Your sexuality is an intrinsic and vital part of who you are, and is your birthright.
This was one of the most powerful lessons I learned from my mentor, Patti Britton, aka The Mother of Sex Coaching, who will be retiring in May, 2023.
I first met Dr. Patti back in 2015, at an event run by Jenni Joy in central London, just off Great Portland Street.
I had agreed to write a piece for Rude Magazine for a friend about Dr. Patti and their training, Sex Coach U. I knew I wanted to train in and work with sexuality somehow, and was torn between a few different options.
This was where I also met her partner- in life and work- the late Dr. Robert Dunlap, who tragically died in 2017.
I remember sitting on the floor of the apartment, wide-eyed and taking it all in. Little did I know that this event would alter my life path for good!
I chose SCU because it was a mix of evidence-based sexuality education and academia (hence my geek brain was satisfied), along with a holistic approach. Also because Dr. Patti had such a solid reputation, background, and academic credentials, as an elder in Sexology. She rolemodeled that it is possible to love both academia and be into spirituality too.
I started the sex coach training in January 2016, and met them in real life again in Warsaw that May for live SAR and ASPEX training, where I also got to know Sarah Martin, Celina Criss, and Agata Loewe.
I still remember my first live SAR experience, in that house in the suburbs of Warsaw full of erotic art, some of what Dr. Patti told us:
“Human sexual expression is infinite”
She and Dr. Robert handed out animal cards at the end of the training, and mine was the Scarab beetle. The next day I found a beetle pendant in a little shop underneath the main road in Warsaw, and wore it.
[Learn about what a SAR training is and taking it with Sex Coach U here]
It was during ASPEX training, in that retreat centre in the middle of nowhere in the Polish countryside, that Dr. Robert pulled me aside and said that they wanted to offer me a position to work for Sex Coach U- due to my (looking back now, very rusty) skills in blogging and social media- my first paid role!
They took a chance on me and I will always be eternally grateful to them for that.
For 5 years, I worked within the marketing team of SCU and WASC, and saw the team grow to what it is now.
I can honestly say that it was training with and then working for Sex Coach U and World Association of Sex Coaches which provided the foundation for my work today.
[Read more: What Is A Sex Coach?]
I learned a passion and fascination for the world of human sexuality, and most importantly, to be unashamed of this body of work and share my message. (That could also be my ADHD brain that doesn’t have a filter and loves to hyperfocus.)
Whenever people ask me where I trained and why, I will always point them to SCU. It was the combination of evidence-based information, rigorous standards, along with more holistic tools, and how to structure a session.
Dr. Patti has long been an elder in Sexology, and she has lived a very long and fascinating life. Whenever we had team calls with her or was with her in-person, she would regale us with stories and anecdotes from her long time in the field.
She instilled within me and all of the SCU community, a deep passion for this work and why it is so needed in the world, especially today.
Sexual rights and freedoms can never be taken for granted- be it access to comprehensive sexuality education, access to abortion, access to contraception and emergency contraception, LGBQTIA+ rights and inclusion, sex worker’s rights, erotic expression, and so much more.
The anti-sex and erotophobic sentiment is still very much alive today, it just morphs into different guises.
If I could summarize what I learned from her, it would be this:
- The importance of staying in your lane with clients and knowing when you need to refer out, to avoid causing harm and working beyond what our capabilities are.
- Building a referral network for that purpose so you can provide the best standard of care and also build professional connections.
- The importance of sex-positivity and being a sex and pleasure-affirming professional.
- Why your sexuality is an intrinsic and vital part of who you are, that your sexuality is your birthright.
- That sex education really does save lives.
- That sexual rights are human rights, and that pleasure is a sexual right.
- Why we must be an ally and stand up for sexual rights for all.
- That our work gets to be fun and pleasurable for us too.
- The importance of Extreme Self Care, that if I am not taking care of myself, I cannot show up for my clients.
- And most importantly: having rigorous standards within sex coaching and sexology, because sex coaching is an unregulated field and there is no barrier to somebody calling themselves a sex coach, and there is capacity for so much harm.
Now Dr. Patti is retiring, I feel a strange sadness as although it is well-earned and she voiced it to us within the team for a while, I’m sad that not many more people will be able to train under her tutelage.
She is retiring in May, 2023, which means the next cohort of students who enroll at Sex Coach U will be the past to learn directly underneath her, until she passes the baton on.
If you’re thinking of training as a sex coach, then you cannot do better than SCU.
Thank you, Dr. Patti. I hope we get to meet again in person soon, because I miss you!
Lucy Rowett, CSC – Pronouns: She/Her/Her