2027 Conference Theme

Weaving Lineage: Sixty Years of Pedagogy, Pleasure, and Practice

AASECT was founded in 1967, which makes the 2027 conference a celebration of our 60th anniversary.

The conference theme proposes four questions to the membership: Where did our knowledge come from? Who carried it, including those whom sexuality literature never credited? What did we get wrong, and what did it teach us? And what is the legacy we are leaving to the professionals who will hold this work for the next sixty years?

Weaving is present tense because our collective labor is still underway, intertwining threads from different traditions worked into a fabric that will bear weight. A weave also shows its repairs, which gives us honest language for the parts of our history that need correcting.

Lineage names an inheritance and an obligation at once and is broad enough to include the community traditions and the practitioners of different cultures, languages, theoretical approaches, and disciplines whose contributions shape this work.

Why this theme, and why now?

Our 60th anniversary is a significant milestone, and a lineage theme gives us the momentum to engage and honor those who came before us.

With sexuality education, gender-affirming care, and sexuality research under sustained scrutiny, documenting AASECT’s professional lineage demonstrates six decades of standards, training, supervision, and peer review.

Sexuality educators may enter the tapestry through pedagogy and therapists through practice, while counselors work the space between them. Pleasure is the common thread where all three meet and converge. The concept of weaving presents our work as ongoing, while a focus on lineage honors the past and frames what comes next.