Breaking Down the Alphabet: Understanding the Difference Between Attraction, Identity and Expression

2sLGBTQI+: What does each of those letters represent? If you are straight and cisgender, you’ve likely never had to question your identity. Boys are boys. Girls are girls. Boys like girls and girls like boys. It’s pretty simple. But imagine if a doctor said you were a girl, and no fiber of your being felt like a girl, and you were attracted to girls? How confusing would that be?

If you don’t understand the difference between attraction, identity, and expression, you risk misgendering someone or making assumptions about their relationship and the like, which signals that you haven’t done the work and 2sLGBTQI+ people are not in a safe, inclusive environment.

Breaking Down the Alphabet: Understanding the Difference Between Attraction, Identity and Expression takes the mystery out of the topic. Based on his new book Alphabet Soup: The Essential Guide to LGBTQ2+ Inclusion at Work, Michael Bach uses humor and storytelling to demystify the topic and help participants understand the complexity of the alphabet soup that is the 2sLGBTQI+ initialism.  

Learning Objectives

Participants will come away with a clear understanding of:

  1. Some of the common terms used when discussing gender and sexuality.

  2. The difference between attraction, identity and expression.

  3. The concept of the binary and the spectrum.

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What People Are Saying:

Michael is an excellent and engaging speaker who uses his humour and extensive knowledge to educate people on topics that can be quite challenging. We engaged Michael to provide a keynote on LGBTQ2+ inclusion, which is a topic that our company is keen on exploring and learning more about. Michael’s keynote was a huge success and helped to open people’s eyes to why LGBTQ2+ inclusion is so important.

David Matarasso | Principal, Real Estate Management | BentallGreenOak