There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. – Oscar Wilde
Over the past seven months more and more readers have discovered my blog, and the many visits and many links from the websites and Twitter accounts of those who enjoy my essays have made The Honest Courtesan that much easier to find on Google for those looking for information on prostitution and the lives and thoughts of whores. And that’s a good thing not just for my vanity but also for all sex workers, because every source which presents real information instead of the ugly propaganda spread by the prohibitionists increases our chances of being heard by those in the general public who otherwise might not ever find the truth. In the past few weeks, I’ve been contacted by three different Dallas-area reporters who discovered my column of November 23rd and decided to consult me about the myth of 10,000 hookers invading Dallas for the Super Bowl. One of these reporters emailed me a bit too late to make his deadline, but I gave telephone interviews to the other two and found both of them intelligent, inquisitive men who were genuinely interested at getting at the truth rather than simply transcribing press releases from special-interest groups.
Jason Whitely of WFAA-TV in Dallas contacted me on January 12th and interviewed me the next day; though the telephone interview wasn’t used in the final story, I pointed him to the links which appeared in Tuesday’s column (the ones debunking the World Cup and Olympics hysteria). The report aired on television Monday night and can be seen on the station’s website. Then last Friday (January 28th) I spoke with Pete Kotz of Village Voice Media; his article appears in this week’s free Dallas Observer newspaper and is also online at the Observer’s website. I gave him the same links I had given to Mr. Whitely and he also did a lot of independent research himself for the article, so it’s well worth reading both for the information and the joy of seeing another thinking person who recognizes nonsense when he sees it. My favorite part:
This isn’t to say that the sex trade isn’t alive and well. It is. Nor is it to imply there are no such thing as teen prostitutes. There are. The problem is that most of what we believe remains fixed in a blaxploitation film from 1973, where menacing pimps named Lester beat their weeping charges with diamond-encrusted canes.
Ask Maggie McNeill.
That’s not her real name. It’s the pen name she uses on her website, The Honest Courtesan, where she dispenses wisdom on all things hooker. She ran an escort service in New Orleans for six years, supplying ladies for the 2002 Super Bowl. As she sees it, almost all we believe about the industry is fallacy.
That, and the part about whores’ super invisible powers. He also independently discovered the Schapiro Group’s report and came to pretty much the same conclusions as we did.
But on Monday good luck came, as the superstition tells us it does, in threes. The news articles appeared in the evening, but in the morning my column “Numerology” was featured in the “Morning Links” section of The Agitator, generating the best day I’ve had yet: 3486 views, of which 934 came directly from The Agitator and hundreds of others from references, retweets and the like. My favorite headline from all of these was the one used by Econjeff: “Former prostitute out-researches CNN…and does so in only 90 minutes.”
In the same morning, I received an invitation from regular reader Kelly Michaels to appear in her Nymphtalk Live podcast that evening; I of course jumped at the chance and so my readers can now enjoy the dubious pleasure of listening to me talking about my favorite subject with Kelly for the last 90 minutes of a two-hour podcast (the program opens with a five-minute sexual fantasy and the next half hour is on Tantric masturbation, which I’m sure my readers will find interesting as well). And though I’m not exactly in love with the sound of my own voice when it isn’t resonating in my own skull cavities, I hope to hear it a lot more often in the future because that will mean I’m getting the word out, telling people the truth about whoring and answering the trafficking fetishists and the Amber Lyons and the Annie Loberts and, if I ever get as brave as Laura Agustín, maybe even the Mira Sorvinos.
I understand Maggie, I hate my voice too, but I will tell you, as others tell me your voice is ultra sexy…especially because of the intelligence with which you speak.
I had so much fun that night, that toward the end of a really long show, I forgot that it was not just you and I talking!
To your readers, an invitation-
I am incorporating “Hobby News” into my podcast, and offer a microphone when one is needed. Using the Contact us link on my website is one simple way to find me.
Thank you again for accepting on such short notice! I look forward to doing it again one day!
