Evelyn O. Pavlova

For the past several months I have actively watched Korean shows, which have taught me a lot. As my ears adjusted to the Korean language, I am now able to differentiate between Korean and non-Korean languages (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese Hokkien, etc.).

In my last post, I tackled a very sensitive topic of White privilege and in this post I will continue to do so. I must admit that I received what I expected to receive in response - defensiveness, denial, and plenty of explanations for the favor of White privilege.

This post is dedicated to White people with the goal to increase awareness of White privilege, which may not be very pleasant to read. Please note that Whiteness is a race, not nationality or ethnicity.

Yesterday, I watched a documentary about asexuality ("(A)sexual," 2011). As I am committed to furthering my knowledge in LGBTQIA and other areas, I feel the need for more education about asexuality and its place in our society.

This week I would like to speak concretely about suicide rates in the U.S., particularly among LGBTQ individuals. I'm not a numbers person, but sometimes it helps me to see numbers in order to more comprehensively grasp an issue at hand. Here are the numbers for suicide that I collected from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Trevor Project, and American Association of Suicidology; the latest data is available for the year 2011):