The NCSF is committed to creating a political, legal and social environment in the US that advances equal rights for consenting adults who engage in alternative sexual and relationship expressions. The NCSF aims to advance the rights of, and advocate for consenting adults in the BDSM-Leather-Fetish, Swing, and Polyamory Communities. They do this through direct services, education, advocacy, and outreach, in conjunction with their partners, to directly benefit these communities.

Read a snippet from NCSF’s press release below.

NCSF Publishes Important Information for Your Mental Health

NCSF and the NCSF Foundation are proud to announce two new and valuable publications: A Guide to Choosing a Kink-Aware Therapist, and the Therapists Guide to Polyamory.

A Guide to Choosing a Kink-Aware Therapist , created by Keely Kolmes Psy.D. and Geri Weitzman Ph.D., will help people who engage in BDSM find a therapist who can accept them without judgment or prejudice. Some therapists cause more harm than good when they slap a label of mental illness on a client simply because they enjoy kinky sex.

“Over the years, I have received many calls from folks around the globe who wanted access to therapy that was respectful of their kink identity, but didn’t know where to turn to find it,” says co-author Geri Weitzman, PhD. “We are excited to share this resource on finding kink-aware therapists with our community, in the belief that a warmly accepting therapeutic environment should be available to all.”

“Therapy needs to be a place where you can feel safe to bring your whole self. I hope that our article is a helpful tool for kink-identified clients and the therapists who want to learn more about working competently with them,” agrees co-author Keely Kolmes, Psy.D.

NCSF has also published second paper for therapists: A Therapist’s Guide to Polyamory. This resource can also be found on their site.

Please join our group: Bay Area Therapists Affirming of Diversity in Sexuality

This is a free group for mental health professionals in the Bay Area of California. We offer support, networking, and consultation for Bay Area clinicians and mental health trainees who embrace the full range of sexual expression of consenting adults. Our respective practices explicitly welcome and serve clients who engage in alternative sexual behaviors and relationships, including kink and poly folks.

We offer an email list and meet every other month at a member’s office.

We are especially interested in reaching out to students who may not have mentors or support in their clinical programs around working with sexually diverse populations.  Most clinical programs encourage students to explore their cultural identities and offer student groups organized around ethnicity, religion, LGBT-identity, disability, or other cultural affiliations.

But students who are kink or poly-identified or who want to work with these populations may have a more difficult time identifying one another and forming such groups. Many schools still don’t recognize these alternative identities as deserving of non-biased care and respect. We are seeking to bridge this gap. We offer a safe space to connect with other mental health professionals who are affirming of the full range of diverse sexual expression.

Contact me at drkkolmes at hushmail dot com if you would like to get connected with us.

I will be facilitating a Singles Salon for bisexual and lesbian women in San Francisco with HersnHers Connexions and Betty’s List in the coming months. Read more for details:

Talking About Dating, Relationships, Sex and Romance

A Salon Series from Hers & Hers Connexions

Dr. Keely Kolmes, Facilitator

When

Sunday Afternoons, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
May 16th, June 20th, July 11th, and August 22nd

Where

Castro Neighborhood Location in San Francisco

Topics

- Flirting & Making Connexions
- First Dates
- Managing Multiples & Monogamy / Sex & Singlehood
- Dating Deal-breakers, Deal-sealers, and Matches That Make It

Registration Information & Cost

$40 Per Session – Registration Required
Call the “Betty’s List” office line 415-503-1375 to schedule one or more sessions. Each is limited in size.

Salon participants will meet once-per-month for a free-flowing facilitated conversation on being Single that provides the chance to talk, listen, learn and explore a key life experience. Single life comes easily for some but is a challenge for others.

Come share your dating experiences, learn and be supported in your journey. Sessions begin with informal mingling, followed by the facilitated discussion.

Option to bring food or beverage to share.

**Please note that this is not a psychotherapy, support, or counseling group.**

I thought I would share with my blog readers my Five Dating Tips for Singles that I shared at the event last weekend:

1. Know yourself

Dating can often feel like one part clarity to two parts confusion. Learning more about your wants and needs can help turn that ratio around. Spend some time allowing yourself to dream and let go of previously held assumptions or the pictures other people have painted for you of what is ideal.

Do you want to date women, men, transfolk, any-or-all, or just whomever makes you feel happiest? Do you enjoy dating? Or would you prefer to focus on finding a serious relationship? Is dating even what you want to do right now? Don’t assume you should date just because you are single.

Do you like being monogamous or are you open to having multiple partners or romances? Are you seeking a traditional relationship or are you open to something less “standard,” such as living separately?

Allow yourself to think of what has worked for you in the past and what hasn’t worked so much. This will help you develop a clear picture of what you want now, and when that picture gets clear, it will be easier to communicate that vision to others who may want to be in it. You may be surprised to find that if you take some space and really think about it, the script you’ve followed before may not be the right dating script for you today.