I had fun, too, even though we were up long past my old-lady midnight bedtime! It was my pleasure, and I would love to do it again sometime as long as you promise to learn to control that mute button! 😉
I read a famous person’s blog! Whooo!
Not the rose, but near the rose…
LOL, I’m not sure how famous I am, but I appreciate the support! 🙂
I want to thank you for the Brandy mentions in the podcast – that was way cool 🙂 Loved finally hearing your voice Maggie and seeing your name in some of the above mentioned news stories. As you know, I always read the comments in addition to the articles and I could jack slap one commenter … idiot that she/he is … but if I did that with everyone I thought deserved it I’d never have time for anything else! Any who… kudos dear friend. Maybe we could have a three way sometime? Woohoo!
Hell yes, and I mean that any way you care to take it! 🙂
hello maggie, good to hear people are finding you, and thanks for continuing to read me. at this point may is it okay if i ask you to spell my surname right? it’s agustín. ag, not aug. it’s a common mistake so don’t worry!
best, laura
Ack! Laura, I can’t believe I have been misspelling your name and never noticed it before! I’ll do a search and fix it immediately in every essay where I’ve screwed it up. Mea maxima culpa!
@Brandy….. When you say can we have a three way sometime, is that a Kelly Maggie Brandy? Because if you are, I am hopping a plane yesterday!
😀
i was going to put you on my email list but see you have an earthlink address and earthlink hates nodo50 and rejects everything out of hand. have you got another alternate one?
Hmm, let’s try a test; I’ll put your full email address in a filter, you send me as test email today and we’ll see if it rejects. If so, I have a way around it. 😉
Since I happen to live in Dallas, I picked up the Dallas Observer. Maggie, you done well.
I wish I had thought of this before, but for your readers that want to skip right to the last ninety minutes….there is an option on the podcast player on the link that you have in your article that says “open in your default player or in new window” it is tiny print right at the bottom of the blue square player.
Opening it in your default player (usually windows media) will allow you to fast forward, or rewind….(should you want to listen to the sexual fantasy again….;) )
Enjoy!
How the hell did I NOT know about something called Nypmhtalk Live?
I must be slippin’.
Well, now you know. 😉
Congratulations, Maggie. It’s nice to see a little balance to the delusional shit that the press keeps passing of as the truth.
Thanks, Dave and Sailor! What really excited me is that Tracy Quan and Norma Jean Almodovar both commented on that Observer piece! 🙂
Congrats Maggie!
Hope you’re keeping an eye on arrest stories — I know they’re fishing this weekend.
XX
Oh, I’m sure they are! But you and I both know that they won’t find anything out of the ordinary, and this will be quietly dropped until next year.
I’m pretty sick of this particular moral panic; can you hysterics please move on to a different one soon? 🙁
MSNBC Live just ran a story about the tens of thousands of hookers being trafficked into Dallas this weekend. I’d love for them to do a follow-up next week, about just how many teenage sex slaves were rescued, and how many in the first week of Februaries when the Superbowl is NOT in town.
They never do follow-ups when they’re wrong, and unfortunately the general public never seems to remember the predictions a few weeks later. 🙁
[…] Michaels of nymphtalk.com has a pod cast where she talked to Maggie McNeill (and yours truly was […]
Everybody finds their voice terrible… but I’ll agree with those who said you, at least, have no reason for that belief! 🙂
I’m glad to see you’ve had a better experience with reporters now. The last one you mentioned made it sound as if there was no hope of finding conscientious reporters. Who knows? — maybe the future is brighter than it so often seems!…
🙂
Damn I get sick for a few days and look how much I miss!!!
Congratulations Maggie!
Millions of USA government dollars are being spent to fight a crime that is extremely rare. The US government assumes that all prostitutes on Earth are sex trafficked slaves.
Forced into it against their will. This is NOT true of MOST Prostitution.
I have included in my post some very important links and information about this, that you should read. It is important to let the truth be told. The lying people get all the press. It is time for the people who tell the truth to get the press.
