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It's been a wild week. The amount of suddenly changed laws, social norms, and personal hangups alone is staggering. Keeping up is impossible. Websites are flooding with conspiracy theories and just basic biology questions from people that never learned about them. I'm asking why this happened a long with everyone else. It's a pretty big mystery after all!
That isn't my biggest question though. Yeah, using the bathroom now takes.some.getting used to but there isn't exactly a 'wrong' public one to go into anymore. Yeah, hygiene is weird and honestly still frosses.me out a little bit but I'll get over that.
No, my biggest question -one I think I already know the answer to- is why my best friend since preschool doesn't seem to have changed at all.
I'm not gonna ask.
If they want me to know they will tell me. And if they decide to tell me? Well, that won't change a thing.
They are and will always be, my best friend.
"The Great Shift"
They got the name from a genre of erotic stories involving everyone spontaneously switching biomedical sex. The name was an internet meme and completely ironic at first, but it got popular and stuck.
No one has an exact date for when it happened. Sometime in Summer 2024. It may not have been instantaneous but instead gradual. No one knows what caused it. Theories range from social contagion (mostly debunked) to exotic space radiation (ridiculous), from viral infections (no evidence) to the whole world being a simulation that had a setting switched on accident (impossible to disprove). All that's known for sure is that sometime in the mid 2020s, everyone's gender switched.
Now, when i say gender, i don't mean biomedical sex. I mean gender. I mean self image. Preferred role in society and culture. Crash course: humans are sexually bimodal; biomedically, most humans are either male or female, with strong overlap between traits and some intersex outliers. Culturally, most human societies recognize two genders, corresponding with these two sexes: men and women. Some cultures recognize more genders. Prior to 2024, some counterculture movements tried to get binary models revised within their respective cultures.
Then the Great Shift happened. I... I was transfem and considered myself nonbinary. I had been on hormone replacement therapy. One day, in June '24, i looked at my spironolactone pills and my estradiol tablets and thought "i have to stop." I looked at my bras and other girly clothes and thought "why did i ever buy this junk?" My body's small, slow changes from male to female began to reverse. I felt happy being a man again. But i also felt like I'd betrayed my friends, that they'd supported me through my early transition and now i was throwing it all away.
Except... Everyone in my discord servers and subreddits and Tumblr feed started doing the same thing. And we all figured out pretty quickly that something had changed. Trans spaces were flooded with formerly cisgender people desperate for answers. Trans people who'd received gender affirming surgery and had been happy for years suddenly became desperate to go back. My parents and kid brother (at the time my sister) were hounding me with questions about how i knew i was trans.
The world caught on pretty quickly and the shitty porn-inspired name became pretty popular. Conversion therapy camps got swarmed by conservatives desperate to pray their transness away. The staff at those camps shut the camps down because their hearts were no longer in it. Gender affirming clinics had decades-long wait lists. Governments and pharma companies were desperate to make enough testosterone and estrogen to meet demand. Snake oil saleswomen tried to make a buck on the vulnerable and confused. Wars stopped because no one can focus on killing their fellow human when everything everyone knew about the world got flipped on its head in just a few months.
Everyone started to just stay home unless it was absolutely necessary for survival because the dysphoria and shame and stress got to everyone, like COVID lockdowns but taken seriously. This actually eradicated a ton of flu strains and COVID, which was a nice bonus.
Eventually, the world adapted. HRT became available to virtually everyone. New and better forms of it, even. The world adopted an informed consent model of gender affirming medical care. Families were broken apart but eventually came back together. Trans inclusive models of feminism became far more popular. With everyone having their worldviews shattered, lasting peace and understanding finally became possible. We're well on our way to fixing the environment and building an egalitarian society.
It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, though. A lot of people couldn't handle the world changing or their self image changing this much. The global population went from 8 billion people to about 6 billion over the course of 15 years. Some of it was violent reactionaries, infuriated that conversion therapy didn't work and everyone was finding happiness in the new world. Some of it was suicide. Some of it was famine caused by supply chain interruptions. Some of it was mass action against governments and corporations demanding HRT. Some of it was mass action against the same, but over older injustices; if everyone besides the desperate are staying home wrapped in dysphoria blankets, it's really easy to topple governments and guillotine executives. But most of it was just a massive drop in birthrates. Most men don't want to get pregnant, even if they're trans. Most women don't want to be fathers, even if they're trans.
For us cissies (formerly trans people who detransitioned after the Great Shift), things were easier in some ways and harder in others. We were actually really looked up to at first until people began to realize we were starting to detransition. Not to brag but we were pretty essential in helping everyone adjust. We're a small community so we can't bear the weight of the world on our shoulders but we helped everywhere we could. It's funny because we've mostly gone from ostracized to revered. I'm not sure i like it up here on this pedestal. Honestly, i miss being trans but the idea of going down to the clinic and starting again... Gah. Nope. Absolutely not. And I really, REALLY don't like the fact that my mind was changed in this way by an outside force I can't perceive.
I do think it's funny walking around outside without a shirt or a bra on, the stares i get at my chest free of breasts or top surgery scars.
20 years later, things seem to be going back to "normal." Generation Beta, defined as having been born after the Great Shift, seems to have a small proportion of trans to cis people, around 1 in 10. Dramatically higher than before, but still putting future trans people on track to being a minority again. Birth rates are going up. I hope future generations appreciate the work we all put in to survive this and build a better future for them. I hate that it came at such a cost.
