{"id":45465,"date":"2018-10-26T03:00:53","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T07:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=45465"},"modified":"2018-10-25T12:23:21","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T16:23:21","slug":"an-old-fashioned-fisking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/10\/26\/an-old-fashioned-fisking\/","title":{"rendered":"An old-fashioned Fisking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The always-entertaining <a href=\"https:\/\/davidthompson.typepad.com\/davidthompson\/2018\/10\/weepy-and-hysterical.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">David Thompson<\/a> harks back to the early days of blogging by indulging in what used to be called &#8220;a <acronym title=\"A point-by-point refutation of a blog entry or (especially) news story. A really stylish fisking is witty, logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; flaming or handwaving is considered poor form. Named after Robert Fisk, a British journalist who was a frequent (and deserving) early target of such treatment. - New Hacker's Dictionary\">Fisking<\/acronym>&#8220;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the pages of the <em>New York Times<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/10\/24\/opinion\/men-sexism-me-too.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a philosophy professor named George Yancy is gushing his little heart out<\/a>: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>It is hard to admit we are sexist. I, for instance, would like to think that I possess genuine feminist <strong>bona fides<\/strong>, but who am I kidding? <strong>I am a failed and broken feminist<\/strong>. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Upon which revelation, I suppose we could all just stop and go home. But no, let\u2019s press on.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>More pointedly, I am sexist. There are times when I fear for the loss of my own entitlement as a male. Toxic masculinity takes many forms. All forms continue to hurt and to violate women.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The word toxic, by the way, is deployed no fewer than nine times, excluding various synonyms, as if it were an incantation. Now brace yourselves for some full-on testosterone-jacked beastliness.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>For example, before I got married, I insisted that my wife take my last name\u2026 While this was not sexual assault, my insistence was a violation of her independence. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To reiterate. Asking a fianc\u00e9e if she\u2019ll change her surname upon marriage, as is still the custom, perhaps to avoid confusing people as to whether you\u2019re actually married or not, and possibly to avoid imposing on any children lengthy hyphenated surnames\u2026 this is <em>not sexual assault<\/em>. I\u2019m glad we\u2019ve cleared that up.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Or, as our educator puts it, tearfully, his face reddened with shame,  <\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>When I was about 15 years old, I said to a friend of mine, \u201cWhy must you always look at a girl\u2019s butt?\u201d He promptly responded: \u201cAre you gay or something? What else should I look at, a guy\u2019s butt?\u201d He was already wearing the mask. He had already learned the lessons of patriarchal masculinity.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Yes, adolescent butt-watching. Oh calamitous woe. <a href=\"https:\/\/twistedsifter.com\/videos\/1965-candid-camera-episode-with-the-hot-teacher\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">And which, apparently, girls never indulge in<\/a>. Presumably, we should only be sexually attracted to <em>personalities<\/em>, and never the fleshy packaging.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>There was no wiggle room for me to be both antisexist and antimisogynistic and yet a heterosexual young boy. You see, other males had rewarded his gaze by joining in the objectifying practice: \u201cLook at that butt!\u201d It was a collective act of devaluation.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Or possibly the reverse.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>The acts of soul murder had already begun.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019ll just leave that one there, I think.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The always-entertaining David Thompson harks back to the early days of blogging by indulging in what used to be called &#8220;a Fisking&#8220;: In the pages of the New York Times, a philosophy professor named George Yancy is gushing his little heart out: It is hard to admit we are sexist. I, for instance, would like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,53,13],"tags":[86,987,303,255,504,43],"class_list":["post-45465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-politics","category-usa","tag-criticism","tag-feminism","tag-sexism","tag-sexuality","tag-teenagers","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bPj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45466,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45465\/revisions\/45466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}