The numbers of sex trafficking sex slaves:
There is a lot of controversy over the numbers of adult woman who are forced sex slaves. The real factual answer is that no one knows. There is hard evidence that the sex slavery/sex trafficking issue continues to report false information and is greatly exaggerated by politicians, the media, and aid groups, feminist and religious organizations that receive funds from the government, The estimate of adult women who become new sex slaves ranges anywhere from 40 million a year to 5,000 per year all of which appear to be much too high. They have no evidence to back up these numbers, and no one questions them about it. Their sources have no sources, and are made up numbers. In fact if some of these numbers are to believed which have either not changed or have been increased each year for the past twenty years, all woman on earth would currently be sex slaves. Yet, very few real forced against their will sex slaves have been found.
It is not easy for criminals to engage in this activity:
Sex trafficking is illegal and the pentities are very severe. It is very difficult to force someone to be a sex slave, they would have to have 24 hour guards posted and be watched 365 days a year, 24 hours per day. Have the threat of violence if they refused, and have no one notice and complain to the authorities or police. They would need to hide from the general public yet still manage to see customers from the general public and not have the customers turn the traffickers in to the police. They would need to provide them with medical care, food, shelter, and have all their basic needs met. They would need to have the sex slaves put on a fake front that they enjoyed what they were doing, act flirtatious and do their job well.
They would have to deal with the authorities looking for the missing women, and hide any money they may make, since it comes from illegal activity. They must do all of this while constantly trying to prevent the sex slaves from escaping and reporting them to the police. They would need to prevent the general public from reporting them into the police.
This is extremely difficult to do, which makes this activity rare. These criminals would be breaking dozens of major laws not just one. Kidnapping itself is a serious crime. There are many laws against sex trafficking, sex slavery, kidnapping, sex abuse, rape, sexual harassment etc. If someone is behind it, they will be breaking many serious laws, be in big trouble, and will go to jail for many long years. And do you actually think that there is a long line of people who want to have a career as a sex slave kidnapping pimp?
While there are some women who may be true victims. And it is possible for this to happen in rare situations. This is a small rare group of people and that the numbers and scale of this crime is exaggerated. The very nature of someone pulling off a kidnapping and forced sex for profit appears to be very difficult. Since it would be difficult this makes this crime rare. Not impossible, but extremely rare. And do you really think that millions of people are lining up to make a career out of being a illegal violent sex slave kidnapping pimp?
A key point is that on the sidelines the adult prostitutes themselves are not being listened to. They oppose laws against prostitution. But no one wants to listen to the prostitutes themselves. Only to the self appointed experts that make up numbers and stories many of which have never met a real forced sex slave or if they did it was only a few. The media and government never ask the prostitutes themselves what would help them in terms of laws.
Many women in the sex business are independent workers. They don’t have a pimp.They work for themselves, advertise themselves, and keep all the money for themselves. No one forces them, because there isn’t anyone to force them. They go out and find their own customers, set their own prices, and arrange everything by themselves. Sometimes they may employ others to help them, but these are not pimps. If for example, she hires an internet web design company to make a website for her, does that make the web design company a pimp? If she pays a phone company for a phone to do business, does this make the phone company a pimp? If she puts an ad in the paper, does this make the editor a pimp? If she puts the money she makes into a bank account does this make the bank a pimp?
A lot of anti prostitution groups would say yes. Everyone and everybody is a pimp. These groups make up lies, and false statistics that no one bothers to check. A big reason they do this is because it provides high paying jobs for them. They get big donations, and grants from the government, charity, churches, etc. to have these groups, and pay these high salaries of the anti prostitution workers.
Sex Traffficking in Sports Events:
Super Bowl 2011:
According to the media hype There was supposed to be hundreds of thousands of under age child sex slaves kidnapped and forced to have sex with super bowl fans. At the Dallas Super Bowl 2011. WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL OF THEM????????????
