowledge. As a result, our neurons for this information strengthen their bond and give us a better understanding.

Individual percept things a certain way but interaction with others forces our brain to think outside of the box we look through every day, it helps us understand other people and in some cases even change someone’s views. Sexuality or sexual orientation is becoming increasingly diverse as each day passes by. How do these diverse sexual orientation or sexualities differ within each individual? And more importantly, what did I learn from my Human Sexuality class about my sexuality? How did it changed my perspective about similarities and differences I share with others?
First of all, I will talk about the difference within myself that I wasn’t aware of at first. When I started this class it was pretty clear to me that this class will require some dedication on my part. I was trying my best to keep with my other classes as well when I stumbled upon one of the readings required for Human Sexuality class. The article by Lamaya H is about a Muslim girl and her queerness.
As soon as Lamaya said, “It takes me a while to recognize this as desire. I have no models for these kinds of feelings and it is confusing. I figure I’ll outgrow it.” I took a break from this reading as though it spoke to me. Lamaya H talks about how her experience was and how she tried her best to “crush on boys and (painfully, awkwardly) flirt with them” and that it never got her far because she knew it wasn’t something she wanted. Lamaya talks about the representation of lesbians on media are very limited to naked blonde women kissing each other.
Then moving onto how she got to the word queer and how she found out about Queer Muslim mixers. This way she was able to be who she wanted to be around her friends who would judge her for being queer or Muslim. It was just one sentence to make think about myself. I’ve been so focused on being what people wanted me to be that I completely forgot about what I wanted something else. I knew I had feelings for some of my friends who happened to be girls.
It confused me a lot because I liked boys too. The only option left was me as bisexual. I drowned myself in all the articles and readings online. In my case, it was harder for me to even come out to myself. Some people go through same things, coming out to oneself becomes the hardest part but everyone and every individual is different from one and another. While we do diverse from each other, our brain make connections to things certain things making it easier for us to connect with others.
Moving forward, I will be discussing asexuality and its connection to me or People within LGBTQ community. The first question is; what is asexuality? An asexual person is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. Asexuality just like other sexuality has difference and similarities within itself. One statement can not define everyone’s preferences.
Carrigan, in an article ‘Asexuality’, explains that it can be usefully understood in terms of divergent attitudes towards sexual behavior (positivity, neutrality, repulsion) and romance (aromanticism and romanticism, which can take heteroromantic, homoromantic, biromantic, and panromantic forms). There are many more identifications some of which fall under “Gray-A” commonly known as “Grey Area”.
Carrigan shares some of the statistics that fall within “Gray-A”, “56% of respondents reporting identification as ‘Asexual’, 21% as ‘Gray-asexual’, 21% as ‘Demisexual’, and 2% as ‘None of the above”. Even though not having sexual attractions is not so unknown there are still a lot of confusions or myths about asexuality.
Carrigan talk about one of the most “common confusion is to equate asexuality with celibacy, such that a lack of sexual attraction (asexuality) is conflated with a choice to abstain from sexual acts (celibacy)” Celibacy is a choice to restrain oneself from acting on sexual attractions while asexual person has no sexual attractions (depends on where someone is on gray-A) towards any individual.
As a person who defines herself as demisexual one of the biggest assumption is that everyone is sexually attracted to someone. Demisexuals is a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form an emotional connection. Even though demisexuality falls under gray-a, they are sexually attracted to people to they have an emotional connection with but not to everyone as myths suggest. Even within sexuality, people have differences and similarities inwardly within each individual.