The air tasted stale with complacency, thick with the unspoken rules of a society sliding backwards. It happened slowly at first—a joke here, a sidelong glance there—until one day women woke to find their grandmothers' nightmares had become reality again. The world had tilted on its axis while they slept, and now every headline, every muttered conversation in boardrooms and back alleys alike carried the same poisonous refrain: know your place.
Men who'd once feigned enlightenment now loosened their ties and let their true colors show—a smirk at a female colleague's interrupted presentation, fingers "accidentally" brushing against thighs in crowded elevators. The internet became a minefield of carefully worded dogwhistles that blossomed into full-throated choruses of this is how it should be.