Sex Therapy with Erotically Marginalized Clients

Recorded Webinar
Instructor: Shannon L. Sennott, LICSW, CST
CEs: 1.5 
Level: Intermediate
Target Audience: Social workers and other social service providers.
Course Delivery Method and Format: Recorded webinar, self study. All courses are hosted on SmithOnline. Login information will be emailed immediately after registration to the email address entered during registration.
System Requirements: Attendees will need access to a computer with internet and the capability to play recorded videos.

Date of original webinar: May 20, 2020, noon - 1:30 p.m. ET

This course provides an affirmative framework for working clinically with erotically marginalized clients in a psychotherapy or sex therapy setting. The term erotically marginalized describes people who are at risk of being pathologized and oppressed both outside and inside the clinical setting due to their sexual identities, orientations and practices. This can include those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, demisexual, queer, trans and gender nonconforming, nonbinary, intersex, polyamorous, consensually non-monogamous, kinky, BDSM practitioners or who have alternative relationship and sexual structures in general. This course will explore the questions: How do power and privilege play out inside and outside the therapeutic space? In what ways is the work influenced by the clinician’s own identities and/or experiences? How do we address these items to provide affirmative sex therapy with erotically marginalized clients?

Registration Fee and Deadline:

$35 (one time registration fee of $5) | Ongoing 

Learning Objectives:

1. Name nine principles for providing affirmative sex therapy to erotically marginalized clients.
2. Describe how a clinician’s own identity impacts their clinical work with erotically marginalized clients.
3. List three tools clinicians can apply to their respective practices with erotically marginalized clients.

Instructor Biography:

Shannon L. Sennott, LICSW, CST, is the co-founder of Translate Gender, Inc. and the Center for Psychotherapy and Social Justice, she was clinically trained at the Smith College School for Social Work and the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society in New York City, and is an AASECT certified sex therapist. Shannon is an adjunct faculty member at the Smith College School for Social Work, teaching family theory and sex theory, as well as, maintains a full time private practice at the Center for Psychotherapy and Social Justice in Northampton, Massachusetts. Shannon utilizes a transfeminist therapeutic approach in her work with individuals, adolescents, and families, her interests extend to working with couples, consensually non-monogamous and polyamorous relationships, and groups, and she especially enjoys working with those in alternative family structures. Her clinical orientation is influenced by both narrative therapy and dialogic practice traditions. Shannon's published paper in Women and Therapy Journal, introduces her transfeminist therapeutic approach, Gender Disorder as Gender Oppression: A Transfeminist Approach to Rethinking the Pathologization of Gender Non-Conformity. More recently, Shannon delivered the keynote for the Ackerman Institute for the Family annual conference in 2018 and she is enjoying clinically supervising and training other clinicians, institutions, and organizations in their work with erotically marginalized people.  Her recent publication with Routledge Books is titled, Sex Therapy with Erotically Marginalized Clients: Nine Principles of Clinical Support.