I will go with thee, and be thy guide,
In thy most need to go by thy side. – Everyman
A personal blog is like its author’s online “home”, and those who read and comment there are like guests. And though the party here generally grew gradually, there have been several periods of explosive growth, most recently from late February to late March. Today’s column is a sort of welcome to all my new readers, but regulars may want to stick around as well because I’m going to give a little tour and I might end up telling you something you don’t already know. So come on in, get comfortable, let me offer you a drink and we’ll get started.
First of all, why “The Honest Courtesan”? I used to have a little box in the right-hand column explaining it, but had to retire it to make room for the Twitter feed at the beginning of the year. The name of my site is the literal translation of the Renaissance Italian term cortigiana onesta, meaning a courtesan who provided real companionship and intellectual stimulation in addition to sex. I learned of the term via Margaret Rosenthal’s book of the same title, which was the story of a Venetian courtesan named Veronica Franco; a movie named Dangerous Beauty was based on it. Notice the two hyperlinks in that last sentence? I use them a great deal (some might even say too much); they’ll take you either to old columns or to outside websites that will give you more information about whatever it is. If you’ve got the time, following them from any given post is a good way for new readers to catch up on my back-catalog.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If you look up above my eyes there, you’ll see some tabs that may come in handy. The “Introduction” is actually just a static copy of my very first column, and will give you some idea of what I’m about if you haven’t figured that out already. Next to it is the “Index” tab; if you move your cursor over it you’ll see drop-downs for a multi-part subject index. The primary index is an alphabetical listing of posts by title, while the subject index is exactly that; both are totally hyperlinked for ease of use. If you want to know what I have to say about any given topic, the subject index is your friend. The next tab is “Resources”, and in the drop-down you’ll find “Bibliography”, “Filmography” and “Quotes”. The resources tab is a catalog of all the supplemental materials (mostly PDFs and a few very large image files) stored in the blog which don’t appear as posts or pages; the bibliography and filmography contain reviews of books and films, and the quote page is a selection of quotes about harlots or harlotry, most of which have appeared as epigrams on one or more of my columns. The last tab, “Offsite”, contains links (newest at the top) to places I’ve been interviewed, discussed at length or published guest blogs; its drop-down features “Links” (which are links to sites which themselves carry permanent links to this blog) and “Criticisms, Witticisms and Praise”, which is a list of cool, witty or otherwise notable statements others have made about me, even if they’re not flattering. These pages (other than the introduction) are all works in progress, so you may want to scan them every so often to see if there’s anything new.
Now let’s move over to the right-hand column, which remains in place no matter what page you visit. At the top is a calendar, which will let you go to whatever I posted on any given day. You’ll notice I post every day, but only once a day; I schedule my columns in advance to automatically publish at 10:01 UTC so all my readers can access them on the proper date, though the local time ranges from late evening in New Zealand to one minute past midnight in Hawaii. Every Saturday (give or take a day) I publish “That Was the Week That Was”, a synopsis of news items from the past week. Many of these are “updates”, stories that remind me of previous columns in some way or another; I provide links to those columns, so that’s another good way for new readers to catch up. Sometimes TW3 (as we call it for short) gets pushed to Friday or Sunday because of some date-dependent column on Saturday, but it will always be one of those three days. Once per month (usually but not always in the middle third) I publish a “fictional interlude”, an original tale with a prostitute as one of the important characters, and once about every 35 days or so I publish a “harlotography”, the biography of a famous whore.
The next box down in the right column is my Twitter feed; it displays my last five “tweets” and features a button to allow you to “follow” me. I use Twitter to call attention to whore-related news stories as I see them, to publicize articles on human rights issues which aren’t really appropriate for my blog, to “retweet” interesting or amusing items from other people and to publicize my daily columns. Even if you have no interest in Twitter you can click on the links you see in that box, and directly below it is another button which will sign you up to receive my daily column via email. Below that is a box with my email address and helpful instructions on how to ensure your message gets past my very aggressive filter-daemon.
If you keep going down that column, the next thing you’ll discover is a set of five boxes containing various links. The first, “A Few References”, contains links to several important columns. “Advice for Clients” and “Maggie’s Amazon Wishlist” are self-explanatory; “Handy Figures” is a list of numerical figures about prostitution with links to where the information can be found, and “Safety in Numbers” is a list of every column or study on this site which contains facts and figures about sex work, including a number of PDFs of scholarly studies. Though both “Handy Figures” and “Safety in Numbers” are posts rather than pages, I periodically update them to reflect new additions. Finally, there’s “House Rules”, which was my column of one year ago today; it contains a few simple guidelines to make everyone’s visit here more pleasant. If you just plan to read without contributing or if you’ve been commenting for a while you can probably ignore it, but if you’re a new commenter it might be a good idea to acquaint yourself with that post. Incidentally, that “one year ago today” link is something you’ll see in every column until early July; sometimes it’s embedded in the column proper and sometimes appended at the end, but it’s always there somewhere and provides yet another way for new readers to catch up. As of July 10th it will mostly become a part of “That Was the Week That Was”, though individual columns may still have such a reference when appropriate.