Well, as I predicted it was all a big lie told by various anti-prostitution groups and the Dallas Women’s Foundation which is a anti-prostitution group that lies in order to get grant money from the government and charities to pay their high salaries. As proved in the link below:
Top FBI agent in Dallas (Robert Casey Jr.) sees no evidence of expected spike in child sex trafficking:
“Among those preparations was an initiative to prevent an expected rise in sex trafficking and child prostitution surrounding the Super Bowl. But Robert Casey Jr., special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas office, said he saw no evidence that the increase would happen, nor that it did.“In my opinion, the Super Bowl does not create a spike in those crimes,” he said. “The discussion gets very vague and general. People mixed up child prostitution with the term human trafficking, which are different things, and then there is just plain old prostitution.”
http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/super-bowl/local/20110302-top-fbi-agent-in-dallas-praises-super-bowl-security-effort-sees-no-evidence-of-expected-spike-in-child-sex-trafficking.ece
This myth of thousands or millions of underage sex slaves tries to make every sports fan a sex criminal. No matter what the sport is, or in what country it is in.
Brian McCarthy isn’t happy. He’s a spokesman for the NFL. Every year he’s forced to hear why his customers are adulterers and child molesters. Brian McCarthy says the sport/super bowl sex slave story is a urban legend, with no truth at all.
I do not like the idea of people getting the wrong information and believing lies, no matter what the topic is. The Sex trafficking, slavery issue is one of the biggest lies being told today. It is amazing to me how people will believe such lies so easily. The media is to blame for this. I wonder why they feel such a need to report wrong stats, numbers and information about this topic without doing proper research.
While this may happen in very rare limited situations, the media will say that millions of people are sex slaves without doing any real research on the topic. Only taking the word of special interest anti-prostitution groups which need to generate money in the form of huge government grants from taxpayers, and charities. These “non profit” group’s employees make huge salaries, therefore they need to lobby the government, and inflate and invent victims in order to get more money into their organizations. If you look into how many real kidnapped forced against their will sex slaves there are, and not just take the anti-prostitution groups word for it. You will be very surprised.
Where are all the forced sex slaves? I would like to meet the millions of slaves and see for myself if they were kidnapped and forced against their will.
These groups lobby the government in a big way, getting Politicians to truly believe their lies.
This is an attempt to over inflate an issue in order to get more government money to these organizations. As a tax payer, voter, and resident I don’t want the government to mislead me.
I would like to see a news organization do a full report on the lies, myths and exaggerated numbers being told about sex trafficking slaves. The articles about the super bowl sex slaves, has been proved wrong many times, but news organizations still report about it, as if it were fact.
== World Cup 2006 ==
Politicians, religious and aid groups, still repeat the media story that 40,000 prostitutes were trafficked into Germany for the 2006 world cup – long after leaked police documents revealed there was no truth at all in the tale. A baseless claim of 25,000 trafficking victims is still being quoted, recently, for example, by the Salvation Army in written evidence to the home affairs select committee, in which they added: “Other studies done by media have suggested much higher numbers.” Which has been proven by the German police to be completely false. Yet people still talk about these false numbers as if it were fact. ==World Cup 2010 ==
Again using the made up number of 40,000 prostitutes trafficked:The behavior of fans in South Africa has run contrary to what was predicted prior to the start of the tournament after David Bayever told World Cup organizers in March it was feared that up to 40,000 extra prostitutes could converge in the host nation to meet the expected demand. Bayever, deputy chairperson of South Africa’s Central Drug Authority (CDA) that advises on drug abuse but also works with prostitutes, warned: “Forty-thousand new prostitutes. As if we do not have enough people of our own, we have to import them to ensure our visitors are entertained.”But the tournament in 2010, if anything, has seen the modern-day soccer fan attracted to art galleries and museums over brothels.A trend that has seen a drop in revenue across the board for the prostitution industry, which is illegal in South Africa. “Zobwa,” the chairperson of Sisonke — an action group representing around 70 street prostitutes in Johannesburg — said business had been down over the last month. “The World Cup has been devastating. We thought it was going to be a cash cow but it’s chased a lot of the business away. It’s been the worst month in my company’s history,” the owner and founder of one of Johannesburg’s most exclusive escort companies told CNN.
