Contrary to what you may have heard from Ashton Kutcher, Amy Schumer, Kamala Harris, and other sex-work prohibitionists, not all sex workers are victims, not all sex workers are trafficked, and not all sex workers hate their jobs and are just waiting for some do-gooder police officer to rescue them. In fact, there are plenty of sex workers who do it not by coercion, but by choice.
There’s very little good data on the number of sex workers who are trafficked in the United States versus the number who do it by choice, but if you ask Maggie McNeill, the vast majority of sex workers fall into the latter camp. She’s in it, too: McNeill has been a sex worker, writer, and advocate for more than three decades, and her new documentary, The War on Whores, which was produced by Paul Johnson, will be screened at the Rendezvous on March 2, during the Seattle Annual Sex Work Symposium (SASS).
