Beyond Inclusion: A DEI Intensive for Helping Professionals

Title of Event: Beyond Inclusion: A DEI Intensive for Helping Professionals

Description of Event:

What does it really mean to create liberatory, kink-affirming spaces—on your couch, in your classroom, and in your dungeon? How are you centering kinksters of color, disabled kinksters, and those with less access to power and resources in the way you teach, treat, and organize? This 3.5-hour intensive is designed for educators, therapists, counselors, and community leaders who want to move beyond lip-service DEI and into accountable, anti-racist practice in kink and BDSM spaces.

Structured in three interconnected parts, this training invites you to examine how power, privilege, and oppression shape your work with kinky clients, students, and communities.

Part 1: Inclusion – Seeing Yourself & Your Power in Kink

We begin by grounding in intersectional theory and exploring how it plays out in kink worlds. You’ll map your own kink-related privileges and marginalizations, unpack how implicit bias shows up in your professional and play spaces, and practice using inclusive, kink-affirming language. This segment builds self-awareness so you can recognize where you hold power and how you can wield it more responsibly.

Part 2: Diversity – Centering BIPOC & Marginalized Kink Histories

Next, we dive into BIPOC kink histories and lived experiences, with a focus on how racism and other forms of oppression show up in kink communities, events, and clinical/educational settings. You’ll learn to recognize microaggressions in kink contexts and practice ways to interrupt and repair harm. We’ll deepen multi-cultural kink competency and humility, and distinguish between kink tolerance, kink civility, and true kink acceptance—while foregrounding active anti-racism.

Part 3: Equity – Designing Legacy, Access & Accountability

Finally, we translate insight into action. You’ll examine how learning, leadership, and power flow through your organization, practice, or events, and identify concrete ways to redistribute resources and opportunities to kinksters of color and other marginalized folks. We’ll co-create or refine guiding principles, sketch out pathways for nurturing new kink leaders, and develop an accountability process tailored to your role—whether you’re a clinician, educator, or organizer.

You’ll leave this intensive with a clearer understanding of yourself as a kink-involved professional, a sharper lens on your organization or practice, and a practical roadmap for being a better ally and accomplice to multi-cultured, multi-faceted kinksters—especially kinksters of color. Most importantly, you’ll know what it looks like to practice anti-racism, anti-ableism in the kink world and beyond, not just in theory, but in your daily decisions, policies, & relationships.

At the conclusion of this intensive, participants will be able to:
*Describe at least three ways that intersectional privilege and oppression shape the experiences of kink/BDSM-involved clients, students, or community members.

*Identify at least three areas of their own kink-related privilege and/or bias and articulate how these may impact their clinical, educational, or organizational decision-making.

*Differentiate between kink tolerance, kink civility, and kink acceptance, and explain how each stance influences anti-racist practice with kink-involved individuals and communities.

*Develop at least three concrete strategies their organization, program, or practice can use to leverage resources and increase equity and access for kinksters of color and other marginalized kink communities.

Date of Event: 03/14/2026

Time of Event: 12pm Est

Location: Online Synchronous

Sexuality Education (SE) Training:
SE4. Theory and methods of approaches to sexuality education with specific populations (e.g., youth, older adults, couples, ethnic/ cultural/ faith-based populations, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities).
SE5. Theory and methods of different approaches to sexuality education delivery (e.g., small group work, one-on-one education, large group lectures or interaction, online delivery or use of other electronic means).

Sexuality Counseling (SC) Training
SC6. Theory and practice of consultation, collaboration and referral.

Sex Therapy (ST) Training
ST5. Principles of consultation, collaboration and referral.

Presenter/Speaker: Marla Renee Stewart

Company/Organization Sponsor: Velvet Lips LLC

Contact Name: Marla Stewart

Contact Telephone Number: (415) 871-1255

Contact Email: marla@velvetlipssexed.com

Event Website: https://www.marlareneestewart.com/event-details/beyond-inclusion-a-dei-intensive-for-helping-professionals

AASECT Approved CEs: 3.5