Are you a social worker, therapist or educator interested in sexuality and relationships? Do you know someone who is? If so, you’ll want to know about the AltSexNYC conference. It’s a one-day annual event where clinicians, educators, and researchers share information that centers sexuality and advances knowledge about “populations that have historically had access to minimal support and understanding of their lifestyles, behaviors, and relationship structures,” according to the organizers, Michael Aaron and Dulcinea Pitagora. Workshops are intended to help practitioners and educators better serve clients whose sexuality has frequently been stigmatized and who have frequently faced barriers to necessary treatment or information.
I’m excited to announce that at the 4th annual AltSexNYC conference I’ll be presenting alongside the likes of Robin Wilson-Beattie, Kate D’Adamo, Kimia Sharifi, and others. The theme for 2019 is resilience. My workshop, Domination after Dialysis, explores the ways that kinky sexual expression can be a source of resilience when a person needs to renegotiate their relationship to their body after illness or injury. Specifically, I’ll talk about the ways that my mother found sexual dominance to be a source of resilience after her late-life sexual awakening as a sexual dominant was temporarily disrupted by kidney cancer, a nephrectomy, and then the failure of her remaining kidney. Her recovery was facilitated by the radical body acceptance encouraged in her BDSM community and by the ways that medical play, imagination, and power exchange helped her to build confidence in her body and to celebrate her strength.
Here’s the full schedule. It’s pretty exciting!
The conference is coming up soon on May 10, 2019. Attendees at the conference can earn six AASECT continuing education credits or six NYS Social Work continuing education credits, but you can also register as a community member for a lower rate and skip the CEs. For more information, visit AltSexNYCConference.org.
~~~
Photo used under a Creative Commons Universal Public Domain license courtesy of Max Pixel.
Elizabeth Anne Wood, Ph.D. 