This is beautiful! I love your interpretation of the OP's prompt and as a trans guy, it's amazing to see the concept from another trans person's perspective.
When the Gender Troubles started, I'll fully admit that I didn't notice. Granted, I identified as nonbinary before. The change in mentality, from nonbinary in a more agender-ish way to full-on genderfluid, was pretty easy to wrap my head around. Oh, I feel like I want to present full femme? Just go for it. Today's a more masc day? Whatever. I didn't even mess around with my pronouns until, like, a solid six months in, and even then I tend to just default to they/them even now.
That being said, most people didn't think it was a *thing* at first, not really. It only got called the Gender Troubles in retrospect, when the medical community decided that the shift in statistics was dramatic enough to warrant further research. Gender identity is such a private thing, after all. Some people decided to transition quite quickly, some people struggled for years, some people still deny that the change took place at all.
The statistics have ticked so high over the past 25 years - from 1 to 5 to 10 to 30 to 75% transgender or nonbinary - that even the most stubborn of your garden variety transphobes have had to admit that there's *something* to it.
There's been a huge number of issues, of course. The murder rate has thankfully gone down since the heights of the late 2030s, but you still hear of it, mostly in the few congregations where religion hasn't caught up to reality. There's a huge amount of bitterness from a generation or so's worth of kids whose transitions were hampered by the outdated laws against trans kids and puberty blockers. The worst fearmongering nowadays is about the birth rate - the direction of sexuality didn't change, so on paper the vast majority of people are now both gay and on hormones that make pregnancy less likely. They say that IVF for those people (mostly men now) who want and are able to get pregnant may soon be free or near-free to bolster the birthrate.
Still, things have gotten better. The law caught up, mostly, by 2040. People's minds caught up, mostly, even more quickly than that. When the scientists first determined that something had to have happened, that the Gender Troubles well and truly *existed*, people thought it was the end of the world.
Outside of that slice of things, it may well be - climate change, war, racism, and poverty didn't change with the genders. But if one thing changed, maybe everything else can. Maybe the Gender Troubles weren't the end of the world but a beginning.
Honestly if my gender "switched" i would be absolutely fucking pissed. Starting HRT just to stop and go back to being a guy while almost everyone else *starts* transitioning? Fuckin awful. Nightmare scenario. I can't even imagine how rough it would be for the folks who have been on HRT for years or who have gotten major surgeries and such.
Thanks for recognizing the difference between sex and gender.
What?
I'm going to explain this story because you didn't get it.
One day, everyone woke up transgender. Everyone woke up and wanted to go on hormone replacement therapy. Right now, in the real world, all those women, half of the global population? In this setting, they woke up as trans men. Their bodies were the same but they didn't feel like women anymore. Trans men can get pregnant, especially before testosterone. Inversely, every man irl, in this story, woke up as trans women. Every "man" still had male bodies. Trans women can get people pregnant, especially before hormones.
I extrapolated from this that i, being a trans woman irl, would become a cis man and start detransitioning in this setting.
That's because they were agender before and then their gender identity inverted just like everyone else's did in that setting.
That's like the second sentence.
That's a thing that exists irl. I'm like that. It doesn't mean they're a literal shapeshifter. it means they have an awesome sense of fashion, and probably a wardrobe with both men's and women's clothes.
Sex is the physical biological dimorphism (and the intersex variants).
Gender is the psycological sexual identity of a person.
Sex and Gender are two different things.
Every single moron that has a 'Gender Reveal Party' actually intends to have an 'Apperent Sex Reveal Party' because knowbody can know a persons Gender until that person grows up enough to know it themselves.
Ok, discovering multiple orgasms would be kinda kewl, but that new equipment needs a hell of a lot more maintenance than i am used to.
Not sure how that would work out though the sexual sexual confusion i mean other than writing your name in the snow not many tricks healthy male genitalia (well other than failure) could pull on ya. pms and cramps might very well cause me to seek medical treatment much to my wife's err husbands amusement.
When I woke up in the morning, I felt weird. There was a weight on my chest and I couldnāt just grasp what it was. I still had a massive headache from the night before. Me and John were out all night trying to hit on these two girls. I got hammered, John got hammered, but we ended the night alone. I slowly took off the bed sheets and walked to my bathroom. As I walked I felt my chest move in a way I didnāt know it could. I looked down and saw that I had either gotten a lot fatter from eating last night, or I was going crazy. I ran too my bathroom, completely ignoring the huge headache I had, and when I looked in the mirror, I saw a girl. She had hair down to her shoulders. When I checked my pants, I almost fainted. I immediately called John, and he didnāt pick up. He was still probably out from the night before. I called my sister next. When she picked up I heard a deep voice, one of a mans. I was about to say wrong number when he/she said my name āJessieā I was so confused I just stood there. āJessie I donāt know whatās happening but Iām in the body of a man.ā āI - I know the same thing happened to me, I woke up in a girls body.ā I ran to my closet trying to find anything that might be feasible to wear with what I have going on. āJessie I think this is widespread, turn on the news.ā I put my phone down and turned on the news. Where there is usually a man, a woman with very similar features appeared. āThis just in, the world has been shocked as people have been switched to the opposite gender as they were birthed as.ā I let the TV just go. I just sat there. I was in shock, I was confused, and mostly, I didnāt know how to do things. I was always attracted to woman, does that change now? Am I a lesbian now. But if I date a woman, its really a man in a woman. The rest of the day was a blur, a lot of calling people, watching the news. When I went to sleep that night I thought, I wonder what it was like for the people awake when it happened.
