# Is this Slate article about spooning a joke? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 6, 2015, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782 "2015-11-06T05:56:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/1 "2015-11-06T05:56:05Z")
I’ve been reading Slate for many years. It has some good stuff. It has some stupid stuff. Lately the tide of stupid stuff seems to have been rising. One example is[this article](http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/06/26/infant_gender_assignment_unnecessary_and_potentially_harmful.html) ranting against “infant gender assignment”, meaning that the author opposes labeling infant boys as boys and girls as girls. Supposedly noting the gender of a baby is “brutal”, “imposes limits on helpless infants without their consent”, and “might be Russian Roulette with your baby’s life.” Now, as if trying to find a way to top that, Slate has published _[Against Spooning: A Manifesto](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_drift/2015/11/04/against_spooning_a_manifesto.html?wpisrc=obnetwork)_. It’s basically what the title suggests. A sample: But there’s a deeper issue here, a troubling aspect of spooning that emerges in the dimension of ideology, of what it all means. Please recall the big spoon/little spoon roles I described earlier. A look at the gay adaptation of these terms is useful in exposing the power relationship they instantiate. Among gay men, big spoon and little spoon have become softer ways of signaling whether one is a top or a bottom during sex. But, as has been true of the top/bottom dynamic since the beginning, these also carry certain connotative weight: Big spoons are manly and will take care of you (provided you let them use you to take care of themselves); little spoons are fragile, passive creatures that need to be held and kept safe. This, of course, is fundamentally a sexist arrangement, one that casts the big spoon as “the man” and the little spoon as “the woman.” To say that this power imbalance is built into all acts of spooning—whichever the sexes engaged—is not, I think, an overstatement. Indeed, I would argue that spooning is always already a power play, a perverse strategy by which we nightly enact the unjust relations of “big” and “little” privilege that plague our society on every level. Now I’m honestly wondering, is this a joke or does the writer actually believe this stuff? This could be a parody of loony left, social justice warrior type arguments, what with the bizarre logic, excess verbiage, and pompous language (“fundamentally a sexist arrangement”, “exposing the power relationship they instantiate”). Later the author even refers to “the semiotic violence that spooning conveys”. But on the other hand, Poe’s Law must be taken into account. There are real, live human beings who write this sort of stuff and think that it’s intellectually sound and meaningful. So what says the Straight Dope? Joke or no joke? ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/2 "2015-11-06T07:16:55Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Joke or no joke? Probably a bit of both. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/3 "2015-11-06T07:36:47Z")
Reads like a joke to me. Written by someone who has only ever had humor described to them. ---
**Author:** ![Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uosdwis_R.Dewoh)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/4 "2015-11-06T08:23:23Z")
It’s not a joke, but that doesn’t mean it’s serious. It’s pure click bait and nothing more. I don’t think the author believes this shit for one second. All he wants is that sweet sweet ad revenue. The body of the article might as well be lorem ipsum for all the useful information it conveys. The worst part is that it works. Here we are talking about this crap and giving the article the views they desperately crave. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/5 "2015-11-06T09:20:13Z")
Holy shit, did someway actually say that you cannot tell biological gender from genitals? ---
**Author:** ![jimbuff314](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c57346/32.png) [@jimbuff314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimbuff314)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/6 "2015-11-06T10:02:39Z")
I agree with Mr., er, **Dewoh** that the competition for eyeballs is fierce and has been for some time. In accordance with Poe’s law, or notwithstanding it, is very much beside the point. It would be interesting to model an average internet user’s mind based solely on what kinds of attention, biases, etc. articles such as these attempt to, and largely do, engage. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/7 "2015-11-06T11:09:58Z")
Slate is hardly the only website that has learned how to monetize trolling. It’s a pity this one hasn’t, at least not yet. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/8 "2015-11-06T12:50:57Z")
That’s the wonderful thing about political correctness - the extremes to which it tends are funny whether the author knows it or not. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/9 "2015-11-06T13:45:19Z")
I know, I thought the same thing when I saw that article. Spooning is, among other bad things, _ **sexist** _? That article could be posted on The Onion without any editing. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/10 "2015-11-06T21:19:29Z")
