Ethertravel report #1012, received February 11, 2493. Labeled hoax until Djinn story corroborated with other reports.

Dana Parris reporting in. During my ethertravel training, I was basically taught to prepare for anything, so I really didn’t expect this!

It was pretty quickly obvious to me when I arrived here that this world was way more Earth-like than I expected. The people look mostly like humans with one or two major exceptions, the trees and other animals look familiar, and once I was able to find a map of the world, even the place names and the land forms (pre-icecap-melting versions) were mostly a match for my memory.

The difference between people here and those from Earth is that there aren’t two sexes. Everybody has the body shape of a female, but with a penis. There’s no battle of the sexes, no gendered restrooms, no gendered clothing, nothing of the sort. They’re fully functional, and any person can be a father or a mother to children.

The other big difference is that there is no hole between the butt cheeks. Instead, the pee and poop come out of the penis together from a slightly enlarged urethra. People here pee about as often as humans, and each time it washes out a bit of poop that comes out with it in a somewhat pasty mixture at first, which is generally flushed out by more pee afterward.

The toilets are shaped differently, not designed for sitting, as a sort of cross between a urinal and a toilet. The basin part is at toilet height and has a height of water in it like a toilet, but it is narrower. It runs up to the wall, but protrudes far enough for someone to straddle while standing. All toilets, both in homes and public restrooms, are made this way. There’s toilet paper, but we just use one or two of the little squares to wipe off the end of the penis.

There is still a limited amount of gendered language. My parents are identified as “Mom” and “Dad” based on which one gave birth to me. My sister uses the same terms for the opposite parents, since each of them bore one child. But people usually use female terms such as “girl”, “woman”, “sister”, and the like to refer to other people. Compounds with “man”, where “woman” or “person” was sometimes used on Earth, are always used with “woman”. Other gendered forms, like “actress” or “comedienne”, aren’t used. “Actor” and “comedian” are used instead. Terms such as “boyish” or “manly” have meanings similar to Earth, describing a person’s behavior or body shape and not implying she doesn’t have female parts (though especially “manly” may imply she doesn’t use them). The female pronouns are also used. Other animals still have separate sexes and traditional male and female terms, including gender-specific words for specific animals, are still used.

People generally keep the breasts covered, but it is permissible to be topless in public, and common on beaches. Tops like sports bras are also common, especially for bustier women. School and office environments require full shirts.

I didn’t have to hunt to figure out how this came to be. It was part of the standard knowledge passed down to every child, usually along with the sex talk. That started out normal, explaining the body parts, what sex means, telling us to avoid getting pregnant, and such. But then they showed us the recorded video, from some decades ago, of the event. It had occurred during the filming of an episode of a “Treasure Hunters” TV show, and they kept it in and rushed the the episode to broadcast merely one week after it was filmed. Essentially everybody had copies of it now and passed them on to their children when it was time. Mom said, “You know that people today don’t look like the two you will see at the start of this video and some people in other old movies, but this video shows why.”

These two guys had run a metal detector over a beach and marked all the spots where they had picked up significant signals, and took another, heftier looking device out to explore those places, which gave a clearer view of the shape of the metallic objects buried underground. At this one spot, the shape they saw looked like the classical magic lamp. The two of them dug down, and when they finally uncovered the lamp, one of them pushed the other down. He landed face down in the bottom of the hole on top of the partially uncovered lamp. The man on the ground stayed down, dug with his hands to finish digging out the lamp, and rubbed it. A being calling itself the Djinn appeared, and asked him to make a wish, not for himself personally, but for the betterment of mankind. And the man holding the lamp said, “I wish there were no assholes.”

Obviously, he was referring to his partner in this expedition who he thought was a jerk for shoving him, but the Djinn chose to interpret it literally. The two men changed to apparently female forms. Based on the sensitivities of that era, the broadcaster superimposed censor bars over their now very female, naked breasts. Likewise, a small bit of the word “assholes” was bleeped out, while making it obvious what word was said.

