Do you really have to be the ice queen intellectual or the slut whore? Isn’t there some way to be both? – Susan Sarandon
Anniversaries are one of those times at which we’re inspired to look back at the past to see where we’ve been; it’s a bit like sitting on top of a mountain and surveying the route one took to get there. And when I consider all that’s happened here since July 10th, 2010 all I can say is “wow”. Well, that’s not all I can say, or else the column would already be over, but I think you know what I mean. And what makes it even more impressive is looking at the figures I recorded in last year’s anniversary column: then I had written 365 columns, now it’s 731 (not counting the ones in queue you haven’t seen yet or the guest columns I’ve written for other blogs). But while the sheer size of this site has just slightly more than doubled (counting the indexes and other supplemental materials), all the other figures are far more than double. Last year there were about 8300 comments; now there are over 19,000. Then I had just under 250,000 hits; I reached 750,000 late last night and (Athena willing) should hit a million by the end of the year. 87 subscribers have grown to over 300, and that’s not counting the 500+ people who follow me on Twitter. My Google page rank is “5”, which I’m told is very good for a personal blog (Jezebel is only a 7), and that has almost certainly contributed to the number of researchers, reporters and other interested parties who approach me almost every week now with questions, interview requests and the like. I still haven’t managed to make any money from this gig yet, but that’s not why I do this anyhow; the important thing to me is helping the general public to understand that most whores really aren’t weird, scary, criminal, stupid, unethical, emotionally disturbed, victimized by men (except by those employed by governments to persecute us, of course) or any of the other dumb stereotypes with which prohibitionists and other moralists constantly libel us. And judging by the numbers, the fan mail and the reputation I’ve gained among activists, I think it’s safe to say that I’m achieving that to the extent that any one person can.
Last year at this time I started a new feature, “One Year Ago Today”, and though it’s been successful I also think it’s time to retire it as such. I’m still going to call attention to old columns when the text calls for it, of course, but I really don’t want to have to do both “one year ago today” and “two years ago today” features, so I’m going to shift those recaps to two other places: Every day I’ll do both of those on Twitter (non-users will be able to see them in the Twitter feed in the right-hand column), and “That Was the Week That Was” will have a “This Week in 2011” and “This Week in 2010” feature. Another change to TW3 will be a reduction in the number of items I feature there: it takes some doing to keep those columns at under 2000 words, so it will reduce my workload considerably if I extract a few bigger stories and feature them separately in another column (since I can nearly always manage to relate a few to each other). Since the “one year ago” feature will be less rigid now, it’ll be easy for me to leave a gap in the schedule to fit that sort of thing into, and that, too will reduce my workload. Don’t worry, I plan to keep doing a column every day for the foreseeable future; I’ve become more comfortable with shorter columns, which means I’ll be able to turn out daily essays without having to be concerned about padding them or finding more to say than the topic needs.
And that, as it turns out, is pretty much all I want to say on this topic, except for a big thank you to all my readers: thank you for reading what I have to say day after day; thank you for linking me all over the internet; thank you for all the moral support and respect; thank you for many amazing compliments; thank you for the lovely presents; thank you for giving me the opportunity to marry my two beloved professions (harlotry and librarianship) together; and thank you for visiting often enough to amplify my voice so that maybe, just maybe, what I have to say will eventually start reaching the ears of those who need so desperately to hear it.
Hi Maggie,
congratulations on making it this far.
I hope that my spreading your blog as far and wide as I can and my public statement that prostitution is LAWFUL and that there can be NO LAWFUL guvment intervention in that LAWFUL contract helps sex workers in some small way everywhere.
Just like divorced fathers, sex workers are people too.
Thank you, Maggie.
Happy Anniversary!!
You have a unique talent, Maggie – and it’s not just librarianship … it’s in the way you explain things in common, and sometimes complex language. It’s a unique blend and it makes your writing very interesting.
I personally think you should write a book – you already have it written basically – right here in this blog.
YES! I strongly second the ‘write a book’ sentiment!
Hi Maggie,
“so that maybe, just maybe, what I have to say will eventually start reaching the ears of those who need so desperately to hear it.”
I am intrigued by this comment. Who do you think are those who so desperately need to hear your message?
What do you think they are going to do if they do hear what you have to say?
