It was inevitable.
By 2035, almost overnight, all of my classes were two-thirds female, one-third male. We’d finally achieved the critical mass I thought wouldn’t ever happen. Correction. I thought wouldn’t happen in time. I was middle-aged when the most powerful county in the world elected for President not the former Secretary of State, but a business mogul who denied climate change. People would rather die than be led by a woman.
Not that all of my female students were feminist. You’d always have the barbies, it seemed. But, now, enough of them were. Would be.
I say it happened almost overnight, but of course there were signs. Geneticists had known about the Y chromosome for decades. By 2013, it was, as one blogger called it, “a trainwreck of about 45 hangin’-on-by-their-pinkies genes.”
At roughly the same time—call it synchronicity, call it intersectionality, or call it all-about-relationships and you’d really nail the irony—there was an increase in chemical pollution, specifically endocrine disruptors such as dioxin. Blithely released into the ecosystem by companies run by men, dioxin was thought to mess with the Y chromosome (as well as a great many other things).
Couples had been needing IVF for decades. Of course, men thought it was the woman’s fault, not being able to conceive. They didn’t know, refused to believe, that it was because they didn’t have enough sperm or because the sperm they had was swimming in the wrong direction. (Never mind that so many of them jerked off every day to online porn. They didn’t know, refused to believe, that every ejaculation reduced sperm quality.) No sperm delivery, no Y chromosome delivery.
All of which is to say it was almost completely the men’s fault.
Of course, they’d always been a minority, but 30% as opposed to 49% made them visibly a minority. And for people who depend on strength in numbers (the gang mentality), for people so subject to the herd mentality (possibly related to the former), for people so focused on the quantitative, this was, in a word, terrifying.
You’d think the remaining men might anticipate that they’d be treated like royalty. Correction. More like royalty. After all, they’d become rare. And it’s too easy to equivocate being rare with being precious. Women would compete for them. (Well, the barbies would.) And so they could’ve. Become more like royalty. Because, well, do the (male) math: there were now two women for every man.
But, as I’ve indicated, they blamed women. Of course they did. It’s always the woman’s fault. (When the porn users discovered they couldn’t get an erection any more with a real woman, they blamed those real women. And pressured them, expected them, to turn themselves into porn robots.) (Alas, all too many of them did.)
And so—even so—they started (started? continued.) killing them. (And they say, have been saying for centuries, that men are the rational ones.) (Their preference for sex with a make-believe female over sex with a real female, when their goal, one of their goals, is procreation— Well, it boggles the mind. The rational mind.)
It didn’t help that testosterone levels had risen. Partly, this was a result of the growth hormones being fed to the animals that men ate (because real men eat meat) (as if they’d killed it themselves): the onset of puberty came earlier and earlier. Partly, it was a result of the boost provided by Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, and the other seven, now on the market: it wasn’t just older men were losing their beloved erections. (And sexuality was that integral to their identity: I fuck, therefore I am.) But mostly, it was a result of the increase in the use of testosterone gels (an easy step from the oh-so-common use of steroids) among men whose natural testosterone production was in serious decline. (Because oh, the horror.)
It also didn’t help that there was an increase in the use of porn. Partly this was due to demand: porn is addictive—which means that more and more is needed. More in terms of quantity, more in terms of quality. Though I hesitate to use the word ‘quality’ in this context. More accurate would be in terms of ‘ability to stimulate’. And partly this was due to supply: the internet made it easy. So easy that every second, about 50,000 men were watching porn. (Up from 30,000 in 2016.) So easy that 90% of all men, and boys (they started at eight), watched porn every day. (Up from 80%.) Someone once said that every new technology would eventually, or perhaps initially, be used as a weapon. I doubt they included male masturbation aids in their definition of weaponry. They should have. Because 85% of all porn specifically humiliated and degraded the women portrayed. And 95% showed her being physically hurt. (Both, 5% increases.) And of course, what you expose yourself to affects what you think, what you do …
And on top of that, the gaming industry exploded. Well past car chases, so many of the games featured pornified women who could be raped by the male player. (Player.) Extra points if they killed her.
So.
Every week, every day, some man went on a killing spree. Most were members of some group—the Incel Rebels, the Brothers of Lepine, the O-Jays, the Bundy Bunch, Jack’s Men—groups that had formed like cancerous tumours. Like stage four cancerous tumours. The word femicide came out of the closet.
At first, maternity wards were favourite targets. Because there were only women there? Or because the women there were birthing more women? Or because they weren’t birthing men? Hard to say. Quite possibly all three.
Then they targeted schools. At first, the young women tried not to clump together, tried to position themselves in the middle of a group of men. But of course, that backfired. Used to be that only—my god, did I say only?—used to be that only one in three men would rape if they thought they could get away with it. Now it was two in three. And the percentage of rapes that resulted in conviction, let alone the percentage that was actually reported? It was a joke. To them.
So I was ready.
I’d carefully considered the seating plan and put the boys at my far left, closest to the door. I put the barbies in the middle two rows, and at my far right, my precious ‘grand-daughters’, the women who would save the world. Marie was becoming a brilliant biologist; Kim, a mathematician or maybe a physicist; I figured Brett for psychology or sociology; Chandra, music; Ming was our class poet, nay, our school poet if my opinion counted for anything; Meg, likely an engineer …
I moved my desk close to the wall, brought in a coat rack, squeezed it between my desk and the wall, then permanently hung my raincoat on it.
And I was tired.
For thirty years, the boys in my class had demanded, hogged, my attention. They showed up late, swaggering into class, daring me to send them to the office for a late slip. (For which I’d be reprimanded: ‘But why don’t they want to come to your class on time?’) They interrupted me, they challenged me on every bloody thing. ‘Are you sure that’s right, Ms. Bennett?’ Too soon the mockery they slid into the ‘Ms.’ wasn’t enough: they called me bitch, cow, cunt. Openly.
Was it just me? The last time I peeked into Janet’s room, I saw the wall behind her desk covered with dried and hardened spit balls. So I’m guessing no.
They didn’t do the work. They didn’t even try. And then they were outraged when they received a failing grade. I stopped failing them after one took a knife to my tires. Even so, the following year, another one took a knife to me. Apparently, he wasn’t happy with the C+ I’d given him.
Worse, every time one of the girls, one of my grand-daughters, spoke up, they put herdown. Called her a bitch, cow, cunt. Threatened to shut her up. For good if that’s what it took.
So when I heard the pops in the distance, I quickly moved to the coat rack and grabbed the automatic also hanging there. And when the pimple-faced boy with scraggly blond hair calmly opened the door and walked into my classroom, I started firing.
I killed him. Along with every one of the boys in my class. There was no doubt in my mind that every one of them would eventually kill several of my granddaughters. One way or another. In fact, as soon as the pimple-faced boy entered the room, three of them pulled out their own guns. And not to shoot back.
That they were killing us, had been killing us for centuries, (as well as each other), proves that our lives are more valuable than theirs. They are irrational. As I’ve indicated. They are selfish. As I’ve indicated. They are a danger to society. To a thriving society.
And so, yes, I was justified.
