A consent educator critiques speakers who tell devastating 30-minute personal stories that leave audiences in tears without providing healing or learning outcomes. They use a Band-Aid metaphor: ripping off emotional wounds without replacing them causes lingering trauma. A speaker's job is meeting educational goals while protecting the audience's emotional well-being, not just getting long book lines.
There are speakers who tell you a 30-minute devastating story and everybody in the room's bawling, right? If you've ever been in a room and watched this happen, and they're all lining up to get the books at the back of the room, but they're really lining up because the Band-Aid's been ripped off that never got put back on. And the speaker did that to them. Look, if you're bragging that 200 people had to talk to you before they left the room, what pain did you cause that they had to talk to you? That doesn't make sense. So if that's happening, you should be asking yourself, what am I not doing to let them walk out knowing I got what I need? That's your job from the stage.
