April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution

This piece is a response narrative for the Autofiction x Worldbuilding submissions call.  It was inspired by this Autoficitonal seed. For this call, we asked people to write a response to another author’s autofictional submission, based on the original piece and this bit of cryptic world lore.

This, and other Worldbuilding pieces are being published to a Wiki, which will allow contributors to edit, link, and otherwise annotate their work and that of their peers.

Women in my timeline faced incredible danger. They wisely knew that an encounter in the woods with a strange bear felt safer to their personal rights and bodily autonomy than the likelihood of coming across a strange man alone in the woods.

That man vs bear meme ignited the gunpowder keg that ultimately led to the Galli Act proposal after a social justice movement and media campaign. The campaign meant well but went wrong. It showed the righteous rage women experienced, but the inflammatory language made me regret taking back the word “bitch” because to me it once was a backronym for “babe in total control of herself. I was a proud badass bitch once. I still do not always see it only as “a gendered derogatory slur”. I am a bad person. Probably.

As public opinion changed once artificial wombs made reproduction genuinely safe and birth control became mandatory due to climate change, crime and forced birth was abolished in the April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution that will begin in Minnesota during a freak snowstorm, that “man” finally became recognized as a dangerous animal. We couldn’t even legally define “man”, either, but we were genuinely threatened by them, felt threatened by them. We knew bears were safer though. Probably.

There were resources available for survivors of bear attacks. You were not ashamed of admitting a bear attack. You did not have to face the bear again in a courthouse. Bears did not stalk, cyberbully, shame, or engage in libel, slander, or psychological cruelty to victims. Bears are intimidating and did not use intimidation against victims. People believed people who survived bear attacks. There were no invasive undignified invasive necessary hospital exams and evidence collection after bear attacks. If you were lucky the bear would just kill you and not make you wish you were dead as you recovered, slowly and gradually, and no one ever asked what you were wearing or if you had had an alcoholic beverage before a bear attacked you. You could avoid bears entirely after an attack and the odds of being attacked by a bear twice were also infinitesimally low. Not probably.

In 2024, the U.N. said every eleven minutes a woman is killed by someone in her own family. Honor killings, sororicide, matricide. 50% of women under 25 have been choked without consent by intimate partners. There is no safe way to choke someone. Not probably. Little girls were choked during their first kisses at age 12. Documentation of such assaults is not probably.

Men thought women liked it because at the time violent video bio-mating clips were available online that showed it as normal. It isn’t. Men became addicted to them and learned from pornography how to be a lady-killer. It caused widespread mental illnesses in all genders /sexes and exacerbated inherent trust issues in femme-leaning ones that were adaptive survival mechanisms. Not probably.

Women were more likely to be the victim of assault or violence from a person they knew than from a stranger. 50% of our species, male humans, are potentially a danger to women. Domestic violence hit an all-time peak during the first global coronavirus epidemic as men turned on their wives, girlfriends, and life partners trapped with them and without access to safety. Not probably. With later pandemics, the Galli Act passage prevented violence as it was phased in on state-wide levels.

It wasn’t until the “Riotgirl 2.3 plus++doubleplusgood movement” and the “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” events and, of course, it cannot be forgotten the problematic “turnabout is fair play” laws made it into national policy, that it became dangerous for the ill-defined social category known or called “men”, especially of the long previously formerly institutionally empowered and privileged categories, to be out on the streets.

From a data file archive of an anonymous “woman”, “cisgender” identifying, confirmed registration and classed XX chromosome and queer non-gender conforming registration citizen (found centuries from the present day)-

“I remember life well before the “Galli Act” with its well-played campaign of “The only good man is a neutered one” or the “LowT4XY Safety”, and the “Bitches control the dogs!” social media campaigns succeeded in changing public policy even further. Once the coin I knew as a child had flipped 180° and changes in public policy combined with social change, it was unsafe for any man to be outside his home at any time of the day.

After those laws were passed it went from harassment to open attacks, and abuse, and eventually, roving groups of young women would attack unsuspecting “men”. It was said that once it was unsafe and dangerous for a woman to go out alone at night and walk down the street by herself unarmed, now it was said the streets were unsafe for men. I’d not let my son out without my supervision.

The home was where a man belonged. That made women safer and their lives better than ever before in human history. Never again would another Kingbury (we chant the names of women murdered in domestic violence throughout history if we knew their names, this is the litany of the lost, the burden and fear of all survivors, for we are women and this is our history) case occur, at least. It helped me sleep at night.

As the solution started when my son was 21, my beloved wife was 39 and the donor was 40 at the time, it was strange when my son asked me when everything changed. He’d read stories he couldn’t imagine in Herstory texts. He barely remembered life before the changes began (they lost the right to vote, bodily autonomy, and the privilege to open their own bank accounts or own property eventually) but now that he was older and not in the workforce he was wondering about those who had not ever seen a time when the world was different. It was safer than being what I was and unsafe for my son to be what he was. He was born that way and that was enough to keep me awake at night worried.

I am old enough to recall when it was different and it is my sincerest hope that one day the pendulum will be in the middle again, and all of the genders will be safe and actually truly legally and socially equal. It was all the feminists (and the bears) ever wanted to begin with.”