The man who made the wish exclaimed, “I said no assholes, not no men! Do you think every man is an asshole?”

“The bodily changes were necessary to accommodate the removal of your assholes,” the Djinn replied.

The two men broke out laughing and each was seen putting a hand down his shorts and probing the changes in his anatomy.

At this point, the video of the men on the beach ended, but other people were shown speaking about the event. One of them was a medical doctor who spoke at length. The gist of his talk was that peeing and pooping at the same time wouldn’t have worked for women the way they were originally made because it would be too hard to keep out of the vagina, so the Djinn gave them penises. But they were fully functional penises, including for sex, and they would have made men unnecessary. To compensate, the Djinn gave men all the female parts.

After the video was over, my parents went on with the sex talk, a pretty frank version of it which included condoms, dildos and vibrators, both male and female masturbation (not only do people do that both ways, but each type feels better for some people). They didn’t tell us not to masturbate or even not to have sex, but they did tell us we wouldn’t enjoy sex until we could enjoy masturbation. The main thing was not to get pregnant, or get anyone else pregnant. Starting on our 12th birthday we got more condoms annually as birthday presents, and when we were 15 we were given access to the house supply, the ones that formerly only my parents used.

It was a very sexually open culture. Before we finished high school, my sister and I had each dated a couple dozen different people, and had sex with most of them. Sometimes I used my dick, sometimes received, and maybe even tried it both ways. I’d been a woman in my past life and I was kind of partial to receiving, but the different feel on the other side was also interesting and I was certainly open to relationships where we switched off.

Patty was very manly, even though small, and she first had sex while she was 13 on a date with a very girly 14-year-old. I think she was 17 before she ever let a partner penetrate her, and only ever did it a couple times. Patty almost always wore jeans after about age 11, when she figured out the convention that they were considered manly and skirts girly.

Which reminds me about the clothing selection here. Because the bodies are mostly woman-shaped, we mostly have the clothes typical for women, but with some accommodations for the penis. Jeans are shaped like women’s jeans, except with the loose front of men’s jeans. Panties (they do use that word for them) are available in a variety of styles, from lacy and silky styles similar to styles I might have worn on old Earth, save for the extra space in front and the overlapping flaps of a fly, to plainer styles almost exactly like the tighty whiteys guys wore on my Earth. Leggings are a thing, too, again with the extra space in front and fly flaps, but they also have a strip of velcro inside the top flap that helps ensure they stay shut except when you mean to open the fly, and most leggings meant to be worn as outerwear, rather than under a dress or skirt, come with a little modesty ruffle, essentially a very short skirt, just reaching to the crotch, that helps hide the penis bulge and covers the fly. You lift loose skirts in the bathroom, but tight skirts have a zipper fly (unlike styles on Earth where women would hide the zipper on the side or in back) and a double closure, typically a hook above the zipper and a hidden flap that buttons, much like some men’s slacks.

Pantyhose were mostly replaced by opaque leggings, because people don’t shave their legs and the hair would have shown through sheer hose. Heck, most people don’t shave at all! Facial hair is usually minimal, and on blondes and dark-skinned people you won’t notice it at all, but you can see the traces of beard and mustache hair on people with light skin and dark hair. When this happens to a girlier person, she generally shaves. I have a few visible hairs on my chin and a thin mustache, but they don’t bother me. My sister would have loved to have even that much facial hair, but her face was hairless when I left for college.

It was easy for me to just enjoy the life here, with easy bathroom visits, no battle of the sexes, and free choice of whether I wanted to take the male or female role in a relationship. But thinking about college reminded me I had a mission here. The technology level here was below that where I left, but not dramatically so. It was definitely possible to make ether devices in my lifetime. I needed to get into studies of electronics and physics, and ideally find some ethertraveling partners.

