Card Carrying

For a lot of guys (and their slobberingly sycophantic women) who expound tiresomely on “traditional masculinity” and fetishize “trad wives,” nobody obsesses more about trans existence than American conservatives.

It’s kinda like how border-control loudmouths keep getting caught hiring undocumented aliens, or Planned Parenthood protesters quietly get their blonde daughters’ black babies aborted, only what they’re actually doing is pretending the GOP convention didn’t crash Grindr with overload demand.

 Hell, even their talk radio shows have names like “The Men’s Room.”

Don’t think too hard about that.

No single demographic spends more time thinking about transgender identity than neo-cons. Much like immigrant laborers don’t wonder what migrant life is like, and fish don’t ponder the viscosity of water, actual trans people are busy living their own lives. If they think about conservatives, it’s to strategize ways to avoid being killed, which seems reasonable on its face. When conservatives imagine trans folk, they imagine the DESTRUCTION OF ALL THAT IS HOLY AND PURE.

Whew. That’s a heavy burden on trans folk, enbies, gays, and people who really don’t much care for getting laid in the first place. Knocking over Western Civilization is a very tall order. They’ll need to eat good protein, train hard, and get plenty of rest.

In the meantime, the purity testers of the GOP, KKK, Patriot Front, MAGA, Identity Evropa, and the rest of those busybody clowns remain urgently fascinated by even the subtlest code that might reveal you as crypto-trans or, in bruh-speak, require you to “turn in your man card.” Like cattle chutes at a feedlot, such purity tests get finer, narrower, and straiter as you go down, until only one path remains. You’ve probably already guessed where that leads, unless you’re a MAGA stooge yourself.

Beware! There are endless ways in which you can be dispossessed of your gender, according to the prized arbiters of a society based on purifying masculinity, and only one path (never specified or discovered) to ensure it.

Put your hand over your mouth in shock? Gay. If you eat a banana, better bite into it sideways, from the middle, and — never mind, just no bananas under any circumstances. Also, no hot dogs (or independence) on Independence Day. Brats are possibly exempt if you’re the barbecue master, your grill marks are perfectly regimented, and you apply only mustard because mayo is eggy santorum and ketchup is basically period blood.

Tea drinker? Turn in your man card. Keep a cat in the house? It’s dogs only for manly men. Have you, or anyone you know, ever watched a full episode of Glee? Move to Canada immediately, and buy yourself a gingham lumberjack dress.



The path is equally narrow and strait for women, who should be sturdy enough to bear a dozen children without stretch marks, but never strong enough to hit hard in a boxing ring. That would make her some kind of “man,” lifelong vagina and birth certificate notwithstanding.



Disturbingly, my fellow motorcyclists — a group that I elevate in my worldview because I believe in my heart that enthusiastic use of bikes makes for better, more joyful people — regularly go all-in on arbitrary litmus tests for gender. It’s supposed to be funny. “If your boyfriend rides a scooter, then you have a girlfriend” — and if that’s offensive, because maybe you’re a guy who rides a scooter, then you’re just a fag who can’t take a joke.

I dunno how to sort it. Can I still call myself a man? Those pop quizzes come hard and fast, and you can’t miss a single question without the intermobs coming at you. At 60, it would be difficult for me to build a fresh new gender identity, no matter how strenuously and often all those “real men” (non quiche eaters?) of incel, racist, misogynistic, basement-dwelling emotional support groups insist that I “turn in my man card.”

Is there any ground left to stand on? Most conservatives wouldn’t find me acceptable as a transgender woman, a gay man (despite the frequency of accusation), or asexual — particularly if I applied, as a big ol’ guy, to be a school crossing guard. In practice, conservatives don’t accept designations other than “man” as fully human — and they persistently fence off that status from anyone who doesn’t meet this moment’s gotcha question.

Is someone’s gender really subject to the opinions of playground bullies? Why is that a conservative value?

Maybe they have a point, in my case. I may be more of a gender suspect than I realized. I’m legally married to a (card-carrying?) woman and divorced from two others, but my wife has an ex-wife of her own. We drive a Subaru… a Subaru! It’s comfy, practical, and very nearly the least macho car imaginable. I kissed a non-binary station wagon, and I liked it.

Also, I lift weights. Sounds pretty butch, right? Nope! Pretty much the gayest thing a so-called man can do. I have that on good authority, in that I looked it up on the internet.



I do harbor a dangerous stockpile of guns, which theoretically should compensate for my no doubt insufficient (again: internet) genitalia in pretty much the same way that a big, red, well-hung pickup truck might. Guess what? I don’t blow stacks of cash on range ammo, so ipso blammo I must be a giant pussy — more or less a whiny woman who needs to learn her place.

My poor, long-suffering wife! How could she have known she was getting herself another girlfriend? After all that damned cooking and childbearing, will she have to turn in her woman card, too?

My biggest question about the perennial insistence that I turn in my man card — a demand I’ve faced repeatedly, because I’m American and I have access to the intertoobz, exposing me to Men With Keyboards — is that I’m not sure which card that is.

I have a lot of cards.

Would the man card be my pilot’s license? Dad always prized his as a mighty high pee stain on life’s wall. My skydiving card, or one of several SCUBA certifications? HOG membership? How about a military driver’s license, DD214, medal citations, or expert qualifications on various weapon platforms? A master’s degree? Industrial certifications? Unlimited displacement motorcycle endorsement, with sidecar?

So many cards; so little clarity. Whomever shall I call on for permission to express my gender identity? Obviously, these questions are not for mere laypersons. They are for our benevolent overlords, weirdly obsessed with policing such matters.

To sort it properly, I’d like to propose that self-declared arbiters of masculinity — hard, courageous men like Josh Hawley, Nick Fuentes, and the bearded eminence of Ted Cruz — personally help me identify precisely which among my preternaturally tall stack of cards are too manly for me and must therefore be turned in.

Because I’m fancy (and apparently of boyish and lightsome sexual affiliation), I’d like to extend that invitation in ancient, bum-cuddling Greek:





…motherfuckers.