This is a real thing in the world.

[Content Note: Guns; patriarchal violence.]


Above: An image of the "Man Card" issued by Bushmaster, the maker of the semi-automatic assault rifle used by Adam Lanza in the Newtown School Shooting, issued to customers who complete a manhood quiz featuring questions like: "Do you eat tofu" and "Have you ever watched figure skating on purpose?"

At least, those were the questions until Bushmaster pulled down the page.

Which may be because the other questions, per Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon, were utterly vile:

One question gives you four possible options of how to respond if a car full of the rival team's fans cuts you off on the way to the championship game. The correct answer, it turns out, is to commit arson: "Skip the game, find the other car in the parking lot, and render it unrecognizable with a conflagration of shoe polish and empty food containers."

And, as if my points about a culture a violent masculinity and an entrained lack of empathy needed to be made any more clearly:

Don't let those emotions show or that glass be full of anything but non-light beer, because your buddies can "revoke" your Man Card at any point. Revokable offenses include being a "crybaby," a "coward," a "cupcake" (we have no idea what that means either), having a "short leash" (presumably thanks to a wife or girlfriend), or being just generally "unmanly" (this one has a woman icon).

Ha ha ha. Adam Lanza killed seven women, starting with his own mother.

There are people who sneered when I observed that Lanza had committed the "ultimate patriarchal act," but here it is, in stark relief, that women are anathema to Real Men, according to patriarchs.