I had barely started my search when I ran across a news story about a college student winning some sort of award and posing in her “I’m with Gregorevich” T-shirt. Yes, T-shirts with words printed on them are still a thing here, and yes, they are as weird as when girls wore them on Earth with the words appearing right across the boobs. I was able to look her up and send her a note.

Before I reached the point of having to commit to a college, I’d established a working relationship with Jenna. I was the only one to contact her after her appearance in the news. She felt better with the circuit building side, and hoped I could focus on the physics side. I explained to her that I hadn’t started college yet and my options were open, so I could do that. My parents certainly didn’t worry when I focused on colleges with good physics programs. My dad seemed happy I’d made a decision, seeing how I’d shown various interests before. And Jenna agreed that it didn’t make sense for me to try to go to school with her. She was three years ahead of me, so it would only be for one year. I should just go to whatever school made sense for me, based on money, location, and quality of education.

Jenna also thought it didn’t make sense for us to try to found a company to build the ether communicator immediately out of college. She’d get the experience building innovative types of circuits for some other company while I would, after graduation, lead the effort for the two of us to develop the physics which would ultimately turn into a circuit design she’d develop and make. We figured, based on the technology level, that that would be at least 10 years past my graduation. But she thought we should live together after we had both graduated as a way of facilitating working together, and I knew that was one step short of a marriage proposal the way things work here. If you live with one other person, it may be for a set time, as with college roommates, or perhaps it doesn’t last because you find the two of you just do not get along. Otherwise, after living together a year or two, one of the partners would propose marriage. So I suggested we spend a little time together first before we got fully committed, to get the experience other couples got by dating.

While she was still in college, neither of us could afford to fly to get together often, so we just did one weekend. After she graduated, she found work closer to where I was going to school, so we could get together any weekend. And that started being a thing, to the point where during the spring break in my junior year, she took vacation time so the two of us could go visit my parents.

“So how did you two meet?”

“Actually, Mom, Jenna was the one who won that award, who I wrote to for advice my senior year in high school.”

“Sorry, I don’t remember that.”

“She helped me decide to study physics by just telling me to be myself and to do what felt right.” That wasn’t the real reason why, but since we could not talk about ethertravel, it was the story we’d agreed on.

“Well, I do remember when you suddenly focused on physics,” Dad chimed in. “I just didn’t realize how you had come to the decision.”

They didn’t remember Jenna from the news at all. So we just talked about having fun together on dates, and they were glad we were happy together, and that was that. When our time there was through, I went back to school and Jenna went home. The next time my parents saw Jenna was at my graduation. I’d gotten a job at a company not far from Jenna’s, my parents understood we were going to live together, and of course this was a prelude to a marriage proposal. They’d discussed that with me when I first told them of the plan, and I assured them I understood that.

At least I didn’t get the “Have you had sex yet?” question. I don’t think that was ever asked here, as dating was almost synonymous with sex. There was a certain class of guy back on my Earth, a class I think had mostly died out by the time I was born but you still saw portrayed in movies, for whom a second date was expected to end in sex and he’d try to get some on the first date. Here, even the first date often meant sex! Along with planning where and when to meet to start the date, and where they’d go for dinner and a movie, the dating couple often planned where they were going to have sex after the movie. Or on a quickie date, instead of the movie. It was considered entirely reasonable here to ask someone you had met but not dated, “Wanna get together for dinner and sex Friday night? My place, my dick.” It was entirely possible the person asked would accept, or could refuse for any reason, including “I only use my dick for sex,” or could negotiate, “Only if I get to use my dick afterward.” Even the dates we had in high school often ended with planned sex at either my or my date’s house with both sets of parents fully understanding sex was happening. A big part of moving out of your parents’ house was no longer having to ask them if you could have sex with a date in their house. Naturally when Jenna and I first planned a weekend together, we had agreed we’d try sex both ways and continue with whatever mutually felt better, or perhaps both ways.

