2017 is winding down to a close. The leaves have fallen to the ground in an explosion of colors, the sky has turned an austere gray, and a bitter chill now permeates the air. Snow has fallen, creating a winter wonderland for most of the country. People are bundling up under blankets or by the fireplace, and they are traveling outside in fashionable layered clothing. Christmas has come and gone with the typical holiday cheer and merriment, with New Year of 2018 very near on the horizon. For most people, the Great Change was already fading from memory, the idea of the male gender a curious relic of a bygone era, only capable of being replicated in fiction or admired in the past. Many men who had once prided themselves on their natural male superiority have completely abandoned their old identities to the sands of time. Once macho men now giggled like schoolgirls and bonded over painting their nails as they now could not think of themselves as anything else but women.
Countless hours of journalism have been dedicated to this very subject, about the shockingly small amount of time it took the human race to adapt to a world without men(All the while various radical feminists and lesbians joked that they knew this fact a long time ago). The exact mechanics of how the Great Change happened were still the subject of much public speculation and investigation. Magic? Aliens? A secret worldwide conspiracy? An act of God? Or perhaps a Goddess?
Regardless of whatever the trigger was, the world had moved on. The parts of society that were in the know about magic were not telling, especially the ones who recognized the frighteningly malleable gossamer mask that separated reality from chaos. It would not be worth revealing the truth, because it would be all too easy for evil, insane, or stupid people to put the appropriate pieces in place and undo the very concept of life itself.
One subject that had worried many people would be the relationship between Born Women and New Women. Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists(Otherwise known as “TERFs”) and other transphobes existed before the Great Change, and there is no reason to believe they wouldn't change now. While there were isolated incidents of prejudice, as what happened to kindergarten teacher Millie Quesada(nee Aaronsohn) and her wife Juliana in the town of Fort Bridgewater, largely the level of acceptance of New Women has been unprecedented, although Born Women who chose to keep their original imperfect bodies such as Elizabeth did face some occasional harassment for sticking out like a sore thumb in the ocean of flawless looking princesses.
In June, the first live action movie of Wonder Woman premiered at the box office to rave reviews and fan plaudits. Born Women and New Women alike marveled at the exploits of the comic book Amazon warrior and feminist icon as she traversed the now barbaric seeming male dominated era of World War I Europe, with many critics noting with amusement that the idea of an island full of warrior women now seemed redundant, if not quaint.
Beginning in October, a number of high profile New Women in entertainment, politics, sports, religion and elsewhere were accused in an onslaught of social activism sprung by the #metoo hashtag on Twitter of sexually harassing their underlings back when they were still men. The fallout from these accusations are largely still pending, although it has revealed that the new all female world will not be completely harmonious or more enlightened on matters of sexuality or consent, as there still remained a not insignificant portion of internalized misogyny.
Religion in some ways has changed quite radically, and in other ways it changed barely at all. The Catholic Church in response to the Great Change almost immediately began accepting New Women as priests, bishops, arch-bishops, cardinals, and of course the Pope herself, but as of now, Born Women were still being denied access to these positions due to the church's interpretation of divine law. The distinction to most Catholics was absurd, as it was among most of the population at large. Protestants meanwhile were adapting much more easily, as the hierarchy's of those faiths were not quite so rigid. There was however much soul searching and occasionally severe relationship shake ups now among the more sexist of the devout, as there was among Jewish women, Muslim women, Hindu women, pagan women, and so on. Early in 2017 there was a Twitter and Tumblr movement to officially classify God as a woman and refer to her as Goddess, which had received mainstream attention and had a few adherents.
Open displays of sexuality were becoming much more openly embraced in all areas of society. The Great Change had essentially supercharged everyone's attractiveness to the point where even the poorest and most destitute were drop dead gorgeous, not to mention that every New Women was well endowed with large breasts, which led to more people being openly comfortable in commenting on one another's appearance or even “copping a feel”. While this was a boon to many women both born and new, especially the ones who in the previous reality had either been ugly or simply not conventionally attractive, it had also created a number of problematic scenarios both in the professional setting and in domestic scenarios, which President Rodham had addressed during her first State of the Union back in January.
The concept of the nuclear family was adapting as well. While most people simply replaced the idea of a nuclear family as being a Mom and a Dad with a son and daughter with a Mom and a Mom with two daughters, social scientists were noticing certain trends towards increasing polyamory, the reinstitution of multiple generations of family members living together(Informally referred to as the “Walton Effect”, named after the rural TV show from the 1970s) as opposed to merely shuffling off older generations into assisted living facilities and kicking children out of the house once they reach the age of consent, and overall a more communal outlook. This was both worrying and intriguing.