Sexual Minority Affirmative Therapy

Sexual minority affirmative therapy provides a frame of reference for working with sexual minority clients, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender; gender variant; asexual (who experience no sexual attraction); cisgender (who identify as the gender assigned at birth); intersex (whose reproductive anatomy does not fit the typical definitions of male or female); and other emerging categories or self-definitions, such as GSM (i.e., gender and sexual minority). This approach is not an independent system of psychotherapy but a therapeutic perspective that challenges the notion that same-sex attractions or atypical gender identities are inherently pathological and in need of change or alteration. This therapeutic lens views societal stigma and internalized sexual prejudice as major pathways for the circumstances that bring many sexual minority individuals to therapy. An ...