Mystery solved — perhaps. There’s a reason the left is coming after our barbecue grills and our smokers. It’s because apparently, barbecuing is sexist. No, really.

Writing for Slate magazine, Jason Brogan feels the need to declare, “I’m a feminist. I’m a dude. And I hate that I love to grill.”

It gets better.

“I’m uncomfortable with the pleasure I take in something so conventionally masculine,” he writes. “Looming over the coals, tongs in hand, I feel estranged from myself, recast in the role of suburban dad. At such moments, I get the sense that I’ve fallen into a societal trap, one that reaffirms gender roles I’ve spent years trying to undo. The whole business feels retrograde, a relic of some earlier, less inclusive era.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the social justice jargon, here’s what he’s saying: “I like to grill, but so does my Dad — and that makes me nervous because he’s so… Republican.”

That’s the essence, though he goes on to expound on politically incorrect outdoor cooking and how it’s inherently misogynistic.

“Unlike most other traditionally ‘feminine’ forms of domestic cooking, grilling typically happens outside, and hence in the public sphere,” he writes. “The putatively masculine quality of grilling may derive in part from the old public-private gender split. In that sense, it shares a common cause with the belief that women belong in the home.”

In case you’re unaware, there’s now a full-fledged War on Barbecue. The city of Austin, for example, sought an ordinance to limit smoke coming off legendary pitmaster Aaron Franklin’s barbecues. And Mother Jones magazine lamented the “tons” of carbon emitted by backyard barbecues over the Fourth of July weekend.

That war continues.

“A bizarre, viral video shows a man who claims to be a neighborhood council official telling a resident that his barbecue smoke isn’t allowed to leave his property,” Fox News reports. “The footage shows the unidentified male resident arguing with the official, who showed up at his house in Pinellas County, Florida.”

The video shows the “official” claim to be responding to complaints.

“I can smell it, I can smell it again right now, but I’m on your property,” he acknowledges. “You’re allowed to have it smell on your property, so that doesn’t count, but when I’m on the street, that’s when it counts.”

Counts to whom? What law is being broken here?

Responding to the conflagration, other Pinellas County officials tried to walk back those “rules.”

“There is no ban in barbecue grilling in Pinellas County,” Pinellas County Air Quality Division Manager Ajaya Satyal told local reporters.

It’s a war that foes of freedom and grilled meats will surely lose. Austin, for example, dropped its proposed ordinance when Aaron Franklin said he might have to move his barbecue joint outside of city limits.

At least now we know why there’s such a fuss. It’s looked upon with suspicion — particularly, suspicion of being sexist — in these post-modern times because it’s traditional.

That misses the truth about barbecue, particularly in Texas.

It’s a uniter, not a divider.