This three-hour workshop provides an overview of how sex workers understand their interpersonal relationships and how they maintain boundaries between their personal and professional lives. Whorephobia and internalized whorephobia will be explored to understand how sex workers navigate complex relationships with friends, family, lovers, dates and partners. This workshop is inclusive of the experiences of sex workers with diverse gender and sexual identities and is being provided exclusively to members of the Canadian Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT).
Katherine Van Meyl is a former sex worker and sex workers' rights activist with over 15 years of experience in the industry. As part of her work with POWER (Prostitutes of Ottawa-Gatineau, Work, Educate, Resist), CASWLR (Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform) and NSWP (Global Network of Sex Work Projects), she advocated for the full decriminalization of sex work and supported sex workers through community building and development. As a clinician, Katherine adopts a psychodynamic perspective in the treatment of couples, families and individuals with non-normative lifestyles and/or identities such as those in the kink/BDSM, sex worker, poly and/or queer community.