I had just returned from the first inter-dimensional trip in human history. I was dumbstruck. My team asked me what had happened, as I had returned after only two hours.

We knew the place the other side of the portal was earth like, as we had sent automated drones through. We could not control them after they had phased through so they were programmed to take short trips to take readings and return.

I had been given a wristband that kept my body in sync with the dimensions vibrational frequency. Pushing the return button simply turned the device off and I would be snapped back to my reality.

I stepped though the portal into a sparse wood and headed west. The drone footage showed a settlement in that direction. I felt fairly confident. I am six foot tall and well built.

Within ten minutes I was on the edge of town. It looked like a twentieth century English village. The buildings were more rounded and the cars were bigger with less sharp angles. I stayed hidden and observed.

The first people I saw were a family. The woman was at least seven foot tall! She was followed by a smaller man, pushing a pram. He was my height. The most surprising thing was the woman was wearing a very sharp tailored suit, the man was wearing a dress! The woman had short, but well styled hair. The man was slightly balding with a beard.

“Come on keep up”

The giant woman shouted. She seemed to not realise that the man was struggling to get the pram up the high curb.

Why they spoke English I will never know.

I saw a few cars pass by. After a while I noticed only women were driving. I decided to take a risk and walk down the high street. If anything happened, one touch on my wrist band would take me home.

I moved quickly, looking through the windows of a small supermarket. It was full of men shopping, wearing what I would call women’s clothing.

“Quick over here, run!”

I turned to see a man in a dark blue pleated skirt and a white blouse waving at me from across the road.

“In here quick.”

He opened the door to a shop.

Steven James Men’s Fashions

“Are you mad walking around like that, you could be arrested”

“Sorry I’m not from around here, what have I done”

“Wearing trousers, surely it’s illegal everywhere?”

“Are you one those extreme men’s libbers?”

“No I’m just a stranger. I am from another country. Can you explain your laws so I won’t break them in future?”

He held his hand out limp at the wrist. I took the finger tips lightly in my hand”

“I’m Steven”

“My name is Peter.”

“So is this your shop then Steven?”

He laughed as he locked the front door.

“Yeah, right as if a married man can own anything!”

“So whose is it?”

“My wife owns everything of course; married men have no property rights”

“I always wanted a shop, but men can’t get bank loans without a female family member's permission. I hoped I would earn more money this way. Men only get a little more than half of the wages of women. It didn’t work out anyway, my wife keeps all the profits. Do you have a bank account where you come from? Where do you come from?“

I thought there is no harm in telling part of the truth.

“No my wife has all my money, and I come from Britain”.

“I’ve never heard of Bri-tain. Are all men allowed trousers there?”

“No, only with their wife’s permission.”

I lied as I wanted to find out more about how this society worked. The women were still females, albeit, bigger and stronger than the men. The men were still biological males. They just seemed to fill what in my world, in the twentieth century anyway, would be typical female roles.

“So who runs the country then?”

“The prime minister Shelly Mellor.”

“Did you vote for her”

She almost collapsed in fits of laughter.

“Men, Vote? Are you mad? I know there are dangerous men’s liberationists that say we should get the vote, but we are too emotional to be given the vote”

“Don’t tell me you can vote in Bri-ton, or wherever you come from”

“No, I just thought it was different here,Do you live here in town?”

“I live about three miles away.”

“Do you drive or walk?”

“How could I drive? Men aren’t allowed to drive. Can you drive?”

“I can if my wife is sitting next to me”

I lied again, trying to calm him.

“I wish I could drive, I have to walk past the pub at the top of the street. Those horrible drunken women say awful sexual things to me. One slapped my bottom last week, and groped me!. I reported to the police. She said I must have been asking for it.”

“Did you tell your wife?”

“Yes, but she called me a dirty little tease and beat me. While I was crying she dragged me to the bedroom and made me do things”

I could tell he was upset remembering this, but I thought surly this was against the law here. I was angry someone could be treated like this.

“Why the hell didn’t you go to the police and report your wife?”

“What for? Many women say it’s a good thing to beat your husband it keeps him in line.”

“What about raping you then?, they will have to do something about that”

“A wife cannot be convicted of raping her husband, being married means consent. Everyone known's that.”

There was a loud noise from the back of the shop. I saw the shape of a huge woman, almost eight feet tall storming towards us from the back of the shop.

“Oh my god, it’s my wife.”

She glared at me, and looked at Steven.

“What the hell are you doing talking to men’s lib perverts like this? Is that what you are now? Will you be burning your knickers next? Wait until I get you home, I’ll beat this nonsense out of you.”

She looked at me.

“You are coming to the police station now”

At her size , she could accomplish this easily.

“And you, Steven are in big trouble”

I shook my head and looked into Steven’s eyes and saw his fear. He was terrified of her.

"I am so sorry”

I pushed the recall button, and I was back in the lab.

******************************************************************************************************************************

Promising a full report on my short trip would be finished in the morning , I drove home. What a horrible world to live in. A vile place for men to have to live in anyway. Men were second class citizens. I thanked god I Iive in our world where injustice like that doesn't happen.

At home I started my report while researching human rights online to help with the terminology. By the end of the night I was in a state of shock.

Men were not allowed to drive.

Until June 2018, Saudi Arabia was the only country in the world in which women were forbidden from driving.

Men were not allowed to vote.

1828 presidential election was the first in which non-property-holding white males could vote in the vast majority of states. By the end of the 1820s, attitudes and state laws had shifted in favor of universal white male suffrage. August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote.

Men could be legally raped by their wife.

Very few legal systems allowed for the prosecution of rape within marriage before the 1970s.

Men could not open a bank account without their wife’s consent.

American woman needed her husband's permission to open a bank account as recently as the 1960s, and it wasn't until 1975 and the Sex Discrimination Act that a British woman could open a bank account in her own name.

Men only get a little more than half of the wages of women.

Despite the 1970 Equal Pay Act, a gender pay gap still exists today. In some professions and at some levels women's wages are equal to men's. But on average women are still paid less than men to do the same jobs. In the 1970s women, on average, were paid about 50% of men's wages in manufacturing and the professions

Married men could not own property.

Married women were not legally entitled to own landed property until the passing of the Married Women's Property Act in 1870 and the Married Women's Property Rights Act in 1882.

I realised that if I was a women living before the twenty first century, I would be living in that horrible world, on my own earth.

In some parts of our planet they still are.

We will not be truly civilized until the whole planet has equal rights.