sExploration 2025: Sex Bytes: Online Reality & Cyber Sexuality
Coming to sExploration in March 2025!
The internet has revolutionized not just how we communicate, but also how we express and experience sexuality. Online communities have become pivotal spaces for exploring desires once considered taboo, blurring the lines between digital and tangible realities through virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial companionship, or lack thereof. These advancements are reshaping relationship expectations and daily interactions—empowering individuals to embrace their sexual identities while also emboldening some to impose their beliefs onto others. As mental health professionals, we are uniquely positioned to navigate these complexities. Sex Bytes: Online Reality & Cyber Sexuality delves into how online spaces influence sexuality and relationships across the lifespan, examining the evolution of pornography in the internet age, the impact of AI tools, and strategies for counseling patients in negotiating their digital and real-world sexual experiences. Join us to explore the intersection of technology and sexuality, and equip yourself to support your clients in this ever-evolving landscape.
Thank you for visiting Projects Advancing Sexual Diversity. Our organization was created with one objective in mind: Improve the quality of life for sexual minority individuals, families and communities by addressing issues impacting their emotional and psychological wellbeing.
We are a not-for-profit group (working on 501(c)3 status) staffed by volunteers. PASD is a virtual organization, one without a physical office to support. We rely on collaborations, partnerships, and donations to conduct our work. Being project driven, as opposed to organizationally focused, firmly channels our efforts into pursuing our mission.
Projects may have a local, national or international scope. Each is designed to be time-limited with well- defined goals. We are accountable to ourselves, our supporters and most importantly to those who we hope to serve. With that in mind, each project includes outcome measures and timetables for longitudinal evaluations. Our intention is to create sustainable change through empowerment.
Projects are created with, and implemented by, rotating groups of graduate students pursuing advanced degrees in psychology. They are directed by seasoned professionals who volunteer their time to shape plans, advise students and mentor them as future advocates and leaders in the field of sexual minority health.
Mission Statment
Projects Advancing Sexual Diversity applies the practice of psychology to further the understanding and acceptance of diverse sexual and gender identities, practices and cultures. We explore narratives of healthy, normative development in these populations. Utilizing innovative research and interventions, PASD also strives to create sustainable change in conditions impacting the welfare of sexual and gender minority individuals, families and communities.
Statement on Cultural Competency
Culturally competent clinicians foster and promote psychological and emotional care, as well as behavioral interventions, that recognize and respect the intersection of sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and gender expression for individuals, families and communities. They aspire to understand how issues of stigma and discrimination intersect, particularly for individuals who experience multiple forms of oppression. These clinicians also strive to understand and respect the historical and cultural contexts within which sexual orientations and gender identities are created.