Joanne Bagshaw
Sex therapist. Professor. Author. Feminist rock star.
While “sex therapist” is a provocative title, my work in this field is highly engaged with and influenced by my education, training, and research in attachment theories, cognitive-behavioral approaches, sexual disorders, and trauma, as well as mindfulness and somatic psychotherapy. As an LCPC in Maryland and an LMHC in New York, I am AASECT certified and use a sex-positive approach that is focused on sexual health in its various translations across the sexuality and relationship spectra. Additionally, I’m an award-winning professor of psychology and women’s studies at Montgomery College.
Sex therapy explores your deep feelings about physical, emotional, and relationship intimacy.
My clients are sometimes surprised to learn that a healthy sex life is more about a healthy relationship with yourself and your partner than it is about physical technique. Techniques only graze the surface of what’s possible. If you want deeper satisfaction—both in life and in bed—you have to go beyond physical touch.
As a psychotherapist for over 20 years, I can tell you with confidence that humans are gloriously complex. It’s something you don’t fully appreciate until you start untangling the knots that make us who we are. Outside influences, internal struggles, cut ties and frayed ends—our true power comes from knowing the difference between what binds us, what keeps us together, and how we choose to be free.
Feminism and equality are natural extensions of this exploration into human sexuality; once you acknowledge the role of sex in our day-to-day lives, you can better understand its influence on our social problems, our behavior, our decisions, our mental health, and our relationships. And once you understand it, you can work to dismantle and reconfigure its effect on your life and the world around you. It’s one of the reasons I was so excited to write The Feminist Handbook. It’s not just a witness of feminism today; it’s a workshop. And we all have work to do.
For contact information and media inquiries, please click here.
*Image credit: Images of Joanne by In Her Image Photography and Cruising Altitude Photography
“You may not be actively thinking about sex 24-hours a day, but society at large is, and you are reacting to those messages all of the time. It’s exhausting—until you realize there are real, practical, actual things you can do about it.”