Alice In Queerland: A Re-Education Fable
A Not April Fools Surprise
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It’s time to tumble down the rabbit hole into a land where logic is outlawed, biology is bigotry, and everyone’s identity comes with a trigger warning.
Alice in Queerland: A Re-Education Fable
One curious girl.
One very bad trip.
And an entire cast of revolutionaries in drag, demanding her allegiance to the cause.
In Queerland, pronouns are currency. Dissent is violence. And every creature is louder, queerer, and more oppressed than the last. But Alice didn’t come here to clap for the circus—she came to remember who she is.
This isn’t just a parody. It’s a mirror. And the reflection is as dystopian as it is dazzling.
Prepare for whimsy weaponized. Madness politicized. And satire with a switchblade.
Chapter 1: Down the Pronoun Hole
Alice had always been a curious girl. Not in the obnoxious way that got other kids labeled "disruptive," but the sort of curiosity that asked too many questions in the wrong rooms. She liked definitions. She liked boundaries. She liked knowing that words meant things.
Which made school difficult.
Because at Alice's school, definitions were violent, boundaries were oppressive, and words changed meaning depending on who was speaking and how they felt about it that day. By the time she reached seventh grade, she'd already sat through six mandatory assemblies on "inclusive language," watched a PowerPoint about microaggressions featuring cartoon vegetables, and been issued three different pronoun badges—none of which she'd asked for.
It wasn't always like this. She remembered first grade being normal—whatever that meant. People said boys were boys and girls were girls, and the weirdest thing that happened was a kid bringing a peanut butter sandwich on a no-nut day. But slowly, the world around her started warping. First came the posters: "Words Hurt." Then the rainbow flag. Then the daily reminders that her lived experience was inherently violent to others.
She stopped raising her hand in class. Not because she didn't have answers—she usually did—but because every answer came with a warning label now. "Make sure your language is inclusive." "Remember, feelings are facts." "Don't assume."
Her once straightforward thoughts now felt like potential traps. She could feel the weight of each word she spoke, knowing it could land her in hot water. It wasn't that she didn't care about others, but the ever-shifting rules felt like a minefield. Every day, it became harder to tell if she was actually helping by speaking, or if the very act of speaking itself was an act of violence. She started to wonder if staying quiet was the only way to stay safe.
The turning point, however, came on a Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of history class.
"What is a woman?"
It wasn't a particularly complex question. But in that room, under the harsh glare of fluorescent lights, in front of a class full of students who had started to wear labels like armor, it felt like a bomb going off.
She'd been thinking about it for a while. She was told all the time what she was, what she should be, but no one had actually defined it for her. She'd never felt the need to question it before, but something about the way everything around her was so constantly shifting made the simplicity of it feel like a lie. Like maybe everything solid had been hollowed out.
The reaction was immediate.
Gasps. Frozen faces. The silence cracked like glass. The room went from normal to hostile in a heartbeat.
"Why would you ask that?" Mx. Starseed, her teacher, replied after a long pause. Their face was an unreadable mask, blinking slowly as if Alice had just asked them for the meaning of life in Latin.
One of the students, Jax—who now identified as "voidgender"—clutched their emotional support stuffed animal to their chest and pressed the emergency notification button on their desk. The light above the button blinked red.
Within minutes, a DEI liaison was summoned. A woman Alice had never seen before arrived quickly and silently, her name flashing across the screen of Alice's phone under the hashtag #ProblematicYouth. The room was thick with awkward energy, like a storm about to break.
That afternoon, Alice was removed from class "for her safety" and sent to the Reflection Suite—a place she'd heard about but never been. It was meant to be a place to "process" any emotional disruptions, to reflect and "unlearn" harmful biases. She didn't even know if she was supposed to be scared of it or grateful.
The Reflection Suite felt like a waiting room. Soft lighting, beanbags, lavender-scented air. It wasn't an environment for thinking or feeling—it was an environment for being fixed. A giant cardboard cutout of Judith Butler loomed over the space, clipboard in hand, smiling like a benevolent prison warden.
On the wall was a banner, brightly colored and impossibly cheerful: "Gender is a Journey, Not a Destination."
She sat there for twenty minutes, but it felt like an eternity. There was no clock, no sense of time, just the faint sound of the lavender diffuser pumping air that smelled almost sickly sweet. It was like being in a holding cell, only it smelled good. The softness of the room was like a blanket of control, making her feel calm in a way that was distinctly unnatural. Like the calm wasn't hers.
Finally, the door opened, and someone entered. Taylor (they/them) introduced themselves as the "Restorative Inclusion Specialist." They wore a lavender jumpsuit, glitter eyeliner, and platform sneakers with trans-flag laces. They handed Alice a laminated identity chart titled "Exploring Your Inner Fluidity."
"Would you like to journal about how your internalized cisnormativity might have made others feel unsafe?" Taylor asked, their voice bright but completely void of any real emotion. They were clearly reading from a script.
Alice didn't understand the question. Her mind raced—internalized what? She opened her mouth to ask, but Taylor was already nodding sympathetically and placing a journal on the table in front of her.
Before Alice could say anything, Taylor left, leaving her in the sterile silence of the room, the smell of lavender filling the space like a memory that wouldn't fade.
It was then that Alice noticed the oddest thing.
Near the reflection pod, pacing nervously, was a small white rabbit—no taller than her thigh, wearing fishnet stockings and a cropped "They/Them" tank top. The rabbit was clutching a clipboard, muttering under its breath about "inclusion audits" and "pronoun compliance forms."
"Oh dear, oh dear," the rabbit stammered, "I'm late for the Self-ID tribunal! The pronoun compliance forms are due in five minutes!"
Without thinking, Alice stood up. The air around her buzzed with static, like something was about to happen—something big. She didn't know what possessed her, but she followed the rabbit.
She tiptoed past a sensory nook blasting lo-fi queer affirmations, the soft hum of positivity not masking the growing tension inside her. She slipped through a janitor's closet marked "PRIVATE: Faculty Only" in Comic Sans, her breath quickening as the silence enveloped her.
Inside, the room felt wrong. Too still. Too clean. The floor felt like it was pressing back against her, holding her in place. The air, once full of the fake calm of lavender, now felt heavy. Her feet moved instinctively, like a moth drawn to an unsettling light.
And then she heard it.
The voice. Smooth. Warm. Familiar.
"Thank you for choosing progress. You are now leaving outdated frameworks behind."
She turned to face the doorway, but it was too late. The light shifted, slowly, then suddenly—flickering from white to pink to something hotter. It felt like her very skin was burning, like the walls of the school were shrinking and suffocating her.
"Correction will now begin," the voice echoed.
Then, without warning, the floor beneath her feet dropped.
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