2. Evaluate whether you are creating space for what you want

Getting clear on who you are and what you want is one thing. It’s another thing to take an honest look at whether you are allowing room in your life to find what you want. This can be a good thing to check in with your friends about. Are there things that keep you from connecting to others?

Some things that came up in my talk last week that can frequently get in the way of dating included kids, work, hobbies, exes or other relationships, and other passions which take up time and space. All of these things are good, but is there balance? You may want to see if you need to clear out some space to allow a new sexual intimacy or romance to bloom in your life. Re-evaluate periodically to be sure you’re dividing up your time the way you like. This could even mean noticing that you’re spending more time and energy on dates than you want to be, and you may need to adjust so that it feels more like pleasure than a mission.

3. Learn to understand your dating plan or style

Some people love using personal ads to meet people. Others prefer getting out to events and organized activities in order to meet new folks. Some people like physical activities like sports, dancing, or excursions while others like events focused on talking and conversation. Others may like just getting out in the world in less organized ways or going to bars or clubs. These preferences can depend a lot on such attributes such as shyness, introversion, or extraversion.

Think about how you have met friends and dates in the past. Now may be a time to shake up your routine and try something new or to fully embrace your style and recognize your preferences. Think about how you like to plan dates: do you prefer to take the lead or do you like another person to suggest activities or surprise you? Do you like to stay in your comfort zone on first dates or do something new to you?

This is also a good time to figure out how many dates a week you have the stamina for. One? Two? More? With how many different people? Do you need to make a decision about the potential of a new person quickly or does it take time for you to figure out if something can be more than a friendship? Are you comfortable with your pace and can you allow yourself to respect it? These are all important things to know about yourself before venturing into the dating waters.

4. Get clarity on what you can and can’t live without

Sit down and think about which qualities matter to you most in a date or a life partner. Make a list of things that you know you can’t do without. Make a similar list of things that are deal-breakers that would send you running in the other direction. There may also be things that you are more flexible about. What are they?

In your first drafts of these lists, allow yourself to be impulsive. You can re-evaluate later and some yes or no items may later move to the maybe zone. Think about whether chemistry or emotion ever leads you to ignore what you know you need or want. This may be a good question to ask some of your closest friends about too. They may have observations about your dating choices or style that are useful to hear. Friends can also help you keep your head and think about whether you discount people for superficial (or more “maybe” reasons) when they have a lot of the qualities on your “must have” list.

5. Check your responses

Are you finding that you are responding strongly to rejection or missed connections? Do you get disappointed often in dating? Are you having any fun? If you find that you are frequently in conflict with others on dates or that it feels like work or a bad time overall, it may be time to put things on pause and take more time to reflect on what’s blocking you. Remember that primal issues and emotions and even past traumas can get strongly tapped in in dating and relationships. If this seems to be a theme, you may want to consider therapy to help clarify what is in your way and help you get on track.

And remember that new relationships can also benefit from therapy! People do not need to wait until a relationship is in trouble to learn to develop healthy ways of communicating and handling conflict. New couples sometimes go to therapy to learn how to plant the seeds for a more fulfilling relationship. So if you find someone in your dating adventures who is worth hanging onto, be open to putting some work into the relationship in the beginning. I will offer Tips for New Couples in a future blog post!

One point of clarification: I mentioned that sex-positive health care was something that isn’t just for sexual minorities but is something deserved by heterosexual, monogamous, and vanilla people. I want to make it clear that my intention was to acknowledge these as distinct identities, not to make it sound as though I was lumping heterosexual, monogamous, and vanilla people into one category. Of course, there are plenty of kinky straight people, monogamous and vanilla queer people, and so on. I’ll go further to say that people who are celibate deserve care that is respectful of their choices and lifestyle and a safe place to talk about their sexual thoughts or questions.

Some of the resources I shared are included on my own Resources page, including Gaylesta for LGBT folks seeking a therapist in the Bay Area and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), an international site for people seeking psychotherapeutic, medical, and legal professionals who are informed about the diversity of consensual, adult sexuality. NCSF also hosts a directory for Kink-Aware Professionals. Another good resource if you’re a poly-identified person is the Poly-Friendly Professionals page.

More about my motivation for this can be read below.

Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on my experience as a graduate student doing research on kinky sex. Taking on therapist bias against BDSM as a dissertation topic was challenging. I frequently felt misunderstood or I worried that professors and other students might make assumptions about my sexual practices. When I wasn’t busy worrying about those things, I worried about the burden of responsibility that I suddenly felt to the BDSM community, by virtue of choosing this topic. I went back and forth several times and nearly changed my topic to something….less adventurous.