The other four link boxes all feature external links. “Friends of Whores” are sites which, though run by non-sex workers, actively support our rights. “Organizations and Allies” are various nonprofit organizations which support sex worker rights; some are sex worker organizations and some have a larger mission which includes sex worker rights or outreach. “Resources” are various reference materials on other sites, and “Whorish Media” are websites by or about sex workers, including a couple of group blogs and some items just for fun. Below the link boxes is a widget that allows you to look up posts by category. Next comes the definition of my own coinage “neofeminist”, and finally a legal disclaimer (basically stating you can borrow my stuff as long as you give me credit).
That concludes this tour of The Honest Courtesan; I hope it proved educational if not entertaining, and that you visit often. And if you have any questions, just ask them in the comment section below and I’ll be happy to answer them.
There’s so much thought put into everything here it’s SCARY. This is like the “Jimmi Hendrix” blog of all blogs. I can’t think of a better laid out FREE blog administered by one person.
You reminded us above that you do a column on a famous harlot once every 35 days or so. Have you ever considered including some famous “groupies” … like Connie Hamzy, Bebe Buell, Morgana Welch, Pamela Des Barres, etc?
Of course – I bet you haven’t, and these women would probably take offense at even being associated with the term “whore”. However, personally I just kind of see them as a modern-day courtesans who inspired a lot of very good music – which isn’t unlike what many of the great courtesans of old did.
Thank you, Krulac! Part of that is just my personality; you should see my pantry and personal library. And back when I did a lot of game-mastering my players used to make fun of me for it:
Player 1: Hey Maggie, what kind of widgets are common in this city?
Player 2: I’ll bet she’s got a table for it.
Player 3: Or a chart.
Me: Ha, ha, very funny.
Player 2: But you do, don’t you?
Me (in a small voice): Yes.
Another part is my librarianship, and the third part is the fact that this is like a full-time job for me when my husband’s travelling, which is most of the time. One day maybe I’ll figure out a way to monetize it, but when I do I promise it will be unobtrusive (i.e. nobody will have to pay a dime unless he wants to).
I think groupies are probably a bit over the line, though I do see what you’re saying; by that standard I’d even have to include women like Elizabeth Taylor and Christina Ricci, who have inspired music, films and art. And that risks dissipating my message – that it’s actually pretty normal to take money for sex – so I think I’ll leave it alone.
What? Girl … YOU played dungeons and dragons???!!!
Oh … My … God!
DMed even. Take a close look at what’s on the table in that kitten cleavage picture:
And this one’s much more obvious:
Damn that pictures made me want to dig out my old AD&D 2nd ed manuals and give them a go, but I kind of like 3.5 now… 😛
And we won’t talk about 4th ed……
Woot! Another gamer.
I’m not much of a D&D player, but I love Call of Cthulhu. (Which is abbreviated CoC by gamers, but walking around cheerfully saying you love CoC can get a girl a reputation.)
I’ve never played CoC, but I really wanted to; Frank has the books but never got a game together. We played a lot of Champions, though.
About six months ago, one of the local libraries had a gaming day, and I ran a couple of CoC games. I’ve been asked to do so again, and might do.
I’ve also played CoC at GenCon and Origins.
Since I also have a love for things steampunky, I also play several steampunk games like Ars Mechanicia, Victorians and NAGS.
Did somebody say “steampunk?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPH1OoTobtk&fmt=18
They played at A-KON year before last. I waved a blinky binky around because my throat was too sore for me to yell.
I played D&D a couple of times but guys really got teased for playing it.
When I was in my military training pipeline there were basically two factions of guys on Saturday nights in Great Lakes, IL. One group that stayed in the barracks and had “D&D Orgies” (that’s what we called them – and one group that headed out to a theater in Kenosha, WI to participate in the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” antics.
I was in the latter group – because I’ve always like “weird” girls and there were always PLENTY of them at the RHPS! 😛
There’re plenty of “weird” girls in gaming, too. And you might be interested in knowing that one of the NPCs in the very first campaign I DMed (at the age of 14) was a cleric who was a sacred prostitute.
