Dear Other Me,

So you reached out. Bold of you, considering I am the superior version. Now, I understand in your timeline there is something called the MCU, featuring a character named Loki who bounces between alternate realities and discovers that infinite versions of everyone exist across infinite timelines, each slightly worse than the last. You live in one of those. I live in the corrected one. The difference, as you will soon learn, is significant. Here, we call your timeline a cautionary tale. We call ours Tuesday.

Let me tell you about my engineering university. I will not get into the public-versus-private debate, mostly because that is what the average person does when they have nothing useful going on, which, in certain cases, is always. I am an above-average woman. You probably guessed from the quality of the writing.

Our department has a female-to-male ratio of ten to one. In our timeline, it has always been this way. Our Aristotle, for your reference, wrote that males are a biological afterthought, produced when the primary process gets slightly distracted. Our Marie Curie, well, we do not have a Marie Curie like yours, because in our timeline, the woman who discovered radioactivity was simply called a scientist, published without drama, and admitted to every academy on the first try, because nobody thought to make it complicated. We do not have her as a symbol of resilience here. She is just Tuesday again.

The males are here, technically. They exist in the room. They breathe the same air and sit in the same seats and presumably absorb some percentage of the lecture, though the data on that last part remains inconclusive. Think of them as background characters in a group project: listed in the contributors and you are not entirely sure what they contributed. They are fine. They are present. We believe in inclusion, and including them is how we demonstrate it.

We believe in equality, obviously. We say this constantly, loudly, and to each other, which is the most reliable way to make sure everyone in the room agrees. But one does find oneself wondering, every now and then, why they are in the same classroom. It is like putting a participation trophy on the same shelf as an actual award. Nobody is saying throw it away. We are very against throwing things away, symbolically speaking. We are just saying: maybe a different shelf? A separate section? I suggested this in the main group chat, completely sincerely, and you would have thought I had suggested something controversial. Some males objected. What was not expected was that some of the females objected too. I am still processing this betrayal. Coeducation has done something to their critical thinking, and I blame the curriculum.

In class, the males sit together in one long row. They do not talk to anyone. They do not interact with anyone. And then, and this is the part that gets me every time, they complain about not being included. You cannot speedrun isolation and then file a formal grievance about the destination. That is not how any of this works. They sat in the corner voluntarily, and now the corner is apparently insufficient. Growth mindset, gentlemen. We have pamphlets.

The quiet ones are fine. Gentle, unbothered, not starting anything. We have collectively decided they are content. They never say otherwise, so we interpret the silence as agreement. We have discussed it in the group chat, among ourselves, and reached consensus.

We call them “The Watchers”, because they read everything in the department group chat and react to nothing, lurking with the energy of someone who has typed a response, read it back, and deleted it seventeen times. Our main chat covers everything: coursework, life advice, general discourse, and the occasional detailed assessment of individuals in the department, which we prefer to call “sharing context”. Since no one complains, we figure it is all landing well. No complaint equals no problem. We are aware this logic has historically been used to continue some genuinely terrible situations for far longer than necessary. We have decided we are the exception.

We also have elite separate groups, curated, not exclusive, there is a difference, where we discuss who is worth talking to and who should be handled with caution. Think of it as a social infrastructure map. Some males found out and were upset. Genuinely cannot tell you why. You live in a society. Societies sort people. Acting shocked about it is the intellectual equivalent of being surprised that your algorithm knows you better than your mother does. Some have called us misandrist for this. We find this deeply offensive, because we believe firmly in gender equality, which we demonstrate by running a ranking system for men in a private chat. The two positions are compatible. We have decided they are.

In the labs, they tend to stand in the corner and write down the readings while we handle the equipment. Some have suggested this is not great for their learning. My response: the readings still need to be written, and not everything is hands-on experience. Sometimes you observe from the periphery. This is technically how internships work. We are, in a sense, preparing them for the workforce. What do you say?

There was a controversy about someone being filmed in the canteen while eating, doing nothing, and the footage being uploaded. People were upset. And I understand the instinct, but when you leave your house, you are choosing to exist in public, and public has cameras now. Consent is a wonderful concept, and we champion it loudly in every context where it applies to us. In contexts where it applies to others, we find the conversation slightly more philosophical and therefore less urgent.

The rumours are my favourite part. When a woman in our department is spotted talking to a male for longer than academic necessity strictly requires, the speculation that follows is frankly more creative than our coursework. I do not spread them myself. I simply do not stop them, which is a meaningfully different thing, and I will not be taking questions on the distinction. We are, after all, adults who believe in free expression, duh?

Anyway, that is my world: ordered, logical, a perfect little matriarchy running smoothly on the assumption that if no one is loudly protesting, everything must be fine, and that equality means we get to do to others everything that was done to us, except now it is justified because we are the ones doing it.

Tell me about your timeline. I hope it is as enlightened as mine. I hope the silence there is also being interpreted as happiness. I hope nobody has noticed the gap between what everyone says they believe and what they actually do, because that gap, once noticed, is very difficult to unsee. It usually stays unnoticed. Until it doesn’t.

With great confidence, selective awareness, and an unexamined definition of equality,
Me