The apparent path of the sun crossed the celestial equator southbound at 1:03 UTC today, making this the first day of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere and the first of spring in the Southern. This is the time of harvest, when plans come to fruition; it is also the harbinger of the time of rest, especially for Daughters of Darkness like myself who are exhausted and overstimulated by the long days of summer. But even if you’re not a fan of the growing gloom, I hope you can enjoy the cooler days and hold summer in your heart while waiting for its return, just as I wait patiently through the long, bright days for the time that best reflects my inner landscape.
As I wrote last year on this day, the time has come for me to stop writing new essays for this and the other days on which I have in the past published polemics, because “The wheel turns inexorably, and all there is to say about it has already been said countless times; there is, I think, little point in saying it again“… Last year, I observed each of those occasions with links to all the previous examples, so that the interested reader can more easily explore them. Though some may contain details to events which are no longer current, I think you’ll still find most of them worth your while if you’ve never read them, or even if you have.
The apparent path of the sun reached its northernmost point at 9:13 UTC today, marking the longest day of the year and the beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and the shortest day of the year & first day of winter in the Southern. May all of your plans come to fruition in the fullness of time, and Blessed Be!
Today is a day to shamelessly celebrate our shameless history, not a day to cater to the precious fee-fees of amateurs by neutering our terminology so as not to offend their delicate sensibilities. – “Unsanitized”
Last year, I observed every one of the days I usually observe with polemics by instead providing quotes from and links to all the previous essays for that day. I did this “lest I grow irrelevant due to repetition. Besides, I’ve already written plenty“…but I did make one exception: this one, International Whores’ Day, because for the past few years I’ve noticed some sex worker organizations and social media accounts trying to sanitize our struggle by eliminating the “nasty” word “whore” rather than celebrating our long history as sexual outlaws. I already explained last year why this is misguided and counterproductive; this year I’m going to bring this observance into line with the others by quoting previous years’ essays.
Yes, things are very damned bad right now…and it will pass, as everything does. And when it does we will still be here, just as we always have been. – “Eternal as the Sea”
Politicians who up until recently coudn’t even be bothered to accept that sex workers have basic civil rights are now actively calling for decriminalization. – “Galvanized”
It is the intrinsic nature of government to continue growing ever more tyrannous until a revolution becomes inevitable. – “Cornered Animals”
Every day, sex workers of all backgrounds, all around the world, work to debunk prohibitionist lies and expose the ugly truth about government persecution of individuals for the “crime” of consensual sex. – “Whores’ Day 2017”
We are winning at last. And there’s not a damn thing the prohibitionists can do about it. – “Whores’ Day 2016”
Prohibitionists…have…in[vaded] the public’s imagination with…lurid masturbatory fantasies of gypsy whores, weeping teenage “sex slaves” and leering “pimps” with magical powers. – “A Day for Whores”
Though the crusade was rooted in American Protestant notions of “pure and pious womanhood”…it is the poorer countries of the developing world which have borne the brunt. – “International Whores’ Day”
The tide of history is toward greater individual and sexual rights, and those who would restrict others’ sexuality, no matter what propaganda they employ, will eventually be swept away. – “The Birth of a Movement“
I used to like hoaxing on April Fools Day, until it stopped being fun; five years ago, in “The Rule of Fools“, I explained why:
…the…media are positively riddled with idiotic nonsense about “sex trafficking”, the “War on Cops”, supposed “epidemics” of things that are actually less common than they’ve ever been, and other tall tales that could be easily debunked by ten fucking minutes on Google if reporters actually cared to practice journalism rather than stenographically reporting every moronic, impossible and self-serving lie vomited out by cops, politicians, prohibitionists and all the other bipedal vermin who glut themselves on others’ suffering and profit from human misery. Mathematically-impossible, scientifically-illiterate and sociologically-absurd poppycock too ridiculous for a ’50s science fiction B-movie is routinely presented as fact even by “respected” sources like The New York Times, and politicians base laws on fantasies roughly as credible as the contents of Malleus Maleficarum, complete with penalties that would’ve found approval from those who employed that book. Clowns are widely presented as objects of terror (and are the subject of a recurring moral panic), which perhaps makes sense given that our rulers are themselves violent clowns who send forth armed thugs in clownish costumes to terrorize, rape, rob and murder the populace based on excuses Caligula himself might recognize as mad. And their cringing subjects attempt to impose order on a world gone completely insane by artificially dividing their overlords into teams, swearing fealty to one of those teams and then obstinately ignoring all the evil done by “their” leaders while blaming the other side for everything no matter what the facts show. In short, we live in a world in which the highest points are all occupied by professional full-time fools, and it seems pointless for a sane person to even attempt to compete with them.
In the five years since, the situation has only grown worse. The mad emperor had at that time barely even begun his Carnival of Crazy, and the powerful deranging effect he had on minds still harboring some childlike faith in government had only begun to show itself. The American political stage soon became a Punch and Judy show writ large, and everyone was too busy watching it to pay attention while their hollowed-out rights were reduced to paper-thin facades; a plague of snitches spread across the land; “sex trafficking” hysteria began its implosion in a more spectacular fashion than I had anticipated; another, more literal plague gave tyrants and control freaks the best excuse for a power grab they’d had since 2001; censorship became wildly popular among all those who believe the most terrifying fact of the world is that others beside themselves have free will; and those in power gave up all pretense of even attempting to make their lies resemble some rough fascimile of the truth. In short, the lunatics are running the asylum; every day is Fools’ Day, and the joke is on us.
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