I should have Storified this but didn’t because I only have so much time and energy.
A question was posed on Twitter about not seeing guys of a certain race. I gave a flip, but honest answer, about why I no longer see Indian clients (even though Indians aren’t actually a race, they’re an ethnicity). And I don’t. I made that decision a year ago, after months of soul-searching and debate.
All of that debate was with two friends who would hear about my complaints after each and every appointment with Indian guys and they would pose the obvious solution: “Stop seeing Indian clients.” I would argue back with all the arguments I got on Twitter, plus my worry about it affecting my finances.
Today is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. I feel it hardly needs introduction anymore, thanks to social media and a lot of sex workers starting to have an interest in activism, or at least interest on social media.
This year the December 17 memorial site has short bios for some of the victims. It’s about time. Credit to whomever implemented the idea. Humanizing and properly memorializing the victims is so very important.
Accessing justice is very difficult for sex workers living and working under US laws.
Violence against sex workers is legally-sanctioned here in the US. Unless you get really lucky and find someone who is willing to help you and has the power to do so (and that someone likely won’t come from a sex work org), you’re going to end up dead. I’m not trying to derail this day to make it about Jill and I because we’re alive and I can’t complain about that. But it was perfectly clear to us through the last six months that the system was willing to let us be killed rather than take minimal measures to protect us. It wasn’t just that we were fighting an enemy entrenched with the legal system (Pig), a large part of it was that we were women, and sex workers.
How much harder is it for women who know they’re in danger but don’t have any help at all? The news is filled with women killed by former partners or men they’ve rejected but never had a relationship with. Some of those women have been sex workers. Legal protections rarely extend to sex workers. Their surviving loved ones have almost no hope of justice. Someone tell me I’m wrong and that most of the men who killed sex workers in the US this year were apprehended. I’d be thrilled to know that and make a correction.
I’m not down on sex work orgs — they do vital outreach and education in the US. The one thing they really have no ability to offer is legal protection or access justice. Legal referrals are difficult to get because there are very few people in the system who are okay with helping sex workers. Very few. (The one sex work org referral I got ended up being a vice officer who was skeptical that Pig had broken any laws — yeah, that’s a big help.) It’s far easier to find a doctor willing to treat sex workers because we’re seen as disease vectors who need monitoring. Far harder for someone in the legal system to see us as anything but ready-made criminals.
US sex work orgs are severely hampered by the laws, obviously, which makes their ability to offer protection or justice slim. Changing the laws is the answer. Always. That hasn’t changed and will never change.
The best protection any victim, or potential victim, could have is to be viewed as a citizen of equal worth to anyone else. That their life is worth defending, their death worth preventing. Not regulating them to criminal, non-human status is a huge start in getting to that place.
Jill had the idea of a lawsuit brought by victims’ families holding the people who make these laws responsible. It’s a unique idea, and worth exploring. (You can hear Jill and I discuss this, and a few other topics, on a brief radio show.)
In the same vein, the Vancouver police department issued a video statement of how sex workers are to be treated. Basically, like humans and citizens with rights. Revolutionary.
Massive update…Pig’s been arrested!! You can catch Jill and me gloating on our XXBN show. If you don’t have time to listen, here’s the recap.
Pig has been sending goons to harass friends for our location, up until last week. On Sunday, Jill got the news that Pig had been arrested Thursday 2/26 on felony charges. It seems the Jordan family was able to get an arrest warrant against him on the misappropriation of the funds they gave him to disburse to their children’s trust. By “misappropriation” I mean that Pig simply used the money as his own. No doubt he spent some of those funds last spring to have Jill beaten and to pass his threatening and disjointed messages to me. Whatever he did with the funds, it seems the Jordan family has proof the funds are gone.
Pig may be losing his influence!
I’m hoping that Pig finally loses his law license. One would think; but then again, he seems to have the State Bar well in his rapidly-diminishing pocket. He paid his $250,000 bail and was re-arrested on the same day: 3/2, which is just hilarious to me. If you’d like to sympathize with Pig, his Harris County inmate number is SPN02781148. Here is a PDF summary of his arrest and bond.
Pig had a really bad week last week. His divorce was finalized just a couple days before his arrest. I don’t know the details but I hope she got a lot. She did get a permanent restraining order against him. Based on the questions “reporter” Craig Malisow was asking about Jill, it seems that Pig hired someone to beat his ex-wife (and Malisow idiotically thought Jill did it because Pig said so). Sounds like Pig’s tactic for every woman who doesn’t do what he says. Now perhaps people will believe that he did what we claim he did?