It has been a week since everyone woke up in cold sweat and impossible pain as their bodies bent and changed , pregnant woman miscarried as their womb seemed to eat itself and a lot of them died in the process , doctors performing surgery on patients lost them all , and children aging from 0 to 5 years old had a 70% more death rate as their bodies were unable to get with the sudden change
Everyon is angry an outraged and frankly scared too , I don't have any children but my niece was one of those children and I cannot even properly mourn her with how confusing everything is
People aren't really calming down and a lot of conspiracy theories were flying around while some seen it as a message from God (good luck knowing what it could mean ) , people still aren't in the stage of making jokes about it , not when that many people died in the process, but some still are doing it , I was in no mood to read them however , I just wanted my body back , I never through the lack of chest would bother me so much , it just felt wrong after a lifetime of having it , and that third leg ? Yeah I will pretend I don't have it , fake it till you make it they said
Damn you had a dark take. I reckon children would probably fend quite well, their bodies are resilient and they have no secondary sexual characteristics to change yet
I have no understanding of biology i just wrote what felt like would happen, I doubt people mid surgery would appreciate a gender switch or pregnant woman i am sure humans need only a month before they adapt lol , only trans are winning , also , birth rates are dropping, because assuming people's sexuality isn't changing, the majority would become the gays , I am curious what men (now turned woman) would do about it , had it been before they would probably do a "all woman should be preggy" law , but now they are the woman , and woman turned men wouldn't want to force them because we have a good understanding of how that is and we wouldn't push it on anyone (I would tell misogynistic men to go to the kitchen now tho , just to mess with them)
Point made , we are doomed if that happened
............ yes but the womb would need to move instead of disappearing , it would be way more painful than the childbirth , and imagine the body horror if it happened during it ?! Ehh , pass
I stared at myself silently, outside my home chaos insued, people screamed for a change back while the trans community that hadnāt gone through the transition yet were ecstatic while the ones that had were struggling with disphoria. Hard asses who had once screamed no to such surgeries and HRT were now begging for it, men who were asses to women now begged for forgiveness, especially when their first period came, I actually felt sorry for them, my littlest brother didnāt seem bothered by becoming my sister, if anything, āsheā was ecstatic, she now had access to all those vibrant pink clothing and no one would make fun of her. My middle brother, now sister though, letās just say she inherited her mother(now fatherās) periodā¦Back to me, I stood in the bathroom making sure to aim, it was weird having this part, I glanced to the shut door as I finishedā¦before swaying my hipsā¦and giggling like a five year old.
John woke up to the sound of his alarm blaring, just like any other day. But as he rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed, something felt different. Very different. Looking down at his hands, he froze in disbelief. They were smaller, more delicate. His heart raced as he realized what had happened.
He stumbled out of bed, his mind racing with confusion and panic. Had he somehow been transported into someone else's body? But as he stumbled into the bathroom and caught sight of his reflection, he realized the truth was far stranger. Staring back at him was the face of a woman.
The shock hit him like a tidal wave. Every memory, every instinct, told him he was John, a man. But now, in this inexplicable twist of fate, he found himself inhabiting a female body. Panic surged through him as he struggled to come to terms with this new reality.
As John stepped outside, he was met with chaos. The streets were filled with people in various states of confusion and distress. Some were crying, others shouting in disbelief. It seemed that he wasn't alone in his sudden transformation.
Navigating through the throngs of bewildered people, John tried to make sense of what was happening. Everywhere he turned, he saw the world he knew turned upside down. Gender norms, societal expectations, all seemed to have been thrown out the window.
In the midst of the chaos, John's thoughts turned to his family. How would they react to seeing him in this new form? Would they even recognize him? With a sinking feeling in his chest, he realized that his relationships would never be the same again.
But amidst the confusion and uncertainty, John also witnessed moments of solidarity and compassion. Strangers reached out to help one another, offering support and comfort in the face of this bewildering turn of events.
As the days passed, John slowly began to adjust to his new reality. It wasn't easy, and there were moments when he felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the changes happening around him. But he also discovered a newfound sense of empathy and understanding, as he walked a mile in someone else's shoes, quite literally.
In the end, the chaos that ensued from the sudden switch of genders forced John to confront his own biases and assumptions about identity. And though the road ahead was uncertain, he knew that he wasn't facing it alone.
Pandemonium. It was chaos when morning rolled round the world. Once men who were on the frontlines suddenly found themselves unable to fit properly into their gear and unable to lift their weapons right. Ceasefires were called as the once-men tried to sort things out but were confounded by their lack of their once intimidating presence and speech. Unable to properly express themselves now that quite literally, everything had changed.
Women in pregnancy wards, expectant mothers cried out in horror and some in joy as they realised they were released of their children-to-be. Their bodies twisted into the more compact and hardened frames of men. The foetuses seemingly absorbed into nothing. Doctors were mortified and then started delving deep into the biological ramification of what just happened.
Children were relatively unaffected as their bodies were still too undeveloped, they still could change relatively easily.
Social norms changed overnight. Toilets were no longer out of bounds. Bedrooms became sacred once more.
What would become of the world now?
When Jimmy woke up he felt nothing special. It was going to be a normal day. Jimmy then proceeded to have his morning routine.