However, I’d had the experience in my early 20′s of discovering books and friends who taught me that BDSM wasn’t the terrible, dirty thing I had once assumed it was. I learned that it was actually something that could be about trust, love, safety, and consensuality.

I had my mind changed.

Thus, with the earnestness and conviction that can only come from having your own prejudices revealed to yourself, I took on the issue as a personal challenge to myself, and eventually completed my dissertation on BDSM. This also meant that I experienced anxiety and dread in anticipation of every class I took over the next five years, as it was standard protocol to introduce yourself and your dissertation topic on the first day of every first class each semester.

Of course I hoped that my doing research in this area might mean that it would help reduce bias for BDSM clients entering therapy one day. But I also dreamed that psychology graduate students who identified as kinky or poly might also feel safer as they navigated graduate school or at least feel that the profession had become more welcoming.

It’s now thirteen years since I started my graduate training, and I’ve recently heard from students in training programs who do not feel that their programs adequately provide support or mentoring for developing clinicians who identify as kinky and/or poly or who simply wish to work with those populations.

Most programs these days encourage students to explore their cultural identities and they have student organizations allowing students to connect around ethnicity, religion, LGBT-identity, disability, or other cultural affiliations. But students who are kink or poly-identified may have a more difficult time identifying one another and forming such groups. Students struggle with how–and whether–to come out in a professional capacity either as members of the kink or poly communities themselves or as simply having knowledge or interest in serving these populations. Many schools still don’t recognize these alternative identities as deserving of support or outreach.

My support/networking/consultation group for Bay Area kink/poly-aware clinicians would allow students from various training programs to meet and network with one another and also allow them to connect with those of us who are already established as kink & poly aware professionals.

The first is Sex Ed Online: How Teens Self Savvy. In this panel, Karen Kreps and Karen Rayne will share how kids sort through sexual information online. I think this is useful information for all sex educators as well as for parents who may want to know where their kids are likely to turn for information.

In Sex Lives of the Microfamous, Nick Douglas and Melissa Gira Grant will talk about the exhibitionism and voyeurism that occurs when people talk about their sex and dating lives on the internet. Who does it? Who reads it? Can it help your career or hurt it? These are good questions for the internet famous, those who follow them, or anyone who has considered documenting their sex and dating life online.

Violet Blue will be presenting Sexual Exploitation, Sexual Expression and Self-Defense. In this panel, Blue asserts that sexual exploitation and sexual expression are intrinsic to the online experience of everyone, whether intentional or not. Blue claims that knowing how to protect yourself from a sexual crisis is crucial information that we should all be equipped with and it’s hard to argue against such logic. She plans to discuss legal issues, cyberbullying, and sexual expression. This promises to be a great follow-up to the Sexual Privacy Online panel that I attended last year. I look forward to hearing her strategies for self-protection.

Lastly, Touching Me Touching You: How We Feel Technology is an exciting panel that will focus on computer-mediated touch, including interactive clothing design and teledildonic sex. Interactive technology is changing how people sexually interact and this panel seeks to explore a number of questions related to new sexual technologies and our emotions related to them. This panel is jam-packed with interesting speakers, including Kevin Alderman, Yin He, Michelle Hinn, Thecla Schiphorst, and Cory Silverberg.

One of the challenges of SXSW is that it’s sometimes hard to make it to all the interesting panels that you hope to attend. The upside is that if you miss a panel or can’t make it to the Festival, many of the panels are podcast so you can hear them later. Some of last year’s podcasts are available on the SXSW Coverage page and many more are available on Odeo. This year promises to have even fuller coverage of panels and Core Conversations, so chances are good you will be able to hear some of these presentations later if you’d like to hear what you missed.

The end of a romantic relationship can be a difficult period in which many painful and unsettling feelings are stirred up. I am offering a weekly support group for women of all sexual orientations and gender identities who are experiencing the loss of a romantic relationship. Learn how to heal and learn from your experiences with others who are going through similar transitions. You will have a safe and supportive space to share your story and gain support from others.

The group will meet weekly and will offer both an opportunity for unstructured discussion, as well as the ability to focus on particular topics.

The group is limited to 8 women, and a commitment and pre-payment for the full 8 weeks is required.

Time:    Wednesdays, 6:00 – 7:30pm

Dates:  February 4, 11, 18, 25, March 4, 11, 25, and April 1 (Please note, no meeting on March 18)

Location:   San Francisco (2148 Market St. between Church & Sanchez)

Cost:     $40 per session per person, $320 for full 8 weeks

I wish I’d said a bit more about the feelings of emotional intimacy that can take some people by surprise when they engage in online sexual interactions. Otherwise, I very much enjoyed Violet’s questions and I was happy to read about people who are integrating cybersex into their relationship in safe, creative, and exciting ways. I also loved Violet’s term “techno-poly,” to describe folks who are negotiating non-monogamy with virtual partners.