The 1970s film from Doris Wishman (not a transman suffering from nominative determinism, but a pioneer of titillating nudist films), which features graphic scenes of a man undergoing sex change surgery, begs in its title Let Me Die A Woman!

The US Selective Service System – the draft board, to you and I – has considered this and decided, “Fine. Die how you like. It’s the dying that’s the important bit,” and has announced that those born male must register for potential selection, even if they now identify as female. In a single decision they have managed to upset both trans activists, annoyed that pretending that identity is real thing stops abruptly when war looms, and the gender critical, annoyed that the pretending identity is a real thing was allowed to sweep over women’s rights and spaces and only stopped at the edge of the traditionally male-dominated arena of blowing the living shit out of each other.

Given that getting those two groups to (sort of) agree on anything is nigh on impossible it seems that doing so should qualify for a Nobel Peace Prize, which is rarely awarded to those trying to staff up a shooting war.

The issue that the Selective Service people have is that they fear that, when asked to go and face a hail of Russian bullets, a large number of men may suddenly decide that they are, in fact, ladies… for truly it is said that there are no gender atheists in a folx hole.

The follow up question, that everyone on the government side is now desperately trying to avoid, is whether it can possibly be the case that men would only pretend to be women for this one specific reason. Given men’s long history of being willing to risk ridicule, social exclusion, prison, actual death, and injuries that would make a grizzled SAS soldier throw-up, just to get sexual thrills, especially from women who don’t want to grant them said thrills, it seems unlikely that only the theatre of war is a stage they won’t tread on.

Furthermore, if we won’t take men’s word for it that they’re women when it comes to drawing a rifle, why are we willing to do so when they’re rifling through drawers in a Primark changing room? One of the foundational lies, which has been taken at womanface value by so many governments, is that nobody would ever pretend to be transgender, yet here’s the admission that, yes, they clearly would. And not just for something trivial, like voyeuristic thrills in communal changing areas, or having unlimited access to women who can’t leave in prison, but actually for something as base as not wanting to act as temporary lead storage facilities for their country. After that, how does a government go back to claiming that transwomen are women with a straight face?

To further confuse matters, trans-rights activists have recently taken to accusing those who are gender critical of being aligned with Putin, because they agree with him that men cannot become women. If the service providing the American infantry is also pulling back from acknowledging gender fantasy does that mean both sides are aligned with Putin? I’m no military expert, but I think one of the fundamental prerequisites for a war is that some of the players must be fighting for the other side.

It certainly couldn’t be something like agreeing on absolute literal reality not being a reliable indicator of agreement on all issues, because that’s too complicated to fit into a simple chant.

While we wait to see what happens to the transwomen – who are women – who are forced to sign up, because they’re not women, and the transmen – who are men – who aren’t allowed to sign up, because they’re not men, and also whether the world will end in nuclear fire, we can at least amuse ourselves at this sudden and unexpected rally against inclusion, this draft excluder.