Friday, October 17, 2025
2025 ACSSW Series
Anatomy & Physiology of Sex for Affirming Clinicians Serving Trans and Gender Expansive Individuals
Presented by Laurie Bonjo, PhD and Serginho Walker, LPC
Webinar Description:
A robust and confirming understanding of anatomy and physiology is essential for supporting sexual wellness across diverse lifespans. Yet dominant narratives often reflect cisnormative, heterosexist, and binary frameworks that marginalize transgender, gender expansive (TGE), and intersex experiences.
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This session interweaves ACSSW’s Exemplary Practices in Anatomy & Physiology (attitudes, knowledge, skills, advocacy, supervision) (Pope et al., 2024) with SAIGE’s Competencies for Counseling Transgender Clients (Cor et al., 2025; SAIGE, 2010), emphasizing affirming gender identity/expression, gender-affirming medical and mental health care, and active advocacy. Layered with queer theory and trauma-informed sexology, this session positions sexual pleasure among TGE and intersex individuals not merely as wellness, but as radical, liberatory resistance and opportunities for self-empowerment against normative sexual scripts (Butler, 1990; Ahmed, 2006; Rubin, 1984). It centers intersex voices, resisting erasure and normalization through non-consensual medical interventions (Holmes, 1994; Morland, 2009; “We Need to End Intersex Erasure,” 2018).
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In this session, instruction on anatomy and physiology will move beyond cisnormative models to account for the lived realities of transgender, gender expansive, and intersex individuals. Many core structures and physiological processes overlap with those of cisgender people; however, hormone therapy, affirming surgeries, and natural intersex variations create important distinctions in how bodies function, experience pleasure, and navigate sexual health. Instruction will center TGE and intersex bodies as valid, complex, and capable of pleasure, positioning this affirmation as an enactment of Critical Love Theory—a practice that resists medical erasure, disrupts dehumanizing narratives, and insists on honoring bodily autonomy as a radical act of love. Within a Critical Love Theory lens, healing emerges through radical affirmation—recognizing clients’ bodies not as problems to be fixed but as sources of resilience, capacity, and erotic possibility. Counselors who approach anatomy and physiology with love-centered praxis can help clients rebuild positive connections to their bodies, reclaim language that honors their lived experiences, and explore pleasure without shame or fear.
About the Speakers...
Dr. Laurie Bonjo (they/them or she/her) is a tenured Associate Professor at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) and a founding faculty member of SCSU’s doctoral program in Counselor Education and Supervision. An award-winning educator and mentor, Dr. Bonjo earned their undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in counseling from Penn State University, and a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision from Old Dominion University. Before entering academia, Dr. Bonjo provided counseling services in both educational and agency settings, experiences that continue to shape their teaching, research, and advocacy. Their scholarship centers decolonization, liberation practices, and the disruption of oppressive paradigms that marginalize and disenfranchise communities. Passionate about cultivating equity in higher education and the helping professions, Dr. Bonjo creates space for underrepresented identities to thrive, self-empower, and lead. A deeply committed mentor, Dr. Bonjo regularly co-presents with master’s and doctoral students and currently serves as chair for 12 dissertations. Known for blending rigor with warmth, Dr. Bonjo brings humor, joy, and self-reflection into presentations, guiding participants to expand self-awareness while applying appropriate knowledge, skills, and attitudes in ways that foster justice, inclusion, and transformation.
Serginho Walker is a nationally certified licensed professional counselor in the state of Connecticut. His clinical practice focuses on members of the LGBTQ+ community and Members of the Global Majority. Serginho is a doctoral candidate at Southern Connecticut State University in his third and final year of study. Serginho also serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Saint Joseph and Southern Connecticut State University. Serginho is Vice President of the Greater Hartford Alliance of Black Social Workers as well as an active Chair at the National level on the Students and Emerging Leaders Committee and the National Nomination Committee. Through the National Board of Certified Counselors, Serginho serves as the Connecticut Legislative Ambassador. Serginho has presented locally, regionally, and nationally on issues related to historical trauma, sex and sexuality, and the unique mental health challenges of Black queer men. Serginho’s dissertation research examines how the intersection of non-binary identity, Blackness, and queer sexuality impacts experiences of stigma and mental health outcomes.
This webinar is offered at $10 to ACSSW Members. Contact ACSSW@counselingsexology.com if you have trouble with registering for ACSSW webinars or need the coupon for reduced rate as ACSSW member.
This program has been approved for APA, CA BBS, IL IDFPR, NBCC, and AASECT.
The Office of Continuing Education at The Chicago School is now a Continuing Education Provider for the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT).
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The registration for this program can be found here:
https://tcsppofficeofce.com/oct_17_2025_2/
Zoom link will be available on course page in “My Courses” upon event registration.
This program, when attended in its entirety, offers 2.0 CEs for Psychologists, 2.0 IL CEUS for Counselors and Social Workers, 2.0 BBS California CEUs for LPCCs, LPSWs, and LMFTs, or 2.0 AASECT CEs for Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists.