Students, staff, and faculty gathered to see Tedx speaker Ash Beckham present her talk “Give Voice to Your Truth” on Wednesday, Oct. 27 in the Brodbeck Music Hall.
In this talk, Beckham, who considered herself an “accidental advocate” for the LGBTQ community, addressed the importance of empathy and acceptance and shared her own experiences to engage the audience. The main idea of this talk was “creating a more empathetic community on campus,” she said, and bringing that empathy into other communities as well.
“The first step is to embrace the diversity that we all bring,” Beckham said. “To embrace our own differences, and be willing to share our own stories so people better understand us.”
(Ash Beckham, photo by Shannon Jones)
Beckham went through and talked about the importance of each word in the title of her speech, “Give Voice To Your Truth,” and what they mean. She started with the word “Truth,” which, to her, is simply “the fire inside us.” She also discussed the words “tolerance” and “acceptance” and how they differ from each other.
“Tolerating isn’t enough. We need to get to the point of acceptance,” Beckham said. “The difference is tremendous.”
Beckham also discussed how to deal with people who do not show acceptance or do not understand. “We have to acknowledge the fact that the words we choose affect other people,” she said after sharing stories of how she lost her temper with people who were rude towards her.
“I eventually realized I wanted to be a passionate cause for change,” Beckham said. “I wanted to maintain my veracity, but also have some serenity and some kindness, and not lose who I was generally as a person to the anger these situations were bringing me.”
The event drew a substantial crowd consisting of students, faculty, and staff. One student, Joe Denicola, thought that Beckham’s speech was thought-provoking.
“I thought [Beckham’s talk] was really interesting,” said Denicola, a senior at Hood College. “I really didn’t think much about the way that you give your own voice, especially not in the way she talked about where you try to find a balance.”
“It doesn’t always have to be confrontational,” he continued. “I never really thought of it that way, mostly because I’m used to more harsher settings, where it’s kind of like, “You’ve got to know this thing or else you’re a horrible person,” and the fact that it kind of steered away from that was really cool for me.”
Beckham first went viral in 2013 with her TEDx talk “Coming Out of Your Closet,” which currently has more than 5 million views on YouTube and covers the subjects of homophobia in society. She has since given other TEDx talks on the topics of sexuality and empathy.