ABSTRACT
Sex therapists often think of themselves as social liberators, helping people move beyond restrictions and inhibitions created by the Judeo-Christian body/mind split, deprecation of women's sexuality, and preoccupation with procreation. Feminists also view themselves as social liberators, helping people move beyond restrictions and inhibitions embedded in gender roles and stereotypes and institutionalized in all parts of society. The chapter explores two tracks running through feminist sex therapy. The first is remedial and compensatory, and includes a focus on skills and attitudes women need in order to cope with the sexual world. The second track is visionary and transformative, and focuses on refraining sexuality. For both tracks a little body-prologue is an important option. Masturbation education has been a centerpiece of women's sex therapy ever since Betty Dodson's 1974 pamphlet, Liberating Masturbation, and Lonnie Barbach's description of women's group work. Feminist sex therapy must not only offer remedial interventions or opportunities to learn coping strategies to resist ongoing oppression.
