Overview

Social workers engage with sex and sexuality in all kinds of practice settings and with a variety of client populations. However, conversations about healthy sexuality and sexual well-being are all but absent from social work literature, education, and practice. Many social work professionals have internalized sociocultural taboos about talking about sexuality and tend to avoid the topic in their practice. This book provides an overview of key sexuality-related topics for social workers from a sex-positive perspective, which encourages agency in sexual decision making and embraces consensual sexual activity as healthy and to be enjoyed without stigma or shame. It discusses a wide range of topics including physiology, sexual and gender identity, sex in older adulthood, BDSM and kink; nonmonogamous and polyamorous relationships, and ethical considerations, including erotic transference. The book is designed to embolden social workers to engage discussions of sexuality with clients and to provide an opportunity for self-reflection and professional growth. Accessible to students as well as social workers and mental-health professionals at all levels, Sex-Positive Social Work emphasizes the relationship between sexual well-being and overall well-being, giving social workers the tools to approach sex and sexuality actively and positively with clients.

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9780231188111

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Reviews

SJ Dodd presents a strengths-based, health-positive approach to human sexuality. This should be a required text for all graduate-level social work students. -- Doni Whitsett, University of Southern California Finally! A sex-positive text about sexuality for social work instructors and students that encourages pleasure, fulfillment, and the full embrace of engaging people around sexual well- being. The content is expansive and robust enough to deepen one's capacity for conversations about sex and sexuality with clients, in supervision, or the classroom. -- Stephanie Wahab, Portland State University In Sex-Positive Social Work, Dodd begins the conversation about healthy sexuality and sexual well-being that is missing from social work literature. She uses wonderful, clear, and realistic case vignettes to illustrate her arguments. Every practitioner should read and incorporate this text into their practice. -- Gerald P. Mallon, editor of <i>Social Work Practice with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People</i> Sex-Positive Social Work is a brilliant, comprehensive, and well-constructed text useful for social workers in the classroom or practicing in the field. Moving through relevant foundational and contextual information on sex, sexuality, and practice, the text is a welcome addition to the field. It is framed with applicable case illustrations and resources to assist social workers in becoming more sex-positive in their practice. -- Michael Dentato, editor of <i>Social Work Practice with the LGBTQ Community: The Intersection of History, Health, Mental Health, and Policy Factors</i> In Sex-Positive Social Work, SJ Dodd shows how to translate social work's strengths- and justice-based commitments into practice related to sexuality. Such knowledge and skills are vital to social workers' ability to promote the sexual rights, well-being, and dignity of all clients. -- Laina Bay-Cheng, University at Buffalo

Filling a gaping hole in social work education, S.J. Dodd presents a strengths-based, health-positive approach to human sexuality. This should be a required text for all graduate-level social work students.

Author Information

SJ Dodd is associate professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also founding director of the Silberman Center for Sexuality and Gender. She is coauthor of Practice-Based Research: A Guide for Reluctant Researchers (2012).

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