Other Loves: Asexuality & Bisexuality

Life is never truly binary, love maybe even more so. Join us for a conversation on other ways of other ways to live and love with asexual activist Yasmin Benoit and Dr Julia Shaw, author of Bi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality.

Yasmin Benoit is a British model, award-winning asexual activist, writer, speaker and project consultant. At 18, she began modelling with the goal of diversifying the fashion industry and became one of the UK’s most prominent Black alternative models.

In late 2017, she publicly came out as aromantic-asexual and quickly became an unlikely face and voice for those communities. Her goal is to empower the aromantic and asexual people, bring those identities into the mainstream, fight for their social and legal inclusion, and dispel misconceptions about them in an intersectional, cross-sectional way.

Significant strides have been made in recent years in the movement for LGBTQ+ rights, visibility and empowerment, but the conversation is far from over. After years of feeling the crushing dearth of information on bisexuality, psychological scientist and bestselling author Dr Julia Shaw dug deep and found a colourful and fascinating world that she is bringing out of the shadows. It is a personal journey that starts with her own openly bisexual identity and celebrates the resilience and beautiful diversity of the bi community.

In her book Bi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality, Shaw explores all that we know about the world’s largest sexual minority. From the hunt for a bi gene, to the relationship between bisexuality and consensual non-monogamy, to asylum seekers who need to prove their bisexuality in a court of law, there is more to explore than most have ever realised.