Use the Woman Card at the library to get a book with squiggly pastel handwriting on the cover that Gay Talese will not take seriously.
Present the Woman Card to a man you have just met at a party and it is good for one detailed, patronizing explanation of the subject you literally got your PhD in.
Offer it to someone on the red carpet and, instead of any substantive questions about your work, you will get a barrage of inquiries EXCLUSIVELY about what you are wearing.
On the bright side, running for office as a Woman Card–holder is a blast, because it allows people to accuse your female supporters of only liking you because of your gender. Don’t try suggesting the opposite! That doesn’t work.
Show off the Woman Card on your way to work and you will get free comments from total strangers, telling you to smile. Play it in the sciences and you will get to leave the sciences.
Take the Woman Card anywhere and you will instantly be surrounded by men who feel entitled to your time. Also, to your space. Do not take up too much space; the Woman Card does not cover that. It also does not cover female protagonists or not being harassed online. You are on your own for those. The Woman Card doesn’t even entitle you to shorter lines in the restroom. Frankly, as fun as it is to be a member of the exclusive club, and as much as I enjoy the occasional door-holding, I’m not even sure I want to re-up this year.
But it’s not all fun discounts and free experiences!
The Woman Card entitles you to constant scrutiny and judgment from all corners at all times, whether you asked for it or not. Try talking! Or rather, don’t.
You can also use it in fun card games, including but not limited to Go Fish (what your boss says when you ask for a raise), Can You Have It All? (fundamentally identical to War but you can’t win), Sorry! (compete to see who can say this the most in the course of a single meeting), Don’t Wake Daddy (mom has to do all the child-rearing by default), and Five-Card Slut Poker (for men, this is called Five-Card Stud, but this is the double-standard edition).
Unlike Man Cards, Woman Cards do not increase in value as they age. In fact, they depreciate. Do not collect Woman Cards. Even in mint condition, they are worthless.
April 27, 2016
That Five-Year-Old Refugee Has Diabolical Plans
That’s why we slow it down and make sure that if they are a five year old that maybe they’re with their parents and they don’t pose a threat. . . . To assume that just because of someone’s age or gender or whatever that they don’t pose a threat would be wrong.
—PRESS SECRETARY SEAN SPICER, WHEN ASKED ABOUT THE FIVE-YEAR-OLD IR ANIAN BOY WHO WAS DETAINED UNDER PRESIDENT TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDER ON REFUGEES
SEAN SPICER IS QUITE RIGHT to be concerned. This five-year-old boy waiting at the airport certainly has a diabolical plan. All five-year-old children do.
When the five-year-old comes to this country, he will begin his hostile takeover almost immediately. He is going to touch everything in the house and his hands will be sticky for some undefinable reason and nothing in the house will ever feel entirely not sticky ever again.
He will sow disinformation. He will run up and down the aisle of the airplane creating chaos and making fake plane noises with his mouth, even though he is clearly not a plane. He will say the floor is lava. He will say he is a dinosaur. He will say he is Batman. He will say he is a doctor who can vaccinate you against cooties. All of these will be lies.
He will commit sabotage. He will knock down his block towers with a thunderous crash when you are on the telephone. He will spill his Legos on the carpet for you to walk across barefoot in the middle of the night and make you blaspheme God.
But he will not stop there. He will tell interminable stories. He will draw horrible propaganda art where your head is too big and both your arms are sticks and your mouth is a horrible pool full of yellow boulder teeth.
He has plans to turn his bed into a spaceship without registering first with NASA. He has plans to invite friends over from school and hold them hostage behind the couch with his whole army of stuffed hippos.
He has plans to carry his sinister associate Bear Bear with him everywhere, to bed and to the dinner table, and even to school, and we know how Betsy DeVos feels about bears in schools. Besides, Bear Bear is a foreign operative with a missing eye and almost none of his original fur, always silent, and his motives cannot be adequately discerned.
He has plans to let go of your hand and run off giggling because he thinks the world is all like him on the inside and there is no one who does not understand that he means no harm—how could they?—and he wants to play.
Oh yes, the five-year-old boy has diabolical plans. Look at him, standing in the airport. He is not even four feet high, but his mind is whirling with plans: to go to a strange new school and learn a strange new language and make strange new friends and teach them to draw all over the walls with crayon. And at recess, he may not share. He has plans to sit up past bedtime in a house where the sound of bombs falling does not keep him awake. He has plans to commit awful acts of sabotage like flushing strange things down the toilet, because here there is a toilet to flush. He has plans to grow up to become the most terrifying thing
