Culture
Clever Play On City’s Name Results In The “Salem Which Trials”
Mayor Samuel Parris Assures Citizens That “Nobody’s Getting Executed.”
Salem, a sleepy little town in the Ozarks of Missouri, has decided to get a jump on the Department of Health and Human Services effort, as uncovered in reporting by the New York Times, to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.”
“The problem was we couldn’t seem to find any scientists to tell us how to do that,” says Mayor Parris. “All the scientists we talked to said that you can’t tell what gender someone is by their biology. Sometimes you can, but not always.”
When asked if the town council had considered a genetic test, Parris responded that it wasn’t economically feasible for a town of Salem’s size to get everyone genetically tested. As well, several of the townsfolk expressed serious reservations about submitting to a government DNA test.
“First, we thought we would just round up everyone’s birth certificates, but that was going to cost us $68,000. Genetic testing was gonna be way worse, over $800,000. There’s no way we can afford that.”
Not one to let economics stand in the way of progress, Mayor Parris decided to be innovative. Through extensive online research, he finally found his scientist: someone willing to develop affordable gender tests for the town of Salem. Thanks to Wendy Tituba, the rest is no longer history. Through Ms. Tituba’s efforts, the town will soon have a scientific methodology for testing which gender to assign each resident, across all age groups. Tests that Mayor Parris has affectionately dubbed “The Which Trials”.
For children under twelve, what the test lacks in sophistication, it more than makes up for in creativity. The children are placed one at a time in a room that contains a tub of water, a barbie-doll, a string, and a small stone. After the child spends ten minutes alone in the room, if the doll ends up tied to the stone at the bottom of the tub of water, the child is deemed male.
For teenagers, the test is equally simplistic. The teenager is placed in a room that contains a video game console on one side of the room, and a cell phone on the other. “It stands to reason that boys will be drawn to the video games and girls will want to Snapchat with their friends,” explains Ms. Tituba.
When asked if these tests were based on scientific research, Ms. Tituba was emphatic in her response. “Of course they are scientific. This town hired me to be a scientist, so that’s what I am. I developed these tests, so that makes them scientific.”
The adult test is still being developed by Ms. Tituba, with assurances that it would be developed using an equally valid scientific methodology, and would be conducted in a restroom setting.
When asked about her qualifications as a scientific researcher, Ms. Tituba indicated that she graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh with a Bachelor of Science degree. When pressed on how a degree from an art college qualified her to work as a scientist, Ms. Tituba became defiant.
“It’s a Bachelor of Science, OK? It says ‘Science’ right on the diploma.”
Dent County 42nd Circuit Court Judge John Haythorne, when asked how the results of the tests would be used, indicated that the test results would be used in a variety of ways, in keeping with the spirit of the Trump Administration’s stance towards eliminating gender non-conformance from the American public life.
“Say, for example, you want to work at the funeral home here in town, and the test says your a guy. If you show up for work looking like a girl and the director doesn’t like that, well, the funeral home director should be allowed to let you go,” states Judge Haythorne. “But, mostly it will just be used to keep the boys out of the girls’ restrooms, you know? Can’t be too careful anymore.”
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