In reading the Amazon reviews for Ray Comfort’s book You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence but You Can’t Make Him Think, I came across this gem, by Gen JC Christian, patriot. In raving about the book, he advances the following argument:
Bolding mine. What in the holy hell is the “little sailor in the boat,” and why are you not allowed to touch it? Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty sure I know exactly what he’s talking about, but I’ve never heard it called a sailor in a boat. PLEASE tell me this is a Poe’s Law parody. This guy just cannot be serious.
The five star reviews of this book are well worth reading for entertainment value. My favorite is the one who says that all the one-star reviews are from atheists who haven’t read the book. This is just above a five-star review that states he didn’t read the book, but is giving it five stars anyway because “My rating is for the Lord!”
And of course, it was made impossible to find because women aren’t supposed to enjoy sex. :rolleyes: Of course, that raises the question of why God even bothered to make it.
The sailor in the boat is the clitoris and only an idiot misogynistic religious zealot would think that “you’re not supposed to touch it.” That makes me want to get all stabby and reinforces my hatred of people.
ETA any who thinks that it is “impossible” to find is an idiot and should be sterilised.
Wow. Shirley, I wish to thank you for introducing me to the wonderful world of Amazon book reviews, through which I hope to stop working completely while at work.
I remember hearing “little man in the boat” back when i was in my late teens or early twenties, so it’s been around at least since the 1980s. Probably longer.
I first heard this description (or a variant of it) in a Hustler Honey strip when I was … much too young to have been reading Hustler. They were trying to “straighten out” a “sissy boy” and one girl told him to “suck the little boy in the boat,” to which he replied, “now that I can relate to!”
I believe of Carlin’s “incomplete list of impolite words” includes both “boy in the boat” and “man in the canoe.”
There’s a bawdy traditional song called The Boy in the Boat that was recorded/adapted in jazz versions as early as the 1920’s and 1930’s, so I’d bet that the idiom is quite old.
Merciful heavens. Apparently it goes back to Latin naviculans, a present-participle form from navicula, “little boat”. Where’ve you been for the past two thousand years, Shirley?
I’m gonna play this straight-faced & say that if I heard someone say that in real life, I’d wonder if they meant not touch it at all or not DIRECTLY touch it because of the intense sensitivity.
Re “little man in the boat”, I first heard that on an SNL Lothar skit & I’m sure Angela on THE OFFICE made reference to it when telling Toby that as HR head, he needed to make sure Dwight knew about it.
I never heard of Poe’s Law before, but we do seem to have a perfect example of it here. (The law being that “it is impossible to present a parody of Fundamentalist thinking, no matter how ridiculous, that somebody won’t mistake for the real thing”.)
