How We Survived

You're wondering how it happened. How did we survive? How did our population suddenly plummet from six billion to half that. Enabling our natural resources to recover and, eventually, support us. All of us.

In 2020, all of the indicators pointed to our imminent extinction. We had to reduce our greenhouse gases by 50% before 2030 in order to have just a hope in hell of avoiding what would otherwise become inevitable in 2050, eventual human extinction. And in 2020, we were nowhere near being on target. The U.S. continued to deny that there was a problem; Canada continued to allow the production of greenhouse gases just for fun (via snowmobile, PWC, and ATV use; in fact, the government had gone so far as to designate 121,000 kilometres of crown and private land specifically for snowmobile use).

And so there continued to be—and every year, more—devastating droughts, forest fires, heat waves, floods, superstorms, and pandemics, as well as all the rage that typically accompanied such events—riots, assaults, mass shootings ...

In the middle of all this, single mothers just ... gave up. They'd had enough. Enough part-time, temporary, casual work for which they earned half of what men would have earned. (No, what am I saying? Men would never be offered, would never have to accept, part-time, temporary, or casual work. Not if they had kids to support.) Enough of no pension, no benefits. So no affordable medical care. Enough of looking after other people's kids as well as their own, but needing to do so in order to feed their own. Because no affordable daycare.

They'd had enough of fighting for child support every fucking month. They'd had enough of the men, the absent fathers, still calling the shots. For example, preventing them from moving back to where they could get the help of their extended family, because said family was in a different state or a different country and they, the men, wouldn't therefore be able to see their kids as often, as easily. (Suddenly that mattered.)

They'd had enough of living in a culture that "values work that contributes to the destruction and exploitation of life over and above work which nurtures life," to quote Abigail Bray. And Marilyn Waring. And how many other women who had been ignored.

They'd had enough of being considered, treated like, damaged goods and sluts.

Why were they single, you might ask. Their husbands, the kids' fathers, had abandoned them, saying they just weren't cut out to be fathers.

Or they'd left their husbands, the kids' fathers, after years of abuse, psychological and physical, that hadn't started until the first pregnancy.

Why were they mothers, you might ask. Their husbands had refused to use a condom. They'd said they'd pull out, but didn't. Usually, they just raped them. It was their right, after all. (The consequences, apparently not their responsibility.)

So the next time their kids were with their fathers for the weekend, they just ... disappeared.

You might think it would tear them apart. Well, they were already torn apart.

Yes, their daughters would likely be raped. That would've happened anyway. Eventually. The famous 'one in four' had crept to 'one in three' as men got angrier and angrier with the world at large.

Yes, their sons would be raised to be misogynistic psychopaths. That too would've happened anyway. The porn culture enabled by the internet had turned most men into misogynistic psychopaths. Which was no surprise, if they'd been watching women being humiliated and hurt, and apparently liking it, since they were eight. Which was the case now for most males.

And then it wasn't just the single mothers. Married women started divorcing their husbands and insisting that said husbands, their kids' fathers, assume full-time custody.