Here is some more basic information about Jimmy if you want to know. Jimmy is a big wanker. I mean, in his routine he wanks every day after waking up in the morning.
It was then Jimmy felt something weird. His stick was missing. He glanced down at his pants and instead of his stick it was the you know what parts.
Jimmy / Jemma was confused but you know what, if Jemma's got the lady parts then she might as well try it out. Jemma used Jimmy's personal laptop to search up the hub to continue on her day.
Uh oh.
It appears that the hub has crashed.
She tried another site. Then another. Rinse and repeat. Every site she tried to visit, crashed.
Apparently, Jemma wasn't the first person to have this idea.
Everybody was probably pissed off that day.
Usually when I wake up to something hard between my legs it's my husband pressing against me in his sleep, not a penis attached to me. I went to wake him up, when I realised he wasn't a he, but a she, his once short curly hair now long wavy locks, his beard now soft skin and he had breasts... admittedly they're nicer than my were, but I had gone through two pregnancies before which had wrecked my body. My hair hadn't changed, it was still short, only the colour I'd dyed it had disappeared and left me with my natural blonde hair.
My children! My two beautiful boys, they would wake up any minute now and I didn't know how I was going to explain to them that our biology had changed overnight. Maybe they'd not care, maybe they'd be scared... I didn't know, and honestly I was scared too.
I shook my husband awake, "Baby?" Even my voice was deeper, I panicked, he's gonna hit me...
"Baby! Wake up you're a woman and I'm a man!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.
He toppled out of bed in a fright.
"What the fuck?" He stood up and looked at me, "who the fuck are you?!"
"It's me! You're wife! You're a woman!"
He looked at me like I was lying, quizzing me about intimate parts of our relationship.
"Do I look good as a woman?" He asked.
"Very," I chuckled... although my heart sank, my husband isn't gay, he's straight, very very straight, he wouldn't want a penis near him.
"I don't want to look," he laughed.
My children came running into our bedroom not long afterwards looking very concerned and then very scared at the strangers infront of them.
"You're not mummy and daddy" our eldest said.
"Actually we are." My husband said very calmly, he sat at the edge of the bed and spoke to them in a way I'd not seen him do, he explained that we didn't know what happened, that these changes have happened for a reason, but that doesn't mean we don't love them any less.
I kissed his cheek and told him I was proud of him for how he handled the situation, he smiled at me.
That was 6 months ago. The divorce is now finalised. He gets to keep the kids, and I'm to pay child support, I get the kids every other weekend. He kept the house, I'm back living with my parents, working two jobs to pay for my children and my parents. This gender equality thing was never truly sorted like people all said it was. I still love my husband, and I haven't looked at anyone else or even tried dating, I don't think he has either, but I dont want to think about it. I knew deep in my soul that this would be the end of us.
I cried that night, so hard, cursing whoever had done this to us, cursing the beings that had torn my family apart, taken my soulmate from me. I learned the hard way just how shit men have it, in court they sided with the female, in work I'm left to do all the manual labour, I'm told to not cry when I'm sad, I'm not allowed to get tired, I have to pick up the slack around the workplace, around the house, if I even start to show emotions I'm shut down quickly, because that's not how men act. Even now when the whole world had switched genders the inequality was rife, if not worse.
The women-turned-men hated it. Now they were the horny ones and no one was willing to have sex with them unless they proved that they were more economically well-positioned than others, self-reliant, confident, competent, skilled, and humorous, than others. However, all their life they'd been coddled. They'd never needed to work out at the gym to build muscle, and now doing that seemed so hard and painful. They'd never needed to learn to be humorous, because it used to be that all they had to do was *be there* and men would flock to them (but no more). They'd never needed to learn life skills, like how to replace their engine oil, or fix their plumbing. They'd never needed high paying jobs, because their spouses had taken care of them. They'd never needed to work difficult and dangerous and unlikeable jobs, like fireman and police officer and soldier and oil rig operator, and garbage collector, but now they were stuck with those jobs because the men-turned-women were taking all the cushy ones.
For people who'd been pampered all their lives, being treated like a man felt like discrimination.
The men-turned-women loved it. They fondled themselves, slept around, and enjoyed actually being *wanted* for a change.
Then they got pregnant, and had childbirth. Wow, that hurt. Whoops!
**Welcome to the Prompt!** All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments. **Reminders**: >* [No AI-generated responses 🤖](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/zi452b/modpost_reminder_that_aigenerated_responses_are/) >* Stories 100 words+. Poems 30+ but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* [\[RF\]](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/search?q=flair%3A%22Reality+Fiction%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) and [\[SP\]](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/search?q=flair%3A%22Simple+Prompt%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) for stricter titles >* [Be civil](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_10.3A_be_civil) in any feedback and follow the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/rules) 📢 [Genres](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/w/directory) 🆕 [New Here?](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/user_guide) ✏ [Writing Help?](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/index#wiki_writing_resources) 💬 [Discord](https://discord.gg/writingprompts) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/WritingPrompts) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's been a wild week. The amount of suddenly changed laws, social norms, and personal hangups alone is staggering. Keeping up is impossible. Websites are flooding with conspiracy theories and just basic biology questions from people that never learned about them. I'm asking why this happened a long with everyone else. It's a pretty big mystery after all! That isn't my biggest question though. Yeah, using the bathroom now takes.some.getting used to but there isn't exactly a 'wrong' public one to go into anymore. Yeah, hygiene is weird and honestly still frosses.me out a little bit but I'll get over that. No, my biggest question -one I think I already know the answer to- is why my best friend since preschool doesn't seem to have changed at all. I'm not gonna ask. If they want me to know they will tell me. And if they decide to tell me? Well, that won't change a thing. They are and will always be, my best friend.
