Soleil Merroir (they/them), licensed as Angie Gunn, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, and Certified Sex Therapist-Supervisor and Sex Worker and Activist. They are neuro-expansive and gender queer.

They came up inside systems that long extracted care labor in exchange for self-worth as healers. They did that work, and they did it well — until they were compelled to push back for their own survive, and the well-being of the humans they served.

Diving deeply into trauma-rooted care, anti-oppressive client policies, equity in service delivery, and addressing systemic causes of distress rather than symptoms, Soleil makes people and systems uncomfortable.

Their priorities conflict with the racist, performative, metrics-based nature of the mental health system — the urge to create the just-right-sized band-aid to keep clients well enough to perform under capitalism, but sick enough to keep seeing us and participating in the cycle.

And how did they get free? Not in academia. It was through sex work, kink, and expansive sexuality immersion. Immersing in the culture, lived experience, and daily realities of one of the most marginalized identity groups provided the counterbalance to the professional, academic and distanced power structures underlying the therapist identity.

Exploring personal expression, identity formation, and deep engagement with sex, kink, and sex work spaces, they found new pathways to doing the work that actually needs to be done — rehumanizing ourselves, our clients, and our systems.

Soleil's work now focuses on the psychology of sexuality and shame, technology-mediated intimacy and AI relationships, and the cultural and legal mechanisms that shape — and selectively police — how people express desire. Their current work includes supporting sex workers directly, training therapists in sex worker-affirming practice, and examining how AI systems and digital platforms are reshaping erotic behavior and human connection.