This reads to me like a Sociology grad student getting some wider distribution for a dissertation. Like a few years ago when someone wrote about _Gilligan’s Island_ being some kind of metaphor for the Cold War. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/11 "2015-11-06T23:13:10Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > Slate is hardly the only website that has learned how to monetize trolling. An often-forgotten component at monetization strategies is that you have to be at least slightly competent at it. > [@](#): > > It’s a pity this one hasn’t, at least not yet. Indeed. Good trollage is mildly entertaining. This doesn’t even come close. It’s like a parody satirizing parodies of trolling. And clumsy at every level. But it’s Slate. Par for the course. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2015, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/12 "2015-11-07T01:51:35Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Holy shit, did someway actually say that you cannot tell biological gender from genitals? Yes. And it’s factual, too. You can tell _sex_, but not gender (in the assumption that one’s perceived gender is based more on nature than nurture anyway - I believe the jury’s still out there on that one). ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2015, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/13 "2015-11-07T01:53:53Z")
Missed ETA : don’t get me wrong, I think the writer of that article has completely lost the plot from there on. But she’s right on that one bit of fact. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2015, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/14 "2015-11-07T03:34:24Z")
I’m pretty sure the spooning piece is tongue-in-cheek. The author, J. Bryan Lowder, has written other things that lead me to that conclusion. For example, he wrote approvingly of a _South Park_ episode that dealt with the “PC Police”: > **[South Park Takes on PC Police, Caitlyn Jenner’s “Heroism” in Season 19 Premiere](https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/09/south-park-takes-on-caitlyn-jenners-heroism-in-its-season-19-premiere.html)** > > The new season of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s long-running, take-no-prisoners animated series, began last night, and the episode lived up... Now, the piece about infant gender assignment is probably written in dead earnest, by an activist with a radical viewpoint. The editors of _Slate_ don’t necessarily agree with that viewpoint, but they do like to publish essays in which conventional logic and familiar arguments are used to reach a very provocative, unconventional conclusion. The intellectual readership that they cater to loves that sort of thing. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2015, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/15 "2015-11-07T04:12:01Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > This reads to me like a Sociology grad student getting some wider distribution for a dissertation. Like a few years ago when someone wrote about _Gilligan’s Island_ being some kind of metaphor for the Cold War. That’s lunacy. They’re clearly all souls trapped in a Purgatory run by Gilligan, who keeps them all there so they can work off their sins. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2015, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/16 "2015-11-08T05:45:51Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > That’s the wonderful thing about political correctness - the extremes to which it tends are funny whether the author knows it or not. I think that word is getting abused. I don’t see anything in there about avoiding saying or doing certain things because it offends. If this is what you mean by PC, then I do understand not liking it. This is actually sexist, as it is assigning gender roles to an activity. It’s like saying cooking is wrong because only women do the cooking. If this is real, the person needs to go back to their gender studies class. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2015, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/17 "2015-11-08T06:54:15Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Yes. And it’s factual, too. You can tell _sex_, but not gender (in the assumption that one’s perceived gender is based more on nature than nurture anyway - I believe the jury’s still out there on that one). Even with the two big biological markers — genitalia and chromosomes — there are corner cases that make categorization a bit more complex than “either A or B, and anything else is impossible”. ---
**Author:** ![tacos4all](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/51bf81/32.png) [@tacos4all](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tacos4all)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/18 "2015-11-10T06:22:39Z")
Biology, duh. The physically larger partner is more suited to being the big spoon. However sometimes my hubby (a man) and I (a woman) switch it up. I hate when ppl are all like all men this and all women that…all women are individuals and so are all men. Stop it already. Amirite, guys? ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/19 "2015-11-11T12:32:48Z")
> [@tacos4all](#): > > all women are individuals and so are all men. Can we _please_ get past this backwards and outdated thinking? Sure, some women are individuals as are some men. But no one should be made to feel like they have to be an individual just to adhere to some narrow social imposition. Some people struggle for years before being able to comfortably identify as not being individuals while others, sadly, never make it through the struggle. Can we please evolve as a society and respect people’s rights to not be individuals unless they choose it for themselves? ---
**Author:** ![tours\_of\_Gregory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/85f322/32.png) [@tours\_of\_Gregory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tours_of_Gregory)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782/20 "2015-11-11T12:56:47Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > That’s lunacy. They’re clearly all souls trapped in a Purgatory run by Gilligan, who keeps them all there so they can work off their sins. On a related note, as a kid reruns of Gilligans island used to terrify me as a kid for this reason. It seemed like an existential hell, they are never going to get out and will have the same arguments again. That show really was sysphus meets, no exit, only with the occasional Harlem Globetrotters. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-slate-article-about-spooning-a-joke/736782.md?page=2)