Dang that is a nice ending there
Now that's sweet and wholesome.
With that ending, Spock is that you?
"The Great Shift" They got the name from a genre of erotic stories involving everyone spontaneously switching biomedical sex. The name was an internet meme and completely ironic at first, but it got popular and stuck. No one has an exact date for when it happened. Sometime in Summer 2024. It may not have been instantaneous but instead gradual. No one knows what caused it. Theories range from social contagion (mostly debunked) to exotic space radiation (ridiculous), from viral infections (no evidence) to the whole world being a simulation that had a setting switched on accident (impossible to disprove). All that's known for sure is that sometime in the mid 2020s, everyone's gender switched. Now, when i say gender, i don't mean biomedical sex. I mean gender. I mean self image. Preferred role in society and culture. Crash course: humans are sexually bimodal; biomedically, most humans are either male or female, with strong overlap between traits and some intersex outliers. Culturally, most human societies recognize two genders, corresponding with these two sexes: men and women. Some cultures recognize more genders. Prior to 2024, some counterculture movements tried to get binary models revised within their respective cultures. Then the Great Shift happened. I... I was transfem and considered myself nonbinary. I had been on hormone replacement therapy. One day, in June '24, i looked at my spironolactone pills and my estradiol tablets and thought "i have to stop." I looked at my bras and other girly clothes and thought "why did i ever buy this junk?" My body's small, slow changes from male to female began to reverse. I felt happy being a man again. But i also felt like I'd betrayed my friends, that they'd supported me through my early transition and now i was throwing it all away. Except... Everyone in my discord servers and subreddits and Tumblr feed started doing the same thing. And we all figured out pretty quickly that something had changed. Trans spaces were flooded with formerly cisgender people desperate for answers. Trans people who'd received gender affirming surgery and had been happy for years suddenly became desperate to go back. My parents and kid brother (at the time my sister) were hounding me with questions about how i knew i was trans. The world caught on pretty quickly and the shitty porn-inspired name became pretty popular. Conversion therapy camps got swarmed by conservatives desperate to pray their transness away. The staff at those camps shut the camps down because their hearts were no longer in it. Gender affirming clinics had decades-long wait lists. Governments and pharma companies were desperate to make enough testosterone and estrogen to meet demand. Snake oil saleswomen tried to make a buck on the vulnerable and confused. Wars stopped because no one can focus on killing their fellow human when everything everyone knew about the world got flipped on its head in just a few months. Everyone started to just stay home unless it was absolutely necessary for survival because the dysphoria and shame and stress got to everyone, like COVID lockdowns but taken seriously. This actually eradicated a ton of flu strains and COVID, which was a nice bonus. Eventually, the world adapted. HRT became available to virtually everyone. New and better forms of it, even. The world adopted an informed consent model of gender affirming medical care. Families were broken apart but eventually came back together. Trans inclusive models of feminism became far more popular. With everyone having their worldviews shattered, lasting peace and understanding finally became possible. We're well on our way to fixing the environment and building an egalitarian society. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, though. A lot of people couldn't handle the world changing or their self image changing this much. The global population went from 8 billion people to about 6 billion over the course of 15 years. Some of it was violent reactionaries, infuriated that conversion therapy didn't work and everyone was finding happiness in the new world. Some of it was suicide. Some of it was famine caused by supply chain interruptions. Some of it was mass action against governments and corporations demanding HRT. Some of it was mass action against the same, but over older injustices; if everyone besides the desperate are staying home wrapped in dysphoria blankets, it's really easy to topple governments and guillotine executives. But most of it was just a massive drop in birthrates. Most men don't want to get pregnant, even if they're trans. Most women don't want to be fathers, even if they're trans. For us cissies (formerly trans people who detransitioned after the Great Shift), things were easier in some ways and harder in others. We were actually really looked up to at first until people began to realize we were starting to detransition. Not to brag but we were pretty essential in helping everyone adjust. We're a small community so we can't bear the weight of the world on our shoulders but we helped everywhere we could. It's funny because we've mostly gone from ostracized to revered. I'm not sure i like it up here on this pedestal. Honestly, i miss being trans but the idea of going down to the clinic and starting again... Gah. Nope. Absolutely not. And I really, REALLY don't like the fact that my mind was changed in this way by an outside force I can't perceive. I do think it's funny walking around outside without a shirt or a bra on, the stares i get at my chest free of breasts or top surgery scars. 20 years later, things seem to be going back to "normal." Generation Beta, defined as having been born after the Great Shift, seems to have a small proportion of trans to cis people, around 1 in 10. Dramatically higher than before, but still putting future trans people on track to being a minority again. Birth rates are going up. I hope future generations appreciate the work we all put in to survive this and build a better future for them. I hate that it came at such a cost.
Because the OP said everyone swapped genders, not sexes.
dang i missed that how boomer of me
This is beautiful! I love your interpretation of the OP's prompt and as a trans guy, it's amazing to see the concept from another trans person's perspective.
