Best Practices in an LGBTQ 101 Workshop
Many organizations are actively building out their LGBTQ education programming for the year, which we believe, by the way, should provide offerings beyond Pride month, which is celebrated in June in the United States. LGBTQ 101 classes can provide a great foundation to help well-meaning cisgender heterosexual people feel comfortable and confident around their LGBTQ colleagues, customers, and possibly even family members and friends!
If your organization is looking for an LGBTQ class, it’s important to consider the following things:
1. Make sure the LGBTQ training workshop addresses the spectrum of gender and sexual orientation. There are a lot of letters and well-meaning allies may be overwhelmed by what those letters mean. Instead of overwhelming the workshop with clunky definitions, focus on key concepts such as the spectrum of gender and sexual orientation.
2. Focus on building allies by providing specific, actionable tools in your LGBTQ training workshop. Allies are our voices when we’re not in the room, and a good LGBTQ training should provide well-meaning, aspiring allies with the tools to actually be those voices for us.
This means providing allies with conversation starters on how to call out LGBTQ micro-aggressions, tools to speak up in the event of witnessing the misgendering of someone who’s transgender, and specific language around asking someone’s pronoun. Sometimes the most well-meaning allies get stuck in their head because they just don’t know what to say in the moment. Help them with some key phrases and conversation starters. Make sure they practice!
3. Turn allies into advocates subtly through your LGBTQ workshop. We suggest that you address laws and public policies in the LGBTQ class. Many well-meaning cisgender heterosexual people don’t realize that their LGBTQ friends and family lack a lot of protections and rights. Many of them thought that full equality was achieved when marriage equality was achieved in the United States. That’s simply not true.
In the United States and in many places around the world, LGBTQ people lack full equality. Well-meaning cishet people are often shocked to learn this, and can get very fired up to move beyond allyship towards activism and advocacy. We love it when this happens. This can be a very powerful outcome from a simple one hour LGBTQ workshop.
Our LGBTQ 101 workshop is called Over the Rainbow: Tools to be an Authentic LGBTQ Ally and is popular for its candid and accessible approach. We encourage an active and vibrant chat and have received rave reviews for delivering important messages in an inspiring, entertaining, and surprisingly practical way.