Speech Contest Script

Just a draft... I've just typed it out and not read it out loud yet so I don't know how long it will be. White I was writing this, I thought "fuck it. I don't care if I get a prise or not as long as everyone actually listens to what I'm saying."

So... Here it goes. Please leave a comment if you have any opinions.



LGBTI. Perhaps many of you here know what it stands for. It is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex. Before I start my speech, I would like to make it clear that sexuality and gender cannot always fall into a simple categorization but I will use the term LGBTI to avoid confusion.

Being a transgender and a bisexual myself, what I think about most is LGBTI issues. Among many topics that come into mind, I would like to take this time to talk about the importance of conversation about sexual and gender minorities be more open. I personally feel that such conversation is a taboo around me and this is causing a negative impact to the attitude against sexual and gender minorities.
You can easily find examples of the negative attitude.
I will give some examples from my own experience.
When I was in elementary school, I liked a girl so I told her. This was when I was living as a female which made me a lesbian. All her friends who found out that I liked the girl said I was gross and a freak.
You may think this happened because they were children. Here’s a data from a survey done is 2008 in Japan. More than 50% of the gay men who answered the survey said that they were called names when they were in school.
So, it is clear that there is a negative attitude towards sexual and gender minorities. As I said in the beginning, I think the way to change it is to talk about it openly. This is because I believe conversation about such topics will cause people to think about it more seriously. But how and where should it start? I say schools. I know for a fact that there are clubs and meetings for LGBT people at universities but not many non-LGBT people are involved in those groups and it is not an effective way to educate people about LGBT issues. I think it should be talked about from elementary schools onwards because the only way to stop bias is to grow up in a bias free environment.
Next I will talk about how it should be talked about in the early stage of school.
I have never heard about LGBT people being mentioned during sex education. It should at least be said that they exist to let children know there are a diverse values ad it’s perfectly normal and healthy and fine to be that way. Sex education normally starts at the age of about 7 with the introduction of human birth, and if my proposition should be realized, the view against LGBT for them will .be open minded. As an extent, the number of bullying against LGBT youth will hopefully decline.
I don't have the power to realize my plan but I hope my message got thorough to you. Thank you for listening.