In recent years, every time there has been a major international sporting event, a group of government officials, campaigning feminists, pliant journalists and NGOs have claimed that the movement of thousands of men to strange foreign countries where there will be lots of alcohol and horniness will result in the enslavement of women for the purposes of sexual pleasure. Obviously. And every time they have simply doubled the made-up scare figures from the last international sporting event, to make it look like this problem of sport/sex/slavery gets worse year on year. Yet each year it is proved false.This myth tries to make every sports fan a sex criminal. No matter what the sport is, or in what country it is in. These anti-prostitution groups need to in invent a victim that does not exist in order to get press attention.
Sex Trafficking in Sports Events links:
http://www.dallasobserver.com/2011-01-27/news/the-super-bowl-prostitute-myth-100-000-hookers-won-t-be-showing-up-in-dallas/
http://www.dallasobserver.com/2011-03-03/news/super-bowl-prostitution-100-000-hookers-didn-t-show-but-america-s-latest-political-scam-did/
http://www.dallasobserver.com/2011-03-03/news/sex-traffick911-press-release/
The Sex Trafficking/Slavery idea is used to outlaw all prostitution around the world by saying that all women are victims even if they do it willing.
This hurts any real victims because it labels all sex workers as victims. Everything I heard about this problem was Americans complaining about it, but I never heard from the so-called victims themselves complaining about it. Why is that? Many of the self appointed experts complaining about this have never even met or seen a real forced against their will victim.
The problems I see with the sex traffic idea is that suppose some of the women were not forced into this type of prostitution, but were willing and wanted to do this type of work, and went out of their way to do this type of work. (It is a lot of fast easy money, they don’t need a degree, or a green card.) All they have to do is lie and say that someone forced them into it. When perhaps, no one did.
If a illegal allien for example is the victim all they have to do is lie and here are their benefits based on the USA anti-traffic prostitution laws:1. They don’t have to go to jail or be arrested.
2. They get to stay and live in America, and become U.S. citizens
3. The U.S. Government will provide them with housing, food, education and will cater to them since they will be considered victims. . They will be considered victimed refugees, and can become American citizens.The way I see it is that this USA government system will encourage people to lie in order to receive all the benefits listed above.While there are some women who may be true victims. This is a small rare group of people.
What hard evidence does the police have that these women were forced slaves? Were all the women that the police saw in fact slaves? Did the police prove without a doubt due to hard concrete evidence that the women were victims of being slaves and forced against their will? Did they account for all the benefits they would receive if they lied?
I find it very hard to believe that most women in this business are forced against their will to do it. It would just be too difficult. There may be some exceptions but, I believe this is an attempt to over inflate an issue in order to get more government money to these organizations. As a tax payer, voter, and resident I don’t want the government to mislead me.
== In the USA ==
On August 5, 2008U.S. Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine uncovered discrepancies in a program dedicated to cracking down on human trafficking, McClatchy Newspapers report. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spent millions of dollars on combating the international trafficking of indentured servants and sex slaves, including by creating task forces across the U.S. that identified and helped victims. Over four years, the department paid $50 million to the task forces and other groups. Conservative groups, who pressured the administration to go after sex trafficking more aggressively, applauded his efforts.
Critics have questioned whether the problem was being hyped. Fine found in an audit issued that the task forces and other groups set up to help were ‘significantly’ overstating the number of victims they served. By examining a sampling of cases, Fine found the task forces had exaggerated by as much as 165 percent. Making matters worse, the inflated numbers were included in annual reports to Congress.
== In the United Kingdom ==
In October, 2009 – The biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids on sex workers in a six-month campaign by government departments, specialist agencies and every police force in the country. The failure has been disclosed by a Guardian investigation which also suggests that the scale of and nature of sex trafficking into the UK has been exaggerated by politicians and media.
