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Anatomy & Physiology of Sex for Affirming Clinicians Serving Trans and Gender Expansive Individuals

Title of Event: Anatomy & Physiology of Sex for Affirming Clinicians Serving Trans and Gender Expansive Individuals
 
Description of Event: A robust and confirming understanding of anatomy and physiology is essential for supporting sexual wellness across diverse lifespans. Yet dominant narratives often reflect cisnormative, heterosexist, and binary frameworks that marginalize transgender, gender expansive (TGE), and intersex experiences.
 
This session interweaves ACSSW’s Exemplary Practices in Anatomy & Physiology (attitudes, knowledge, skills, advocacy, supervision) (Pope et al., 2024) with SAIGE’s Competencies for Counseling Transgender Clients (Cor et al., 2025; SAIGE, 2010), emphasizing affirming gender identity/expression, gender-affirming medical and mental health care, and active advocacy. Layered with queer theory and trauma-informed sexology, this session positions sexual pleasure among TGE and intersex individuals not merely as wellness, but as radical, liberatory resistance and opportunities for self-empowerment against normative sexual scripts (Butler, 1990; Ahmed, 2006; Rubin, 1984). It centers intersex voices, resisting erasure and normalization through non-consensual medical interventions (Holmes, 1994; Morland, 2009; “We Need to End Intersex Erasure,” 2018).
 
In this session, instruction on anatomy and physiology will move beyond cisnormative models to account for the lived realities of transgender, gender expansive, and intersex individuals. Many core structures and physiological processes overlap with those of cisgender people; however, hormone therapy, affirming surgeries, and natural intersex variations create important distinctions in how bodies function, experience pleasure, and navigate sexual health. Instruction will center TGE and intersex bodies as valid, complex, and capable of pleasure, positioning this affirmation as an enactment of Critical Love Theory—a practice that resists medical erasure, disrupts dehumanizing narratives, and insists on honoring bodily autonomy as a radical act of love. Within a Critical Love Theory lens, healing emerges through radical affirmation—recognizing clients’ bodies not as problems to be fixed but as sources of resilience, capacity, and erotic possibility. Counselors who approach anatomy and physiology with love-centered praxis can help clients rebuild positive connections to their bodies, reclaim language that honors their lived experiences, and explore pleasure without shame or fear.
 
Date of Event: October 17, 2025
 
Time of Event: 10am-12pm CT/ 8am-10am PT/ 11am-1pm ET
 
Location: Online Synchronous/ Online Asynchronous 
 
Presenter/Speaker: Laurie Bonjo, PhD and Serginho Walker, LPC
 
Company/Organization Sponsor: (If any) Office of Continuing Education at the Chicago School in collaboration with The Association of Counseling Sexology and Sexual Wellness 
 
Contact Name: Office of CE at The Chicago School
 
 
 
AASECT Approved CEs: 2.0

Event Knowledge Areas Covered: