I created a new course for healthcare professionals on Working with Asexualities which you can find online at the My Sexual Health Sexology Training Club. One reason I put this course together is because I think relative to other ways of identifying and expressing ourselves, asexualities are not very well understood, both among the general public and also healthcare professionals, and that becomes especially important in a sexual health context for many reasons that the course goes in more depth. As a starting point, however, it’s important to note that if we don’t have a good general understanding about what asexuality really means, we may inadvertently be making assumptions about our clients that could end up being harmful.

It’s important to add that the course is not about understanding asexualities solely as a lens for working with asexual humans. I also wanted to demonstrate that by centering asexual knowledges and understandings in our work with all of our clients, we are facilitating opportunities for them to build healthier, more intentional and consensual relationships with themselves and others. We are also creating room to think more queerly about concepts like desire, attraction and arousal and we are highlighting the importance of all relationships, regardless of whether they involve sexual and/or romantic attraction.

Here are a few key points I unpack and explore throughout the course:

• Sexuality is vast and complex.
• We all experience varying degrees of sexual attraction to others – all of which are valid and normal.
• Language is an important part of the way we shape our identities and realities. As a result we need to be mindful of the power of language – what words we have available to us, where they come from, how they’re used and how they can be used to both support and marginalise.
• Compulsory sexuality plays a huge role in the way we talk about and experience sexual desire, attraction and interest in society.
• Compulsory sexuality regulates our desire in ways that normalise allosexuality and marginalise asexualities.
• The dangers of compulsory sexuality include pathologisation of asexualities, difficulties with desire and desire discrepancies, as well as carrying the additional risk of conversion therapy for vulnerable aces.
• Compulsory sexuality also reduces allosexualities to a singular experience and expression.
• Sexual attraction and sexual desire are both subjective experiences.
• Sexual attraction and desire are not the same thing.
• If we center asexual knowledges and understandings we can work to unlearn the harmful assumptions of compulsory sexuality, build more consensual relationships and start to value our friendships and other relationships (even more).

If you want to find out more you can access the course online here.