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Republicans in the North Dakota State Legislature cannot stop thinking about genitals, especially kids’ genitals. They are very concerned about what people, especially kids, are doing with which kind of genitals in which bathroom or locker room.
It is uncomfortable to sit near these legislators at girls’ basketball games, because you just know they are wondering if there are any penises hidden under those baggy shorts. Hidden penises are the thing they worry about the most and the thing around which they have built their chivalrous “protect the girls” talking points. When a girl(?) drives the lane, scores, and draws a foul, it makes a legislator wonder, especially if that supposedly female athlete has short hair and does not play for the legislator’s preferred team. You just never know these days. There are so many boys who want to hide their penises and be superstar girls’ basketball players or even homecoming queens. This is a major problem everywhere.
Republican legislators have recently begun to worry about both genitals and chromosomes, though which matters more is up for debate. If you were born with female genitals but XY chromosomes and internal testes instead of ovaries, then you are a woman. Your birth certificate reigns supreme—unless you box in the Olympics and they hear about your XY chromosomes. In that case, you are a man competing as a woman. The gender listed on your birth certificate has ceased to matter.
“What is a woman?” is still a go-to ‘gotcha!’ question for them. The mismatch of parts and chromosomes does not at all affect their belief that all this gender stuff is very black-and-white, male and female, man and woman.
This year, North Dakota Republicans have brought forth four bills targeting trans people, mostly kids:
· HB 1144 [ [link removed] ] is a bathroom bill, and one of its purposes is “to declare an emergency,” so it is a bathroom-emergency bill, and that actually makes it sound less ridiculous.
· HB 1181 [ [link removed] ] Would define gender in state law as “the individual’s determined sex at birth.” The caveat, of course, is if that determined-at-birth sex is challenged. Then DNA will rule. (I shake my head even as I write this.)
· SB 2244 [ [link removed] ] is a “parental rights” education bill, because everybody knows teachers are skilled at turning kids gay or trans. That’s why this one also declares an emergency.
· HB 1430 [ [link removed] ] is sponsored by all three of the legislators representing my district. It is a conversion-therapy bill, because someone’s gotta undo all that grooming. They need to make sure the boys end up as the only kind of person with whom a girl can be assured of her safety: a straight, cis-gender man.
An always-vocal voter from my district submitted testimony in favor of the conversion therapy bill. She made bold, confident assertions backed up by zero evidence. It was model MAGA testimony and will likely be studied by future scholars of America’s Era of Churlishness:
“Please do not be too impressed by the professional associations that testify against this bill,” she said. “Over the last several years, the mental health establishment has thoroughly discredited itself. . . ’Gender-affirming’ care remains one of the greatest medical scandals in modern history.” This statement really has it all: dismissal of experts, labeling of an ‘establishment,’ and greatest-in-history hyperbole.
It’s not just state-level Republicans who are experiencing an attack of the vapors over transgender people, of course. Representative Sarah McBride (D-OH) just became the first openly trans member of Congress, and that has made South Carolina’s Nancy Mace even more fake freaked-out than usual. She will be running to TV cameras daily to breathlessly report fictional outrages.
The House already passed a ban on transgender student athletes this session, and Republicans in the House and Senate introduced eighty-seven anti-trans bills last year. As far as they are concerned, there should be a thorough shorts-off inspection for boy bits before every girls’ sporting event. (Matt Gaetz would be up for the job.) Republicans in Congress know there is a high probability of penises under those uniforms because of how cool and popular it is to be a trans kid. Life is so easy for them, and their parents are always pleased as punch when they learn that their child might be trans. Every parent knows there is no more direct path to the easy life than being different from the vast majority of people in such a a significant way.
This really is an emergency to Republicans because a whopping 0.002% (I rounded up) of college athletes are trans. Senator Tommy Tuberville did the math, and by his reckoning that’s nearly half. (You must remember that back in high school, Tommy spent much of each math class thinking about and occasionally scratching genitals.) This is also an emergency because there is no way we will get grocery prices under control until we take care of the potential penis problem. Penises are, after all, notorious for inflation, and mass deportations alone won’t reduce the swollen prices of cucumbers, zucchini, and eggplant.
Republicans want you to know that this is not another instance of them inflating fake problems to distract us from more important ones or from those suggestive text messages they sent to Cassidy Hutchinson. And really, it’s no big deal if they sent a young lady—younger than their wives, for sure—a few eggplant emojis and a clever suggestion that she could help them with a growing problem.
They also scoff at the idea that they are targeting a tiny, vulnerable group of people for political gain. They checked Tommy’s math and know that almost half of college athletes are trans, after all, and you will not convince them otherwise. Don’t try to tell Mike Johnson there’s not potentially a penis under some of those volleyball shorts or cheerleading skirts. He knows better, and he will not be impressed by testimony to the contrary from any professional associations or the thoroughly discredited mental health care “establishment.”

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