It is my stated belief that decriminalization in this country will only be achieved by judicial fiat, just as abortion and gay rights were. Legislators cannot be counted on to do the right thing, but once in a while judges will. In about 15 years there will be a Roe vs. Wade or Lawrence vs. Texas for prostitution which will result in political wars like those around abortion, but it’s still better than what we have now. But we won’t even get there until a large enough number of young lawyers who recognize the injustice of prostitution law reach the judiciary.
The sad thing is when I was a child, that’s the way things looked like they were headed. Remember, that’s when pornography was made legal by judicial fiat. A great thing for America and a genie they have yet to stuff back in it’s bottle. (Though they still try.)
Then something terrible happened, I don’t know what, and we got rising sex hysteria. All of the sudden social mores seemed to start changing around me.
I was watching a Barney Miller episode the other day where they brought in a group of prostitutes. What the episode made clear was that except for a couple of uptight cops (one of whom didn’t like how one of the prostitutes was making Puerto Ricans look, and the other who was an uptight prude) everyone accepted it was a little silly but the cost of doing business. (“See you all next month” “But we already did our arrest for this month, Wojo.”) The show was actually subtley arguing for legalization by making the one uptight cop look like a prick and a hypocrite.
Some people blame HIV, but how is it that gay rights got more acceptable after the rise of HIV then?
I don’t believe in government by the courts. Especially when this argument is TOO EASY to argue in favor of. We can win this with the people – we just need to try real hard.
Courts didn’t do much for abortion – you have one clinic in the whole of Mississippi and there won’t be another. Gay rights? Most of the states have passed laws against Gay marriage. ObamaCare? Constitutionally legal and now state after state is bailing out on it – because they can.
Winning through the courts paints a target on your back – because people don’t like to see you win that way. They expect you to do the yeoman’s work of making an argument in a democratic republic.
We only need a few of YOU, Maggie – and we’re there!
I wish that were true, but it isn’t; politicians in this country NEVER give up power once they take it without some overwhelming reason. Every advancement in civil rights in the US for the past 50 years has been done by court order, and it isn’t going to change any time soon.
Sometimes legislators follow the judges lead. There’s a state or two where the legislature has voted in gay marriage, and a couple others where they tried and barely missed. You’ve got a (very) few Republicans arguing that supporting gay marriage is the proper stance for a good conservative. If there were a move to re-segregate schools, you’d have the most loudly-self-proclaimed conservatives in the country calling it big government interference.
But the courts had to act first.
As for Obamacare; once Obama is gone and opposing anything and everything he does or tries to do or suggests doing or is rumored that he might be thinking about suggesting that he might try to do…
Once that isn’t the Grand Holy Mission of the Republican Party anymore, all or most features of Obamacare will become fairly noncontroversial.
Happy anniversary, and congratulations for the increasing readership.
And I second the writing a book suggestion. Or two, you could publish the short stories as a collection.
your the best maggie.
“thank you for reading what I have to say day after day; thank you for linking me all over the internet; thank you for all the moral support and respect; thank you for many amazing compliments; thank you for the lovely presents; ”
No, thank you Maggie. Every morning I wake up wondering what you will be writing about. You are the best!
Wow, this is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about! My readers are at least half of what has made this blog great! 😀
Maggie you’re like a snowball going downhill, getting bigger and bigger as you go!
I’ll 2nd Rapid’s remark, this blog is one of the first things I look forward to reading everyday.
Another statistic: I don’t know the average word count for each essay, though you rather elliptically suggest it’s about 2,000. If that’s right, in two years you have written nearly 1.5 million words. To put that in context, the average novel today is between 80,000 and 120,000 words; James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was only about 325,000 words. Were you to contemplate a book compiled from the blog, it would need serious pruning, editing and re-arranging; further, a book would surely carry a much greater risk of you being “outed”. But if you do go for it, you should consider “Scrivener” as a writing application (if you don’t already use it).
A very impressive achievement, producing a daily discourse that is always interesting, informative and literate. Congratulations!
I echo those who say you should write a book. (Full disclosure: I have a small publishing company, and I’ve already pitched you to be one of my authors.)
Yesterday I read the Wikipedia entry about Bobbie Gentry, who wrote the song “Fancy” (about a poor New Orleans woman who becomes rich and happy eventually, after her mother turns her out to be a prostitute at eighteen). Bobbie Gentry is quoted as saying that she “is a feminist” who believes in “equal pay” and “abortion rights,” among other things, and the song “Fancy” came out of that.