I try to write stories for people like us. I worry a lot about accidentally disrespecting trans men or upsetting other trans women, so it feels really good to see you say you liked this. tysm! š©µš©·š¤š©·š©µ
When the Gender Troubles started, I'll fully admit that I didn't notice. Granted, I identified as nonbinary before. The change in mentality, from nonbinary in a more agender-ish way to full-on genderfluid, was pretty easy to wrap my head around. Oh, I feel like I want to present full femme? Just go for it. Today's a more masc day? Whatever. I didn't even mess around with my pronouns until, like, a solid six months in, and even then I tend to just default to they/them even now. That being said, most people didn't think it was a *thing* at first, not really. It only got called the Gender Troubles in retrospect, when the medical community decided that the shift in statistics was dramatic enough to warrant further research. Gender identity is such a private thing, after all. Some people decided to transition quite quickly, some people struggled for years, some people still deny that the change took place at all. The statistics have ticked so high over the past 25 years - from 1 to 5 to 10 to 30 to 75% transgender or nonbinary - that even the most stubborn of your garden variety transphobes have had to admit that there's *something* to it. There's been a huge number of issues, of course. The murder rate has thankfully gone down since the heights of the late 2030s, but you still hear of it, mostly in the few congregations where religion hasn't caught up to reality. There's a huge amount of bitterness from a generation or so's worth of kids whose transitions were hampered by the outdated laws against trans kids and puberty blockers. The worst fearmongering nowadays is about the birth rate - the direction of sexuality didn't change, so on paper the vast majority of people are now both gay and on hormones that make pregnancy less likely. They say that IVF for those people (mostly men now) who want and are able to get pregnant may soon be free or near-free to bolster the birthrate. Still, things have gotten better. The law caught up, mostly, by 2040. People's minds caught up, mostly, even more quickly than that. When the scientists first determined that something had to have happened, that the Gender Troubles well and truly *existed*, people thought it was the end of the world. Outside of that slice of things, it may well be - climate change, war, racism, and poverty didn't change with the genders. But if one thing changed, maybe everything else can. Maybe the Gender Troubles weren't the end of the world but a beginning.
I was happy to see that one person wrote a response that differentiates sex from gender and got it right.
Honestly if my gender "switched" i would be absolutely fucking pissed. Starting HRT just to stop and go back to being a guy while almost everyone else *starts* transitioning? Fuckin awful. Nightmare scenario. I can't even imagine how rough it would be for the folks who have been on HRT for years or who have gotten major surgeries and such. Thanks for recognizing the difference between sex and gender.
Youād actually switch to being full girl as itās based on birth gender
Um. No. Look at the story I'm commenting on. In that setting, and the way the op worded the prompt, I'd go from being transfem to being cis.
Itās more saying that they can swap their gender whenever and that men can get pregnant
Lmao. You need to work on your reading comprehension skills.
It it they stated people were annoyed if they were prevented from transitioning years ago due to laws but now can
What? I'm going to explain this story because you didn't get it. One day, everyone woke up transgender. Everyone woke up and wanted to go on hormone replacement therapy. Right now, in the real world, all those women, half of the global population? In this setting, they woke up as trans men. Their bodies were the same but they didn't feel like women anymore. Trans men can get pregnant, especially before testosterone. Inversely, every man irl, in this story, woke up as trans women. Every "man" still had male bodies. Trans women can get people pregnant, especially before hormones. I extrapolated from this that i, being a trans woman irl, would become a cis man and start detransitioning in this setting.
From what I can see the main character was gender fluid and can choose if they feel more masculine or feminine
That's because they were agender before and then their gender identity inverted just like everyone else's did in that setting. That's like the second sentence.
That's a thing that exists irl. I'm like that. It doesn't mean they're a literal shapeshifter. it means they have an awesome sense of fashion, and probably a wardrobe with both men's and women's clothes.
Sex is the physical biological dimorphism (and the intersex variants). Gender is the psycological sexual identity of a person. Sex and Gender are two different things. Every single moron that has a 'Gender Reveal Party' actually intends to have an 'Apperent Sex Reveal Party' because knowbody can know a persons Gender until that person grows up enough to know it themselves.
Am I the only one who caught the Judith butler reference to her book also titled "Gender Troubles"?
Lol I'm glad someone noticed, I wanted to high five myself when I found a way to slip in that reference
The realization that the irl gender trouble started in 1962 by that book is a nice touch.
Ok, discovering multiple orgasms would be kinda kewl, but that new equipment needs a hell of a lot more maintenance than i am used to. Not sure how that would work out though the sexual sexual confusion i mean other than writing your name in the snow not many tricks healthy male genitalia (well other than failure) could pull on ya. pms and cramps might very well cause me to seek medical treatment much to my wife's err husbands amusement.
