The State, Individuals, and Decriminalizing Sex Work

by | Jun 29, 2017

The State, Individuals, and Decriminalizing Sex Work

by | Jun 29, 2017

The chair of the Libertarian Party of Chicago, Justin Tucker, and Outright Libertarians recently hosted heroic sex worker rights activist, journalist, and proprietor of The Honest Courtesan blog, Maggie McNeill, while she was promoting her latest book of short stories, The Forms of Things Unknown.

Maggie has been a sex worker rights activist since 2004. She regularly reports on sex work news, critiques the way her profession is treated in the media and by governments, and has become renowned as an expert on the subject by academics and journalists alike. Her work has been featured in Cato Unbound, Reason Magazine, and she was most recently interviewed on renegade historian Thaddeus Russell’s new podcast, Unregistered.

Before the Chicago event, Maggie sat down with Hard Lens Media’s Kit Cabello to discuss individual liberty, the fight over sex work decriminalization in America, and the expansive power of the state to regulate, degrade, and persecute individuals engaged in voluntary association and peaceful commerce.

Maggie McNeill

Maggie McNeill was a librarian in suburban New Orleans, but after an acrimonious divorce economic necessity inspired her to take up sex work; from 1997 to 2006 she worked first as a stripper, then as a call girl and madam. She eventually married her favorite client and retired to a ranch in Oklahoma, but began escorting part-time again in 2010 and full-time again early in 2015 after another divorce (this time amicable). She has been a sex worker rights activist since 2004, and since 2010 has written a daily blog called “The Honest Courtesan” (http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/) which examines the realities, myths, history, lore, science, philosophy, art, and every other aspect of prostitution; she also reports sex work news, critiques the way her profession is treated in the media and by governments, and is frequently consulted by academics and journalists as an expert on the subject.

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