From the blog EverythingsAProblem:
Some people think it’s cute when people lay in bed with their loved ones, holding each other in their arms. This act is commonly referred to as “spooning.”
Other people—enlightened people—realize that spooning is a deeply problematic way that power structures propagate themselves. Fortunately, such enlightened people are dominant in the media and can explain to us how we should be Good:
The more I reflect on spooning during my sojourn, the more I have come to see it as a terrible idea, one that’s fraught both physically and ideologically.
Yes, thank you! I’m glad someone is finally addressing this.
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.”
wow really makes you think
To say that this power imbalance is built into all acts of spooning—whichever the sexes engaged—is not, I think, an overstatement.
Not only is it not an overstatement, it’s the truest thing I’ve ever read. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that the government should probably step in and begin educating our children about the ideologically unsound nature of spooning. Is it really too much to ask for a chapter in sex ed books on this topic?
I give the transgression of sleeping next to your loved one in an ideologically fraught way three problematics.