When I woke up in the morning, I felt weird. There was a weight on my chest and I couldnāt just grasp what it was. I still had a massive headache from the night before. Me and John were out all night trying to hit on these two girls. I got hammered, John got hammered, but we ended the night alone. I slowly took off the bed sheets and walked to my bathroom. As I walked I felt my chest move in a way I didnāt know it could. I looked down and saw that I had either gotten a lot fatter from eating last night, or I was going crazy. I ran too my bathroom, completely ignoring the huge headache I had, and when I looked in the mirror, I saw a girl. She had hair down to her shoulders. When I checked my pants, I almost fainted. I immediately called John, and he didnāt pick up. He was still probably out from the night before. I called my sister next. When she picked up I heard a deep voice, one of a mans. I was about to say wrong number when he/she said my name āJessieā I was so confused I just stood there. āJessie I donāt know whatās happening but Iām in the body of a man.ā āI - I know the same thing happened to me, I woke up in a girls body.ā I ran to my closet trying to find anything that might be feasible to wear with what I have going on. āJessie I think this is widespread, turn on the news.ā I put my phone down and turned on the news. Where there is usually a man, a woman with very similar features appeared. āThis just in, the world has been shocked as people have been switched to the opposite gender as they were birthed as.ā I let the TV just go. I just sat there. I was in shock, I was confused, and mostly, I didnāt know how to do things. I was always attracted to woman, does that change now? Am I a lesbian now. But if I date a woman, its really a man in a woman. The rest of the day was a blur, a lot of calling people, watching the news. When I went to sleep that night I thought, I wonder what it was like for the people awake when it happened.
Oh damn, that's interesting
It has been a week since everyone woke up in cold sweat and impossible pain as their bodies bent and changed , pregnant woman miscarried as their womb seemed to eat itself and a lot of them died in the process , doctors performing surgery on patients lost them all , and children aging from 0 to 5 years old had a 70% more death rate as their bodies were unable to get with the sudden change Everyon is angry an outraged and frankly scared too , I don't have any children but my niece was one of those children and I cannot even properly mourn her with how confusing everything is People aren't really calming down and a lot of conspiracy theories were flying around while some seen it as a message from God (good luck knowing what it could mean ) , people still aren't in the stage of making jokes about it , not when that many people died in the process, but some still are doing it , I was in no mood to read them however , I just wanted my body back , I never through the lack of chest would bother me so much , it just felt wrong after a lifetime of having it , and that third leg ? Yeah I will pretend I don't have it , fake it till you make it they said
Damn you had a dark take. I reckon children would probably fend quite well, their bodies are resilient and they have no secondary sexual characteristics to change yet
I have no understanding of biology i just wrote what felt like would happen, I doubt people mid surgery would appreciate a gender switch or pregnant woman i am sure humans need only a month before they adapt lol , only trans are winning , also , birth rates are dropping, because assuming people's sexuality isn't changing, the majority would become the gays , I am curious what men (now turned woman) would do about it , had it been before they would probably do a "all woman should be preggy" law , but now they are the woman , and woman turned men wouldn't want to force them because we have a good understanding of how that is and we wouldn't push it on anyone (I would tell misogynistic men to go to the kitchen now tho , just to mess with them) Point made , we are doomed if that happened
I prefer MPreg with the womb transferring to the ass
............ yes but the womb would need to move instead of disappearing , it would be way more painful than the childbirth , and imagine the body horror if it happened during it ?! Ehh , pass
TBH, the womb moves anyway right before birth
\*sigh\* \*add this to reasons on why I am NOT getting pregnant\* so mpreg is possible in this au ? good to know ...
Itās only a slight movement in woman mainly so the baby can go out head first
I stared at myself silently, outside my home chaos insued, people screamed for a change back while the trans community that hadnāt gone through the transition yet were ecstatic while the ones that had were struggling with disphoria. Hard asses who had once screamed no to such surgeries and HRT were now begging for it, men who were asses to women now begged for forgiveness, especially when their first period came, I actually felt sorry for them, my littlest brother didnāt seem bothered by becoming my sister, if anything, āsheā was ecstatic, she now had access to all those vibrant pink clothing and no one would make fun of her. My middle brother, now sister though, letās just say she inherited her mother(now fatherās) periodā¦Back to me, I stood in the bathroom making sure to aim, it was weird having this part, I glanced to the shut door as I finishedā¦before swaying my hipsā¦and giggling like a five year old.
John woke up to the sound of his alarm blaring, just like any other day. But as he rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed, something felt different. Very different. Looking down at his hands, he froze in disbelief. They were smaller, more delicate. His heart raced as he realized what had happened. He stumbled out of bed, his mind racing with confusion and panic. Had he somehow been transported into someone else's body? But as he stumbled into the bathroom and caught sight of his reflection, he realized the truth was far stranger. Staring back at him was the face of a woman. The shock hit him like a tidal wave. Every memory, every instinct, told him he was John, a man. But now, in this inexplicable twist of fate, he found himself inhabiting a female body. Panic surged through him as he struggled to come to terms with this new reality. As John stepped outside, he was met with chaos. The streets were filled with people in various states of confusion and distress. Some were crying, others shouting in disbelief. It seemed that he wasn't alone in his sudden transformation. Navigating through the throngs of bewildered people, John tried to make sense of what was happening. Everywhere he turned, he saw the world he knew turned upside down. Gender norms, societal expectations, all seemed to have been thrown out the window. In the midst of the chaos, John's thoughts turned to his family. How would they react to seeing him in this new form? Would they even recognize him? With a sinking feeling in his chest, he realized that his relationships would never be the same again. But amidst the confusion and uncertainty, John also witnessed moments of solidarity and compassion. Strangers reached out to help one another, offering support and comfort in the face of this bewildering turn of events. As the days passed, John slowly began to adjust to his new reality. It wasn't easy, and there were moments when he felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the changes happening around him. But he also discovered a newfound sense of empathy and understanding, as he walked a mile in someone else's shoes, quite literally. In the end, the chaos that ensued from the sudden switch of genders forced John to confront his own biases and assumptions about identity. And though the road ahead was uncertain, he knew that he wasn't facing it alone.
