Ace Activism Opportunities: Networking Outside The Community

[This is part of a series on opportunities for ace activism. See the masterpost here.]

One of the other opportunities was largely about networking and communication and coordination inside the community, but we also need strong connections with organizations that aren’t strictly ace focused.  We can support their efforts, then be able to call on them to back us when we need it.  We can get a seat at the table and be a part of the conversation, instead of being an afterthought or a footnote.

We need to connect with other queer groups, from local community centers and pride festival organizers to national and international groups like GLAAD and the HRC.  

We need to connect with organizations like the AMA and APA and local doctors and therapists to transform health care.

We need to connect with lawyers and lobbyists and politicians to change laws.

We need to connect with publishers and producers to ensure accurate representation in media.

We need to connect with singles rights activists and childfree activists and poly activists and others who are working to redefine what “valid” lives and relationships are.

We need to connect with schools and teacher associations and groups creating sex ed curricula to ensure that asexuality is adequately and accurately covered and that everyone has what they need to support ace students.

We need to connect with journalists so they’ll have the right people to talk to the next time they need to write an article that touches on asexuality and so we’ll have people to feed press releases when we want to get the word out about something.

These are just some of the areas where we need to grow our connections.

Ace Activism Opportunities: Activist Coordination

[This is part of a series on opportunities for ace activism. See the masterpost here.]

There is a lot of ace activism going on these days.  More than there ever has been before!  While it’s great that there’s so much happening, it’s all so scattered that it’s impossible to keep track of it all.   There are also mostly isolated bubbles without a lot of cross pollination between them.  The vloggers don’t talk to the bloggers.  The bloggers don’t talk to the podcasters.  The podcasters don’t talk to the local organizers.  The local organizers don’t talk to the AVENites.  The AVENites don’t talk to the Twitterers.  The Twitterers don’t talk to the Tumblrines. And the Tumblrines don’t even talk to each other because the damned reblog system is so broken.  There are secret Facebook groups and hidden Discords and mythical Reddits that only the select few have access to.   And that doesn’t even begin to cover the people who don’t have an online presence or aren’t doing their work in English.

Bottom line, it’s hard to find out what’s happening and it’s hard to tell people what you’re working on.  If something is happening that you might be interested in, you have to be lucky enough to follow the right account or be watching the right livestream at the exact right moment, or you might never know about it.

What we don’t have, and what we sorely need, is a central coordination group that tries to act as a conduit between all these various bubbles.  This group would collect what’s going on and disseminate that information out.  They would reach out to and develop relationships with the prominent voices within each bubble.  They would work to connect people across bubbles.  They’d have cross-medium signal boosting powers.

You’re working on a project that would benefit from the exposure of being on a podcast and getting a feature written on a big blog?  This group would help set that up.

You’re a vlogger that needs to get in touch with aces in Rhode Island and don’t know where to start?  They’ll have the information at their fingertips.

You have an idea you’re eager to work on, but need people to collaborate with?  They’ll connect you to someone else who has the same idea and has already started putting together a team.

The power of this activist coordination group is that they unlock the potential and the power of others to go further.  They are a clearinghouse of knowledge and connections and know how to bring the right people together to make awesome things happen.