To me, her logic is sound. If women have a right to their own bodies, and so laws should allow abortions, why shouldn’t women be allowed to prostitute themselves? And if you can invent reasons why a woman over eighteen who isn’t crazy and isn’t retarded, is somehow not competent when she chooses prostitution, can’t we claim that she’s not competent if she wants an abortion? Logic suggests to me that abortion rights and sex-worker rights stand or fall together.
So how did we go from Bobbie Gentry’s idea that “feminism means the right to choose to be a prostitute” to “prostitution is one more way that the Patriarchy oppresses women”?
My own theory is that neofeminists came down on prostitution the instant they realized that decriminalized prostitution meant that penis-persons would no longer have to grovel for sex, and that was simply unacceptable!
“My own theory is that neofeminists came down on prostitution the instant they realized that decriminalized prostitution meant that penis-persons would no longer have to grovel for sex, and that was simply unacceptable!”
Heh, I like that. It’s never been true for all men, of course, but it’s always been true for some. (And sometimes you do great for some part of your life, and then for the rest it’s a big drought.)
After she writes the book, she could consider a screenplay.
I remember that song Fancy, they’ve played it on our local Lefty community radio station now and then. I’m not sure if they “get” it.
Hi Maggie, you have a new reader from Italy. I found your blog a few days ago, I think I landed here following a link from Laura Agustin’s blog. Happy anniversary and thank you. In Italy like everywhere else, the press is saying a lot of lies about the number of women that would be forced into prostitution, greatly exaggerating the numbers. It’s frustrating to see that around the world many newspapers, even prestigious ones, stick to this biased picture of sex work and push to criminalize men who pay for sex. It’s refreshing to see someone like you that presents a different point of view and debunks false informations. When the media prove to be so blind and conformist, showing them wrong is no longer only a matter of paying for sex, it’s about truth and freedom themselves
Happy anniversary, and many more.
The bigger this blog gets, the louder you are, and the louder you are, the harder neo-fems and prohibitionists have it.
Congratulations on your first two years, and here’s to many more!
I don’t usually comment because I usually think what I have to say is very easily debunked or shot down, so I end up missing the boat once I have figured out how to say what I want to say.
But I can say this: Happy Anniversary Maggie, many more and thank you.
Like Quiet, I think I’ve only posted once or twice. But I read, and it is fascinating. Good luck on the next year.
First time, long time.
Just wanted to say, big fan
Congratulations, Maggie.
The profundity of your writing is a two edged sword. I took a 6 week hiatus because I was severely short on time and I KNEW that if I came here, I’d be compelled to read… and read… and read… and I just flat didn’t have the time.
Congrats, Maggie! You do us proud!
Congratulations on your second year.
Keep up the good work.
Way to go, Maggie!
All the obvious things to say, but let’s see if I can work in something new…
Just the fact that you are doing all of this for no money refutes the “whores are greedy and only care about money” stereotype, so you are doing good beyond the content of the words.
Aww… I’d miss the “One Year Ago Today” feature. I certainly have been using it.
When I first found this blog, I was so intrigued I read dozens upon dozens of posts in a row (and their comment trees). I kept reading through the night until well past dawn.
Obviously that’s not a maintainable pace to keep trying to catch up to all the old posts, so I began using the OYAT link to read one new, and one old post per day, which let me keep current AND gradually catch up on older posts over time (without accidentally skipping any).
I know this is your own blog, not a democracy (as a blog ought to be) but if I had a vote, it would be to keep the feature. 🙁
You’ll still be able to access it through my Twitter feed, or via That Was the Week That Was; I simply won’t be doing it every day. 🙂
[…] Yesterday was the second anniversary of my blog, so it’s still just a baby. With 732 posts it’s a BIG baby, but a baby nonetheless. […]
Congratulations. I like reading your posts. Wondering if you know that Susan Sarandon is an anti trafficking, anti prostitution activist now and one of the key supporters of the Somaly Mam Foundation…….
Ah, the whorearchy; “my kind of prostitution is good ans wonderful, but those who practice other kinds are degraded victims.”
Dude, WTF? Did they suspend your twitter account?
Whom are you addressing?
Sorry, my bad. i went to /maggiemcneill instead of /maggie_mcneill. losing my memory…