HUSTLE’s Virtual Lunch and Learn Workshop: Destigmatizing Sex Work
A workshop for service providers supporting male sex workers.
Created by HIM
HUSTLE - Advocacy for Male Sex Workers in British Columbia
An integral component of HIM’s supportive programming for male sex workers, HUSTLE advocates the community’s right to access harm reduction and non-judgemental physical, sexual, and mental health care.
HUSTLE works to ensure that health care, substance use services, and mental health supports are safe and accessible to everyone. When a sex worker seeks services, they have to decide if the individuals providing those services are safe to come out to, or if they need to hide a parts of their lives to avoid being shamed and stigmatized. This means that either an individual will not get as much support as they need, or not get support on issues that relate to the fact that they are a sex worker, or they will not access services all together.
Capacity-building Workshops for Service Providers
HUSTLE’s lunch-and-learn style workshops are designed for cliniaicans and professionals in the social services sector across BC to better meet male sex workers’ needs in community.
Content is designed to provide service providers with some practical tools and insights into providing low barrier services and reducing stigma. Sex workers need to feel supported to out themselves without fear of being shamed and thus, receive the supports they need.
The goal of this workshop series is to provide some background information about sex work and discuss best practices for how to address stigma in the workplace and provide appropriate care.
Topics include:
Appropriate and non-stigmatizing language
The Continuum of Sexual Exchange (What is sex work? And how does it differ from “trafficking”?)
Sex work history in Vancouver and Victoria
Sex work and the law
Male sex work community-specific needs
Stereotypes and assumptions
Impacts of stigma
Best practices, allyship, and disclosures
The workshop series can be done in one 1.5-hour workshop or divided into two 45-minute sessions. Workshops are confidential and not pre-recorded.
Audience Engagement
The primary audience is service and healthcare providers. Program delivery leverages online platforms (such as Zoom) to facilitate accessibility to service providers across geographic regions. As such, HIM is able to deliver workshops to multiple service providers simultaneously.
In order to reach the intended audience, the program has relied on direct emails to HIM newsletter subscribers and service providers. Word-of-mouth is also a key method of recruitment for these Lunch and Learns.
Resources Required
The following resources were required to launch the MOM online resource hub:
Human Resources
Program Coordinator, Vancouver Island
Program Coordinator, Community Engagement
Program Manager, Health Promotion
Program Manager, Community Engagement
Volunteers
Presenter and peer, Vancouver
Presenter and HUSTLE and peer, Victoria
Financial Resources
We pay our peers $100 for each workshop delivery. For two lunch-and-learn sessions with two peer-presenters, HIM spends $400.
Challenges
Compounding factors and lived experiences related to intersectional identities present some ongoing challenges when presenting material. Through feedback collected from survey data, HIM has identified that some facilitators face difficulties speaking outside of lived experiences.
Learning: Speak to the facilitator on what they’re interested in/feel comfortable speaking about.
Learning: In workshop orientations, HIM should engage the facilitators in a discussion about what they know about land acknowledgements, the lands they live on, relevancy to the workshop topic, and why centring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in this conversation is important. Workshop orientation sessions could be structured more like a conversation.Survey data also expressed stigma against substance use stigma in the presentation, and lack of nuance around how intersecting experiences inform sex work. Program staff are working on strategies to recognize and interrupt stigma, rather than reinforcing it.
Successes
With epresentation identified as a priority, peer facilitators from Vancouver and Victoria were hired to lead HUSTLE’s workshops. They have been successful in accommodating social service schedules by delivering lunchtime workshops during and immediately following “cheque week” (when assistance payments are distributed).
Highlights of the resulting survey data include:
91.7% said that they were likely to recommend the workshop.
87% said that they will use the knowledge gained from the workshop to inform their work serving sex workers.
Local history of sex work, language, legislation, and the continuum of sexual exchange was identified as the most important part of the workshop.
The majority of respondents identified peer involvement and leadership as the most important feature. A transgender sex worker in the audience appreciated that the facilitators are trans, and another sex worker wrote that the workshop was validating for them.
Program Materials
Relevant Journal Articles:
Brookfield, S., Dean, J., Forrest, C. et al. Barriers to Accessing Sexual Health Services for Transgender and Male Sex Workers: A Systematic Qualitative Meta-summary. AIDS Behav 24, 682–696 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-019-02453-4
Whitaker T, Ryan P, Cox G. Stigmatization Among Drug-Using Sex Workers Accessing Support Services in Dublin. Qualitative Health Research. 2011;21(8):1086-1100. doi:10.1177/1049732311404031
For further information, please contact:
Dylan Wall
Health Initiative for Men
dylan@checkhimout.ca
310 – 1033 Davie St
Vancouver, BC