Past Workshops

Sonalee Rashatwar (they/them) LCSW MEd has been public speaking since high school, curating multimedia presentations debunking fad diets and analyzing the fatphobic misogyny of 1970’s Bollywood cinema using wit and humor. Sonalee curates custom visual presentations using images and narratives that will stay with you long after their soothing, honeyed voice leaves the room. Their work is centered in asking ourselves the tough, personal questions that invite us to interrogate our internal motives and uproot deeper sources of shame and self-hate.

Some workshops Sonalee has prepared recently include:

• Dreaming Fat Futures - Have you considered what fat futurism is or could look like? This conversation transcends both space and time.

• Healing Sex Shame — Looking to the origins of shame and learning quick ways to unroot them.

• Creating a Self-Love Practice — Simple techniques to invite liberatory pleasure into our every day lives.

• Connecting with your body After Sexual Trauma — Easily digestible practices to feel more connected to your body.

• Anti-wellness as Wellness — Covering more intuitive anti-diet ways to measure wellness.

• The Gender Abolition of Fatness — Considering the intersection of fatness and gender on queer bodies.

• Understanding the White Supremacist Origins of Fatphobia — Unpacking the ways fatphobia and diet culture control our lives and dehumanize fat people.

• Race is a Body Image issue — Politicizing our understanding of body image, while offering ways to unlearn fatphobia. (popular choice)

• How Fat Queers the Body — Unpacking the ways fat intersect gender.

• South Asian Mental Health — Discussing the unique ways mental health is treated in South Asian family systems, castes, and communities.

• Health is a Social Construct — Unpacking the ways colonialism has created the gender and health norms we live by today.

• Healing from Fat Trauma — Learning ways to process body image abuse and trauma in our healing journeys.

• Fatphobia as a Clinical Issue — Helping clinicians understand how to work with fat clients and deconstruct fatphobic beliefs in therapy.

• Fatphobia as a Sexological Issue — Helping clinicians understand the sexological impacts of fatphobia and diet culture.

featured Podcast Interviews

“Anti-diet social worker and sex therapist Sonalee Rashatwar joins us to discuss body policing, the non-consensual nature of dieting for many kids, how body size gets treated as a marker of class status and cultural assimilation, how gender identity changes people’s relationships with food, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about whether there are any reasons to focus on fullness other than fatphobia, and whether a particular statement in the book Intuitive Eating is fatphobic.” - Christy Harrison MPH RD CDN

Past Talks

2023

Coming Soon

2022

Coming Soon

2021

Coming Soon

2020

Coming Soon

2019

Race is a Body image Issue
at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA.

South Asian Family Systems, Trauma, and Pleasure
at Pomona College, CA.

Unlearning Fatphobia
at University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada.

2018

The Pleasure Principle: Finding Pleasure in the Age of #MeToo
at the Leeway Foundation in Philadelphia, PA.

Unlearning Fatphobia and Diet Culture
at Widener University in Chester, PA.

Expanding the Sexological Understandings of Body Image
at the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) in Denver, CO.

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week
at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.

Taking a Trauma-informed Sex Hxstory
at the National Association of Social Workers-NJ Conference in Atlantic City, NJ.

Diet Culture and Body Image
at University of Colorado in Boulder, CO.

Race is a Body Image Issue
at University of Vermont in Burlington, VT.

Expanding the #MeToo Movement
at West Chester University in West Chester, PA.

2017

Body Justice: Understanding the Intersection of Body Image and Race
at National Renfrew Conference in Philadelphia, PA.

Gender isn’t Real and Neither is Health
at SEXx Interactive in Philadelphia, PA.

2016

Body Inclusive Sex Ed: Exploring the Connection Between Body Image and Sex Education
at National Sex Education Conference in Atlantic City, NJ.

How to Support Sexual Assault Survivors
at Haverford College in Haverford, PA.

Unlearning White Supremacist Sex Positivity
at Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance in Alexandria, VA.

Decolonizing Sexual Positivity: A Practical Guide
at the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Selected to present Engaging Diversity Opening Plenary Keynote on
The Colonization of Sex Positivity
at the American Association of Sexuality

2015

Decolonizing Sex Positivity
at SEXx Interactive in Philadelphia, PA.