Sex worker affirmative therapy is a model for therapists to engage with sex workers in a supportive and strengths-based way to mitigate the many impacts of distal and proximal stressors. As with any client-centered therapeutic approach, these guidelines should be tailored to the individual and their presenting problem(s) in therapy, and therefore, all guidelines may not be applicable to every sex worker client. The following outline is part of our published paper, Sex Worker

Last month, the Lake County Sex Trafficking Task Force unveiled a billboard along the North Shore of Lake Superior in Two Harbors, Minnesota. It’s the latest example of the ad nauseam awareness campaigns targeting the sex industry that perpetuate the moral panic surrounding sex trafficking by conflating it with sex work. The billboard warns “johns” to “end the demand” because “we’re someone’s children” and includes a police lineup photo of a chef, physician, a snowmobiler, a

Due to the stigma of sex work, sex workers can be vulnerable to micro-aggressions and minority stress and experience discrimination when the

In my therapeutic work with people who sell sexual services, I consider myself to be privileged to support the process of retirement for folks who want to transition into another type of employment. Unfortunately for many sex workers, there are few sex positive, non-judgmental supports available to them when they end their time in the sex industry. In therapy with sex workers who are retiring, I have found that processing the loss of identity that comes with this transition c

This research article was published in the journal of Sexuality Research and Social Policy. The full text can be read on their host site. This research study, by Dr. Eric Sprankle and SWOP-USA board member, Katie Bloomquist LMFT, looks at how changing whether a sexual assault victim was a sex worker or non-sex worker affects empathy for the victim, as well as victim-blaming. In the study, 197 Midwestern U.S. undergraduate students (mainly white, heterosexual cisgender women)