C is for Conscious Sex

Hi everyone! Welcome to the A to Z of Sex with me, Dr Lori Beth Bisbey. I am a sex and intimacy coach and psychologist and I’ve spent the last 30 + years helping people to create hot and healthy sexual and intimate relationships. We are working our way through the erotic alphabet one letter at a time. Today the letter is C and C is for Conscious Sex.

Joining me today to talk all about conscious sex is Patty, International Ms Leather 2014
Patty is a butch leatherdyke who has been involved in the Leather Community long enough to see herself through several incarnations and take a few trips around Kinky Block. Born and raised in upstate NY, she has been happily transplanted in Toronto for almost 15 years where she is a dual Canadian-US citizen. She is honoured to hold the titles of International Ms Leather 2014, Ms Leather Toronto 2014, and Ms Northbound Leather 2013.
Patty served on the boards of the So You Want to Be Kinky educational series and the International Ms Leather Foundation. She ran the Surge Event Series for leather/kinky women and trans people in Toronto and created the “Surge: Images of Power & Pleasure” calendar as a fundraiser. She presents workshops on mummification and spanking and regularly co-hosts experiential “novice nights” in Toronto.

With 20 years in mental health services as a therapist, supervisor and educator, she is passionate about developing the capacity of community members to better understand and respond to those in distress. In response, she has co-developed and regularly presents workshops on suicide/mental health first aid for the puppy and kink/leather communities.
One of her other continued passions is working on behalf of Rainbow Railroad raising funds to help lgbt individuals find safe haven from state sanctioned violence, murder, and persecution.
Patty was awarded the 2012 Heart of the Flag Federation Volunteer of the Year Award, the 2015 Heart of the Flag Federation Leather Pride Award, and several Pantheon of Leather Awards (Woman of the Year 2015 and 2017, Community Choice Woman 2015). In 2016, she was honoured to be one of the Grand Marshals for the Toronto Leather Pride March.
She is an associate member of the Mid Atlantic chapter of ONYX and member of the Vajra Leather Family. Patty believes in working as hard as she plays and is a huge fan of dangerous things wrapped in pretty packages.

Conscious sex is all about being able to be present and make clear conscious choices – to have the ability to make the choices, the information one needs to make the choices and the agency to decide. It’s all about explicit enthusiastic consent. It takes learning about yourself in the first place and then learning about the people you want to engage with sexually.

Conscious relationship choices require us to understand our triggers, our patterns and to be able to put these to rest. We need to be able to risk assess and reality test in order to have conscious sex.