Milk & Honey Consulting

Nearly two years of work is finally compete on the SIRENS curriculum. For those of you who are new to SIRENS, it is a curriculum that Volunteers of American Oregon commissioned to meet the needs of women in treatment who are current or former sex workers. Surprisingly, this is an area of treatment that is relatively uncharted. While there continues to be research done on women who work in the sex industry, most populations studied are either incarcerated or in limited contact with street outreach programs. What I hoped to find when I began my research were other curricula or programs that talked honestly about sex work to clients who were in the process of making changes in their lives. There are a few programs– most of the them created by and specifically for sex workers–that do just that–St. James infirmary in SF, HIPS in Washington DC come to mind and they are awesome.

But what I needed was something very specific and very special–a set of classes that broke down the stigma of sex work; that addressed the issues faced by a sex worker in recovery but never presumed to tell a women what she should or should not do; a class that supported sex workers  to see themselves as strong survivors in a historical context of women  supporting themselves and their families and also challenged women to look at the way sex work functions in a system that gives women too few choices to survive and thrive. I wanted to make this class fun, and help women to find the artist and writer in themselves, exposing them to the rich tradition of sex workers who have made their unique and challenging experiences into art. I also wanted to advocate for the skill it takes to  successfully support yourself in the sex industry and to emphasize the many transferable skills gained by working as a prostitute, stripper, phone sex operator, lingerie model or porn star that may not be obvious at first glance. Lucky for me, VOA was kind enough to find me a collaborator on their staff–the lovely Shanna Butler–and was willing to fund such a project. Now, the curriculum is making its way out into the world, beyond VOA’s program. I’m excited to see if other social workers find it useful and other clients find it helpful in their change process.