The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume II: Collected Essays from \ by Maggie McNeill

The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume II: Collected Essays from \ Reviews

• 
  Pedro L. Fragoso

  "After the legal precedent for violating a particular right is established with outcasts, it is easily extended to merely marginalized groups, and eventually to everyone (because you never know where those dirty witches/terrorists /sex traffickers/drug users/child molesters might be hiding; they look just like real people!) And by the time members of the majority group finally begin to wake up, all the cops are armed with tanks and machine guns and the judges have given them carte blanche to invade, rob, assault, violate, rape, maim and kill."
  
  This is an important book of itself, but its reading gains much by happening in these days of rioting and police brutality gone more berserk and more widely noticed. These essays are fundamentally about what it means to be "decent", to live a full life guided by moral values and ethical standings that are humane.
  
  "After thinking seriously about morality and ethics since my early teens, I eventually arrived about 25 years ago at a simple working definition of evil: “The attempt to inflict control upon others that they neither desire nor require.”"
  
  There are also powerful arguments on what being an adult entails: "Once we had a set of rules we all agreed to live by, but somewhere along the line the bullies started to cheat and everyone else was either too scared, too involved in their partisan squabbles or too invested in the system to say anything about it, so here we are. None of us, no matter how dispassionate or logical, is entirely free of irrational beliefs, and because we are all different there will always be a plethora of those beliefs. That’s why we should all insist that laws, public policies and official actions be based on facts rather than faith, and reason rather than emotion; though we will still disagree on the interpretation of those facts (and even, in many cases, what they are), such conflicts are inescapably tethered to the concrete in a way that hogwash about evil weeds, cursed weapons and unholy words could never be. It’s time to set aside childish things, and start dealing with one another like grownups."
  
  There are lots of great writing (in substance, structure and style) on sex, prostitution, freedom, and culture. There are essays on writing and the power of words. As usual, the whole thing is remarkable. Since the time is of anarchy and despotism, I have to include this quote: "But one way or another, it is insulting to the Founders’ memory to associate any patriotic feelings you have for the memory of the nation they created with the repressive fascist police state that now occupies its territory; the 4th of July is now a memorial rather than a celebration, and the Spirit of ‘76 is nothing but a ghost."
  
  There is so much that is relevant, that needs to be read and discussed, quoted and made into posters and pinned to walls. For instance: "Sexuality is a thing of the mind, not of the genitalia; as I so often say, the most important sex organ lies not between the legs, but between the ears." Or: "When the subject is abortion, “white feminists” chant “my body, my choice”, yet if we choose prostitution or commercial surrogacy our freedom of choice is denied and our judgment dismissed as the product of “false consciousness”, a nasty form of agency denial borrowed from Marxism and basically functioning as a euphemism for “We know better than you, so shut up and obey.”"
  
  This is the most important book you'll read this year; get on with it.