The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I Quotes

“An inability to tell fantasy from reality would normally be considered evidence of psychosis, but in law enforcement it’s a job requirement.”
― Maggie McNeill, The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I: Collected Essays from "The Honest Courtesan"

“Meanwhile, Hawaiian politicians tried to make up for lost time by officially granting cops the “right” to rape sex workers by spelling the permission out in the text of the new prostitution law. When a legislator discovered this provision in 2015 and rewrote the law to scrap it, the cops demanded that their decades-old droit du seigneur remain in place, and it probably would’ve had not the media gotten hold of the story and a public outcry not ensued. Now there’s a movement to decriminalize sex work there, which might at last free Hawaiian whores from the tender mercies of cops.”
― Maggie McNeill, The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I: Collected Essays from "The Honest Courtesan"

“The vast majority of us, like the vast majority of the human race, exist in the murky grey area between absolute freedom and abject slavery, trying our best to balance the pursuit of happiness with the toil necessary for survival.”
― Maggie McNeill, The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I: Collected Essays from "The Honest Courtesan"

“Want to know what it’s like to live in a police state? Look around you. Like the legendary frog, Americans have remained content to sit in the pot while the temperature has gradually increased, and we’re all well and truly cooking now.”
― Maggie McNeill, The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I: Collected Essays from "The Honest Courtesan"

“To a degree, these activists are right; a whore is a whore is a whore, and legal, moral or procedural lines serve only to break people into smaller groups which are more easily dominated by the power-hungry. If you accept money from someone that he gives due to sexual interest in you, then you are a whore and everything else is just semantics.”
― Maggie McNeill, The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I: Collected Essays from "The Honest Courtesan"

“Each of these bans – from marijuana to prostitution to pseudoephedrine – have had exactly the same effects: None of them have affected demand one iota, nor hampered those who wish to partake. All of them have enriched criminals and increased true crime and bloodshed. All of them have enticed millions who might not otherwise have committed crimes into participating in the lucrative black markets created by their prohibition. All have increased the danger to users or sellers of the banned product or service (and even to innocent bystanders), often to fatal levels. All have given rise to rampant corruption, overwhelmed court and prison systems, dangerously expanded governmental powers, and negated civil liberties; all have caused the waste of billions on enforcement and the loss of billions more in tax revenues. And each has admirably accomplished what it was enacted to accomplish: the redefinition of large segments of the population from citizens to criminals, thus allowing government yet another excuse to deprive them of their rights, goods and freedoms.”
― Maggie McNeill, The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I: Collected Essays from "The Honest Courtesan"