A rhetorical device or debating tactic used to challenge the argument that “Anyone who identifies as trans is trans/valid.”
It quotes the following 2015 anecdote from Mike Huckabee, a well-known anti-trans public figure:
“I wish someone told me in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE. I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’”
The test asks whether or not this teen version of Mike Huckabee is valid as a genderfluid trans teen.
The test forces the opposing side into an ultimatum:
1) Accept the absurd, bad-faith hypothetical as a valid trans identity, validating a transphobic comment by Mike Huckabee.
2) Admit that some standards are necessary for what constitutes a “valid” trans person, in order to exclude trolls like Mike Huckabee, thereby disproving the notion that “anyone who identifies as trans is trans”.
Named in August 2025 by Haley Halcyon (@2gd4.me on Bluesky) after she, quote unquote, “decisively won an Internet debate for the first time” using this strategy. As originally explained:
“Any #transmedicalist who finds someone who parrots the sleepwoking line ‘anyone who identifies as trans is trans’ or ‘all trans people are valid’, my advice is this:
• Apply the Genderfluid Mike Huckabee Test.
• Don’t let off when they try to deflect.
• Point out the gate they implicitly keep.”
It quotes the following 2015 anecdote from Mike Huckabee, a well-known anti-trans public figure:
“I wish someone told me in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE. I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’”
The test asks whether or not this teen version of Mike Huckabee is valid as a genderfluid trans teen.
The test forces the opposing side into an ultimatum:
1) Accept the absurd, bad-faith hypothetical as a valid trans identity, validating a transphobic comment by Mike Huckabee.
2) Admit that some standards are necessary for what constitutes a “valid” trans person, in order to exclude trolls like Mike Huckabee, thereby disproving the notion that “anyone who identifies as trans is trans”.
Named in August 2025 by Haley Halcyon (@2gd4.me on Bluesky) after she, quote unquote, “decisively won an Internet debate for the first time” using this strategy. As originally explained:
“Any #transmedicalist who finds someone who parrots the sleepwoking line ‘anyone who identifies as trans is trans’ or ‘all trans people are valid’, my advice is this:
• Apply the Genderfluid Mike Huckabee Test.
• Don’t let off when they try to deflect.
• Point out the gate they implicitly keep.”
Her argument for self-ID, total bodily autonomy, and zero gatekeeping was a crowdpleaser, until I hit her with the Genderfluid Mike Huckabee Test and she ragequit.
by the riverside August 9, 2025
Get the Genderfluid Mike Huckabee Testmug. by EmaEmma January 22, 2024
Get the Testmug. by old queen June 2, 2019
Get the Driving testmug. by EddieBrock5 September 2, 2023
Get the Hollywood Screen Testingmug. 

