I've got a few executive orders of my own

Two can play at this game, a**hole.

I had a fun, personal, non-political post all queued up for this week. But I couldn’t make myself hit the “publish” button. It just didn’t feel appropriate in light of the historically awful occasion of the recent presidential transition, and the truckload of shit that that guy (sorry, I can’t even write his name) has already dumped on our country with a few strokes of his pen.

I didn’t watch the inauguration, and I have been trying to consume news in small bits. But it’s hard to avoid it completely unless you hide under a rock—and it’s extremely frigid outside, so I don’t feel like doing that. Also, I have a bad cold.

It’s also hard to avoid when you find out that one of that guy’s executive orders directly affects people you love. We have dear friends whose kids are trans, or who are trans themselves, and one of our own kids is genderqueer. But according to the new regime, a person’s sex is “fixed and immutable” and either male or female, period. (Never mind that this completely ignores the medical and biological fact that some people are born intersex, or with an extra chromosome.)

So, even if you’re a trans woman who has undergone top and bottom surgery and who has lived as a woman for decades, sorry, you’ve got to put “male” on your passport. And if you’re a nonbinary person with female anatomy and/or chromosomes, you’re female. No more option to use an “X” on your Real ID, as our kiddo does. Are you a trans man, complete with facial and body hair and a flat chest, who nobody would ever, ever mistake for a woman? If you’re charged with a felony, you’ll be going to a women’s prison and denied your hormone replacement therapy. Enjoy.

Will these things be enforced in every instance? It doesn’t fucking matter. It’s a state-sanctioned invalidation of people’s identity—a forced tethering of trans people to the sex they were born into (assuming it’s either male or female; if you’re intersex, you’re nothing I guess?) in the eyes of the government. Identifying as a gender other than your birth sex is now considered “gender ideology,” which sounds like a term straight out of Soviet Russia.

It’s ugly and dehumanizing and as I read the order my heart just kept sinking and sinking.

You can be sure that our family will be standing up for the rights, freedoms, and dignity of trans people whenever and wherever necessary. In the meantime, however, I’ve decided that it would be therapeutic for me to channel my anger around this and other executive orders to issue some of my own. I urge you to do the same if you are so inclined.

1. If the president can go around arbitrarily changing universally-used names—like changing Mount Denali, as it has been officially called in Alaska since 1970 and federally since 2015, back to Mount McKinley, or renaming The Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of America (snort laugh)—then so can I. Therefore, “Water” shall henceforth be known as “Buttered toast.” (Because being told to have eight pieces of buttered toast a day sounds much nicer than being told to have eight glasses of water, doesn’t it?) “Buttered toast,” meanwhile, shall be called “David.”

2. As previously mentioned, calling yourself a gender other than the one matching the sex you were born into is now invalid from a federal standpoint. Along those same lines, if you began your life as a fan of a Boston/New England sports team (Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots, Bruins) you may NOT identify as a fan of any New York sports team (Yankees, Mets, Knicks, Giants, Jets, Rangers). You may, however, change your fan identity to match teams in other US markets. Exception: Celtics fans may not transition to Lakers fans. Even if they do, they will not be recognized as such.

3. Speaking of which: Connecticut shall henceforth no longer be considered part of New England. Let’s be honest; for most of us, it never really was.

4. The president has declared a national emergency at the southern border because apparently it is “overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics that harm Americans, including America.” I don’t know who this America is that they’re talking about in the last clause (America Ferrera?), but I’m sorry for her suffering. But while illegal immigration is certainly a serious problem, I think Trump and his pals are exaggerating the effects just a leeeeetle bit. (“This invasion has caused widespread chaos and suffering in our country over the last 4 years.” OK….)

   
   I, on the other hand, shall use my self-declared powers to address an issue I feel is actually much more harmful to America and Americans, including America Ferrera: I hereby declare a national emergency because people are spending too much time on their phones. It is isolating them from their fellow humans, leading them down rabbit holes of dis/misinformation and idiocy, and keeping them from engaging in more edifying and important activities such as reading books, daydreaming and contemplating, looking at their children, and not walking into telephone poles. To carry out this order there shall be created a task force of people in need of employment who will be paid a fair living wage to go around and gently remind folks that there’s more to life than screens, and hey, maybe try to cut back by, say, 30 minutes a day for starters. Or even just 15. Like, next time you’re waiting for the bus, or standing in line at the grocery store, try reading a magazine or chatting with a stranger instead of scrolling through TikTok or playing Candy Crush. Could you try that, and let’s see how it goes? Awesome. Have a great day!

5. If you drop toilet paper on the floor of a public restroom, you must pick it up. Honestly, it’s sad that I have to make this an executive order, but apparently I do, because some of you people are disgusting.

Well, that about covers it for now. Like I said, I’ve got a bad cold, and all this order issuing is tiring, especially since I don’t get to do it while crowds of fawning billionaires applaud me. All I’ve got is my cat, and even he isn’t really tuned in. Dude spends way too much time on his phone.

Nevertheless, in the coming days and weeks of my administration, I may be issuing additional executive orders in the interest of saving America from its shameful decline. Never again will citizens be held hostage by the tyrannical demands of woke radicals who insist on things like buttered toast being called buttered toast instead of David, or who think they can just start wearing a Yankees cap and somehow magically not be a Red Sox fan. And there will, hopefully, be much less toilet paper on the floors of public restrooms.

It’s the beginning of a new golden age.

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