Sunday evening Jill and I went out for a celebratory glass of champagne. (I had two glasses, Jill only had one because of the threat of an alcohol-induced stroke — one of Pig’s many gifts to us.) We watched the sun go down over the clear ocean on a breezy cliff overlooking the surf washing over the rocks and beach below. Pig was spending the exact same moment in a smelly concrete box, probably rooming with someone named Bubba Lee.
We have waited over 2.5yrs and gone through hell for this moment. It was very, very good. The memory is one I will savor for the rest of my life. Jill said she is glad that she has lived long enough to see it happen.
This isn’t the endgame but it is certainly the start of the burning of his little kingdom. We like to think we helped it along. 🙂
coda
In my excitement, a few things I forgot to add.
The Jordan family apparently is concerned about violence from Pig. In one of the documents we found, there was a notation about this very issue. The family may have been granted a restraining order. Would have to look that up again. If anyone cares to look, just do a Criminal Search at the Harris County Court Clerk’s website.
I tried to get a copy of his mugshot but because I’m not a member of the media, I could not. If you are a member of the media and would like to get it, please contact me. The process is simple and done via email.
All this really gives me faith in the power of positive thinking. Back in July 2012, sitting in our lawyer J’s office, signing the representation agreement, Jill and I both in pain from our injuries (which we didn’t know the extent of at that time), I said that I wanted Pig’s pilot’s license, his law license, his marriage and his money. I was specific that I wanted him to lose those things, but not specific in how (I hoped to be the catalyst for these losses but again, it was an open-ended desire). I never lost sight of that goal, no matter what, even when it seemed impossible. I don’t know what he has in his bank account but he must be feeling a bit of a pinch, at the very least. And he still has his law license but considering that his felony arrest was for crimes committed while he was acting as an attorney…he might not have it for much longer.
updates
10/21/15 — We finally got some information on what Pig has done to the Godwin family and it’s Pig being Pig. Basically, he created a trust for a young man who was in an accident. The trust was funded by insurance settlement money. The young man needs lifelong medical care for his injuries. Guess who wiped out the account, and requested even more money to cover his expenses? This began on October 2012. So, if you’re an escort who saw Pig after that date, chances are he paid you by stealing from a fund to take care of a permanently injured person. It makes me wonder just where the money he paid me was coming from. (I also assume the Godwin trust funded the crew in January 2013 who came to Dallas expressly to beat and kill Jill.)
11/13/15 — Pig also stole a dead man’s money. Nice. Classy. (Document to be uploaded when I can, but this info is available in Harris County.) We found this out due to the lien against Pig’s house, an effort to force repayment of the funds he stole, all of which I find very amusing.
Jill and I have finally been able to get a restraining order against Pig, after one of his goons admitted to planning on killing Jill via email. Some of these emails are public, some are not. It is nice, after three years, to finally get some legal support. How loud do we have to scream to be heard? Pig is not a good person, he is not honorable, he is not anything he purports to be. He is a thief and wannabe-murderer. But still a practicing lawyer in Texas. Texas is a fucked-up state.
11/29/15 — One of Pig’s goons mentioned on the restraining order went ahead and broke it by harassing Jill’s family. He was arrested, then released on a $25 bail. It was reasoned that since he was a former police officer turned PI, he just got carried away “defending” his client. Pigs helping Pigs.
This is the far more spectacular story I once promised to tell.
I began this history in mid-May, when Jill received her terminal diagnosis. Jill has read this fully and contributed. To the disappointment of many, she hasn’t yet dropped dead. But we have both decided it is time to make public the true story of why and how she is dying. This story started as something else. Not a eulogy, not a memorial, a written memento mori of incidents and echoes.
If there is purpose in all of this, I leave it to someone else to find.
This is what Jill wants to be said, what I want to say, for now, so that it is said.
Basically, the two pieces below concern hysteria: the first around women who say they didn’t consent and it’s believed they did; the second around women who say they consented and are told they didn’t. It’s so much fun being a woman.
Women writing about rape culture are considered to be creating “hysteria” because apparently rape culture isn’t real. On the other hand, you have ongoing sex trafficking hysteria completely out of proportion to actual sex trafficking cases. It’s the non-trafficked sex workers who are believed to not be real. Either way you look at the two issues, women aren’t being listened to or believed, and the end result is more harm to women. (I’ve little doubt that some real sex trafficking victims can’t find help and are stuck in their situation.)
As a light-hearted bonus, here’s a quick common-sense test of what constitutes sex trafficking vs sex work.