Nick Davis of the Guardian newspaper writes:
Current and former ministers have claimed that thousands of women have been imported into the UK and forced to work as sex slaves, but most of these statements were either based on distortions of quoted sources or fabrications without any source at all.
===In India and Nepal===
If media reports are to be believed, there would be no young girls left in Nepal. Oft-quoted figures such as 5,000-7,000 Nepali girls being trafficked across the border to India every year and 150,000-200,000 Nepali women and girls being trapped in brothels in various Indian cities, were first disseminated in 1986, and have remained unaltered over the next two decades. The report that first quoted these statistics was from the Indian Health Association, Mumbai, written by AIDS Society of India secretary general, Dr. I S Gilada, and presented in a workshop in 1986. Subsequently, a version of this report was published as an article in The Times of India on January 2, 1989. To date, the source of this figure remains a mystery. Unfortunately, such a lack of clarity is more the norm than the exception when it comes to reporting on trafficking in women and girls.
There needs to be a distinct separation of
1. Child sex trafficking
2. Adult sex Trafficking
3. Adult consensual
prostitution.
4. Sex Slavery
They are not the same. Adult Women are NOT children.
Media coverage of trafficking and adult women’s migration and sex work is confused and inaccurate. The media wrongly uses the terms ‘sex work’ and ‘trafficking’ and adult sex work and child sex trafficking synonymously, perpetuating stereotypes and stigmatization, and contributing to the violation of women’s right to free movement and livelihood options. They assume that if any woman moves from place to place for sex work that they are being trafficking. The media, politicians, aid groups, feminist, and religious organizations does not take into account that she may do this of her own free will. Too often women are treated like children. Adult women are not children.
Most migrant women, including those in the sex industry, have made a clear decision, says a new study, to leave home and take their chances abroad. They are not “passive victims” in need of “saving” or sending back by western campaigners.
Sex Trafficking/Slavery is used by many groups as a attempt to outlaw all prostitution around the world by saying that all women are victims even if they do it willing. This hurts any real victims because it labels all sex workers as victims.
This is done by the media, aid groups, NGO’s, feminists, politicians, and religious organizations that receive funds from the government. There are very strong groups who promote that all adult women who have sex are victims even if they are willing, enjoy it and go out of there way to get it. These groups try to get the public to believe that no adult women in their right mind would ever go into the sex business unless she was forced to do so, weather she knew it or not. They say that 100% of all sex workers are trafficking victims.
They do this in order to label all men as sex offenders and wipe out all consensual prostitution. Which is what their real goal is. There is almost no one who challenges or questions them about their false beliefs. Therefore, the only voices you hear are of these extreme groups. These groups want to label all men as terrible sex offenders for seeing a willing adult sex worker. No one stands up to say this is foolish, the passive public says nothing.
These groups even say that all men who marry foreign women are terrible sex predators who take advange of these “helpless foreign women wives”.
These groups believe that two adults having consensual sex in private should be outlawed. Since they believe that it is impossible for a man to have sex with a woman without abusing the woman in the process.
This is an example of feminists and other groups exploiting the suffering of a small minority of vulnerable and abused women in order to further their own collective interests. For example, getting money from the government and Charity into their organizations. Rather than wanting to find the truth
Here are some good links about sex trafficking:
http://sextraffickingtruths.blogspot.com/
http://bebopper76.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/sex-trafficking-lies-myths/
What a lovely podcast! Lots of information – including the situation with Biloxi which I don’t think has been mentioned in the blog – and some humor too.
If only there was some way to get the masses to hear this long interview.
Got a 404 error when I clicked on the podcast link … page not findable.
Pat Powers sometimes these things happen, Just means you have to dig deeper. If she says she did a show, she did a show and her voice is out there. I heard her take on tribalism in the court rooms and I reflected upon my own times in a courtroom and thought the only reason I have ever faired as well as I did in a court room is because I know the law. Only the law is about to turn around on a lot of us. who knows if it is good or bad yet.