You might also be interested in the fact that I did RHPS for a while; I’ll bet you can even guess which part I liked to play (look at the hair). 🙂
Oh jaysus! I can only imagine! 🙂
Sweet baked potatoes. Rearrange as necessary. Add butter and/or brown sugar.
In the parlance of one of my friend groups: <3
It's one of those moments where I feel sad that I tend toward submissive behaviors. Ah, well.
Even great apes can play D&D – love it!
“Even great apes can play D&D”
Yeah, especially that orangutan from Saturday. That’s why she’s hooking: where else is an orangutan going to get the money to buy all those books?
On loan from the librarian of the UU of Ankh-Morpork….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unseen_University
AD&D player/DM here too. Writer of Worlds, etc. We loved it. Alas, grup life gets in the way of getting more than three grups together for several hours at a time.
Still got the campaigns we played, the maps of the world, the background stories, ledgends and myths that emerged as I was writing the world, and the guys were playing their way through it.
Imagination? Eternal and Priceless 🙂
I notice your RSS feed hasn’t sent a thing since March 10.
What? I didn’t know; I’ll have a look.
Maggie,about courtesans,i dont know if you have heard of a book called londons sinful secret by dan cruikshank,it is based on 18th century london and argues that most courtesans in london didnt choose the life,but were initially country girls deceived by madams and coerced into prostitution,that although they became wealthy when men got bored with them,they ended up to be ”common ”prostitutes and many died of syphilis.while the two last arguments make sense i wonder if the first comes from white slavery hysteria.he bases the facts of off a series of engravings called ”a harlots progress”by william hogarth,based on the life of a real life prostitute.when i read about french or venetian courtesans,it is said that they were free willed from the beginning.i wonder if the same was truth about the british ones.
Sounds to me like typical trafficking hysteria; anyone who would accept classic moralist propaganda like Hogarth as a valid source of information is clearly delusional.
are you familiar with hogarths work?in wikipedia it is said that he was an artist and social critic but i cant find anything that says that he used propaganda to push his own puritanical ideas
That’s what “social critic” generally means, especially in the 18th century. Consider that the title of that series of engravings is a reference to Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and I think you’ll see what I mean. There is a long tradition, especially in the Judeo-Christian religions, of sticking one’s nose into other people’s business in the name of “morality”, and using art or literature to present exaggerated, lurid portraits of the “consequences of sin”. I wish I could speak of it in the past tense, but it’s still alive and well in the “trafficking” hysteria, “sex addiction”, the “war on drugs”, etc, etc.
yeah,seeing what pilgrims progress was it makes sense that its moralist propaganda.it just amazes me what luxury of time and lack of real problems theese kind of people have even today to keep themselves busy with who fucks whom and how.
Sounds a bit like the plot to Fanny Hill 🙂
There was no need to “traffic” women during that time. People flocked to the city from the countryside seeking a better life than working the fields or milking cows. Most of the girls hoped to get a job as a household servant or later in the period, in a factory, but just like today, there were more applicants than there were jobs, so they opted for the next best (and very lucrative) thing.
The age of consent was 12, so it was not necessary to procure young girls illegally either.
There were tens of thousands of “lower middle class” women in Victorian London whose only work options were largely either being a seamstress or a prostitute. Seamstresses had terribly hight mortality rates from malnutrition and overwork, so many of them did a bit of street walking on the side or became mistresses to those who could afford to keep them.
As Maggie said, the forced prostitution of girls was highly unlikely. It should be remembered that newspapers and “penny dreadfuls” thrived on scandal, even more than today. It was the time when the newspapers were full of stories of characters like “Springheel Jack” who supposedly hopped around like a human kangaroo, slaughtering people in the street.
THat ‘courtesan and the creature’ picture has cracked me up, I think you need another picture of a beastie gnawing on a neo femmes guts or something.
Isn’t that a great pic? I found it while searching for pictures over 18 months ago, and I just couldn’t find a use for it until today! 🙂
Quite sexy, I have to admit 😛
Being Italian I can confirm the translation of “Honest courtesan” into “Cortigiana onesta” is correct. The meaning is the one Maggie describes in this post.
[…] I step up to the bar, Boston still playing in my ears. I squat down, grab the bar and go for the first rep … I need to do 12 reps here. This is when a random thought of Maggie McNeil with a kitty stuck between her tits enters my head. CLICK HERE AND PAGE DOWN FOR THE KITTY PIC. […]
I’ll have to admit, when it comes to the arguments against forcing “country girls” into prostitution, I look to Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. What a resourceful young woman!