PSY85013Z - Clinical Elective: LGBTQ Kink, BDSM, and Other Sexualities

(3 units)

This course provides a knowledge base students can use for culturally competent instruction, research, and clinical intervention. This course examines the unique ways in which LGBTQ people explore, express, and develop alternative sexual identities, which for the purposes of this course we will call leather or kink. We conceptualize kink as covering sexual identities, erotic behaviors, sexual interests and fantasies, relationship identities, relationship orientations, and relationship structures between consenting adults not accepted by the dominant culture. We specifically include BDSM (Bondage/Discipline, Dominance/Submission, Sadism/Masochism), Leather, and Fetish as important parts of the umbrella term of kink. Taken from primarily a developmental and intersectional perspective, the course seeks to illuminate the clinical issues and concerns that arise when serving this marginalized sexual minority group within the context of working with the LGBTQ population.