“Stigma tells sex workers that they’re not worth anything, and I want my lawsuit to be a wake-up call. This is what I want it to illuminate as if on a neon billboard: be careful who you treat like shit.”
“It’s not just about Title IX—getting a court to recognize that discrimination against sex workers is sex discrimination could bring a sweeping movement across the country,” Demeri said of Gililland's lawsuit."Getting a court to recognize that discrimination against sex workers is sex discrimination could bring a sweeping movement across the country."
“Gililland is using her privilege to achieve good for everyone else,” Andrews said, “That is a remarkable thing to do. Sometimes all we have is our white privilege to exploit. There are a lot of people doing sex work who can’t be out about it because the consequences they would face are way too great.”“Gililland is using her privilege to achieve good for everyone else. There are a lot of people doing sex work who can’t be out about it because the consequences they would face are way too great.”
As Gililland and her daughters crossed the Cascade mountain range in a friend's car stuffed with garbage bags of her family’s clothing, she felt hopeful—an emotion that had long been buried under a nearly unfathomable amount of fear. Gililland began sobbing the moment she crossed the Snake River into Idaho. For the first time in two years, breathing felt easy. They drove through the hilly farmland of southern Idaho and stopped at the Utah border so Danika and Piper could play in the snow. The girls were ecstatic and Gililland felt calm.While she is ready to leave much of what haunted her in Oregon behind, Gililland will continue shouldering the burden of her legal struggle, hoping that her new community will embrace her wholly and without judgement. Will she tell them about Coos County and the lawsuit? About the porn? She has decided the answer to both questions will be yes. She anticipates that her new neighbors won’t look at her with disgust or crude curiosity when they learn she used to work in porn. And she hopes they will be impressed, not disparaging, when she tells them she’s finishing her degree online.Gililland is pre-law now and she has her sights set on Yale. She misses medicine and is certain she would have made a fantastic nurse, but she can’t shake the feeling of powerlessness that permeated her time in Coos County.She knows sex workers across the country are also questioned as parents and students and employees; that they’re underestimated, silenced, and sidelined every day. She hopes that, in a few years, she’ll be able to represent them and fight for them.Gililland can’t imagine that many of the people she came across in Coos County will ever take this goal seriously, but she has a new home now. She has a 4.0 and is already studying for the LSAT. Sometimes Gililland envisions her old professors laughing or cringing or shaking their heads in disbelief when attempting to picture her as a lawyer, but she doesn’t mind. She’s already searching apartment listings in New Haven. And this time around, she will be upfront about her sex work. "Hiding only made the stigma and the fear worse,” she said. "It empowered people who shouldn't have had power over me." She hopes her lawsuit will make it easier for other sex workers do the same.Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily."Hiding only made the stigma and the fear worse. It empowered people who shouldn't have had power over me."