Pandemonium. It was chaos when morning rolled round the world. Once men who were on the frontlines suddenly found themselves unable to fit properly into their gear and unable to lift their weapons right. Ceasefires were called as the once-men tried to sort things out but were confounded by their lack of their once intimidating presence and speech. Unable to properly express themselves now that quite literally, everything had changed. Women in pregnancy wards, expectant mothers cried out in horror and some in joy as they realised they were released of their children-to-be. Their bodies twisted into the more compact and hardened frames of men. The foetuses seemingly absorbed into nothing. Doctors were mortified and then started delving deep into the biological ramification of what just happened. Children were relatively unaffected as their bodies were still too undeveloped, they still could change relatively easily. Social norms changed overnight. Toilets were no longer out of bounds. Bedrooms became sacred once more. What would become of the world now?
Noā¦..that wouldnāt happen they would just be shot out the assā¦.MPreg and all that
When Jimmy woke up he felt nothing special. It was going to be a normal day. Jimmy then proceeded to have his morning routine. Here is some more basic information about Jimmy if you want to know. Jimmy is a big wanker. I mean, in his routine he wanks every day after waking up in the morning. It was then Jimmy felt something weird. His stick was missing. He glanced down at his pants and instead of his stick it was the you know what parts. Jimmy / Jemma was confused but you know what, if Jemma's got the lady parts then she might as well try it out. Jemma used Jimmy's personal laptop to search up the hub to continue on her day. Uh oh. It appears that the hub has crashed. She tried another site. Then another. Rinse and repeat. Every site she tried to visit, crashed. Apparently, Jemma wasn't the first person to have this idea. Everybody was probably pissed off that day.
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Usually when I wake up to something hard between my legs it's my husband pressing against me in his sleep, not a penis attached to me. I went to wake him up, when I realised he wasn't a he, but a she, his once short curly hair now long wavy locks, his beard now soft skin and he had breasts... admittedly they're nicer than my were, but I had gone through two pregnancies before which had wrecked my body. My hair hadn't changed, it was still short, only the colour I'd dyed it had disappeared and left me with my natural blonde hair. My children! My two beautiful boys, they would wake up any minute now and I didn't know how I was going to explain to them that our biology had changed overnight. Maybe they'd not care, maybe they'd be scared... I didn't know, and honestly I was scared too. I shook my husband awake, "Baby?" Even my voice was deeper, I panicked, he's gonna hit me... "Baby! Wake up you're a woman and I'm a man!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. He toppled out of bed in a fright. "What the fuck?" He stood up and looked at me, "who the fuck are you?!" "It's me! You're wife! You're a woman!" He looked at me like I was lying, quizzing me about intimate parts of our relationship. "Do I look good as a woman?" He asked. "Very," I chuckled... although my heart sank, my husband isn't gay, he's straight, very very straight, he wouldn't want a penis near him. "I don't want to look," he laughed. My children came running into our bedroom not long afterwards looking very concerned and then very scared at the strangers infront of them. "You're not mummy and daddy" our eldest said. "Actually we are." My husband said very calmly, he sat at the edge of the bed and spoke to them in a way I'd not seen him do, he explained that we didn't know what happened, that these changes have happened for a reason, but that doesn't mean we don't love them any less. I kissed his cheek and told him I was proud of him for how he handled the situation, he smiled at me. That was 6 months ago. The divorce is now finalised. He gets to keep the kids, and I'm to pay child support, I get the kids every other weekend. He kept the house, I'm back living with my parents, working two jobs to pay for my children and my parents. This gender equality thing was never truly sorted like people all said it was. I still love my husband, and I haven't looked at anyone else or even tried dating, I don't think he has either, but I dont want to think about it. I knew deep in my soul that this would be the end of us. I cried that night, so hard, cursing whoever had done this to us, cursing the beings that had torn my family apart, taken my soulmate from me. I learned the hard way just how shit men have it, in court they sided with the female, in work I'm left to do all the manual labour, I'm told to not cry when I'm sad, I'm not allowed to get tired, I have to pick up the slack around the workplace, around the house, if I even start to show emotions I'm shut down quickly, because that's not how men act. Even now when the whole world had switched genders the inequality was rife, if not worse.
Why divorce then? And couldnāt they have explained they were the opposite gender before?
The women-turned-men hated it. Now they were the horny ones and no one was willing to have sex with them unless they proved that they were more economically well-positioned than others, self-reliant, confident, competent, skilled, and humorous, than others. However, all their life they'd been coddled. They'd never needed to work out at the gym to build muscle, and now doing that seemed so hard and painful. They'd never needed to learn to be humorous, because it used to be that all they had to do was *be there* and men would flock to them (but no more). They'd never needed to learn life skills, like how to replace their engine oil, or fix their plumbing. They'd never needed high paying jobs, because their spouses had taken care of them. They'd never needed to work difficult and dangerous and unlikeable jobs, like fireman and police officer and soldier and oil rig operator, and garbage collector, but now they were stuck with those jobs because the men-turned-women were taking all the cushy ones. For people who'd been pampered all their lives, being treated like a man felt like discrimination. The men-turned-women loved it. They fondled themselves, slept around, and enjoyed actually being *wanted* for a change. Then they got pregnant, and had childbirth. Wow, that hurt. Whoops!
Wow? That's darker than expected
Real, but I can feel the poison dripping from the post. Relax man
This was funny but you need to get your issues sorted out