Because we’d been dating for years, we’d didn’t drag it out; we got engaged after three months of living together and married after a year. We each paid to bring our parents to the wedding and everybody else was on their own, so we had about 20 people in all. And there was one revealing thing about weddings I should mention. Men’s formal wear is still a thing, but only those who refuse to even consider sex in their vaginas wear it. People like Patty. So the presence of one at a wedding told you who was the “male” partner in a couple. But many weddings, I might even say most weddings, don’t have such a partner, and both of the people getting married wear dresses. The same goes for every other role at weddings. Whether you are a “bride” or a “groom” you could have a “maid of honor” or rarely a “best man,” and a row of “bridesmaids” which might include a “bridesman” or a row of “groomsmaids” which might include a “groomsman.” Their outfits would match in color and style, even if one was wearing pants. But we didn’t have any of those “men” in our wedding party, which was just two bridesmaids and a maid of honor for each of us. For that matter, there was only one “man” among all the guests, a married friend of Jenna’s. Patty would have been, but she declined to attend.

And once that was over, and we just went home. No big honeymoon for us. But we celebrated with sex for hours, in every position and with each of us using our dicks. We had done it weekly for years, daily the first couple months after I moved in with her, and 2 to 3 times a week later, up to the wedding, but we made this special. We even arranged ourselves so we could fuck each other at the same time, though that turned out not especially comfortable.

Afterward, we tried to have sex as a way of celebrating our time together, even if we were together working on the ether theory. It was not unusual for Saturday afternoon to see Jenna sitting in my office chair lowered as far as it would go and me sitting in her lap, on her dick, while she gently rocked in a way that let her move inside me just a little as I worked on some piece of theory and she watched over my shoulder. If I needed to concentrate on something so hard that the sex bothered me, I would ask her to stop and she would until I was ready again. If I wanted her help or advice, she’d give it. We worked well together.

What we didn’t do was have kids. It would have been too much of a distraction. But we plan to after sending our report to Earth.

In preparing this report, we realized it wouldn’t be complete without a discussion of what happened during the change. Just as the details of what had happened to this world were handed to me on a silver platter, there were also plenty of records available to describe how the world reacted after the change, and we merely needed to search the Internet. Some people loved it, some hated it. Immediately after the change, some people didn’t fit into their clothes anymore, or some of their clothes, anyway, and there was a bit of a rush to try and get clothes that fit, especially among those who used to be men. The other immediate change was that the “men” and “women” signs on restrooms were pretty quickly replaced with signs just reading “restrooms”, and some urinals that were not able to handle the pasty waste product post-change people made were removed. Several different toilet designs were experimented with, and they pretty quickly settled on the ones we now use, but it took a generation for them to get replaced everywhere.

The differences in language took place pretty quickly. While some people, especially older ones, still used male-based terms to describe people they knew as men before the change, the general appearance of people in female shapes led people to apply female pronouns and female versions of some gendered terms to anyone they didn’t know before the change. Female versions of family terms were applied uniformly to people born after the change. Now that we’re a couple generations past the change, these categories include everyone most people know.

There were lots of other little societal details that changed as soon as someone realized the old way didn’t make sense any more. For instance, movie and TV awards kept the distinction between actors and actresses for the first year after the change, when pre-change and post-change productions were in competition with each other, assigning genders to actors in post-change productions based on whether the character behaved in a more masculine or feminine way, which in all but one case corresponded with the actor’s pre-change gender. Subsequently there were only “actors” which included everyone, though after a couple years some award systems invented new categories to make up for the fewer awards this had resulted in, such as a category for co-stars which applies to the second-billed actor in a production, separately from “best actor” (first billed) and “best supporting actor” (third-billed and later). In sports, it was more than just integrating men’s and women’s competitions. Many sports events were canceled for a month or more after the change as they produced new equipment. The change ended careers for some athletes who couldn’t perform as well in their new bodies.

It took us some time to get everything figured out, but when I was 31 and Jenna 34, we contacted Earth and sent this report.