Sex and Lesbian Women

The issues of desire, initiation, and frequency are of considerable clinical importance to lesbians and their sexuality. This chapter focuses on sex between lesbian women and a broader view of how women can express their sexuality in a lesbian relationship. These issues are discussed using the case of a couple who presented with these concerns. It also discusses clinical interventions and the process used to tease apart the various components of sex between lesbian women. This case example illustrates that teasing apart the various worldviews each partner brings to the sexual relationship, ensuring attention to gendered, cultural, and heterosexist lenses, and assisting both women in redefining sex are significant therapeutic processes in which counselors must engage. Counselors who create a safe therapeutic relationship by examining their own biases and worldviews around sexuality for women and lesbian women will have greater success exploring sensitive issues of sexuality.