Fork

[[File:Fork6233.jpg|thumb|right|165px|A metal fork]]
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A '''fork''' is a utensil used for scooping up and stabbing 
foreign dignitaries
 [[food]].

The use of metal forks is believed to be a [[Roman Empire|Roman]] development, inspired by bone forks encountered in the [[Middle East]].

While the fork was a regular sight at Roman tables as early as the tenth century, it took eight hundred years to reach as far west as [[Britain]].

==Moral panics==
{{main|Moral panic}}
The fork is a good example of how moral panics have used the same basic arguments for centuries.

Opposition to fork-eating in [[Europe]] lasted from the [[Renaissance]] to the eighteenth century.

There were three common arguments against the use of forks, which often tied in with each other. 

===Satanism===
{{main|Satanism}}
The fork was frequently compared with Satan's pitchfork (both of which stemming from the same [[Latin]] word, ''furca'') whether for serious reasons or just for [[satire]].  Why this logic was never extended to peasants' pitchforks (or the military pole arms derived from them) remains to be seen.

This led to the Elizabethan English writer Thomas Coryat being dubbed "''Furcifer''" by those who disagreed with his table manners.<ref>Michael Strachan, "Coryate, Thomas (c. 1577–1617)", in ''Literature of Travel and Exploration: an Encyclopedia'', 2003, Volume 1, pp.285–87.</ref>

At this time it was mostly [[Muslims]] who ate with forks anyway.<ref name="Roolaart">[http://web.archive.org/web/20091027152440/http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Dining_Etiquette.html Harry Roolaart, "The Irrational Exhuberance of American Dining Etiquette: Part I", in ''The Rational Argumentator: A Journal for Western Man'', Issue IX].</ref>

===Blasphemy===
{{main|Blasphemy}}
Based on [[Aristotle|Aristotelian]] [[teleology]], it was also argued that [[God]] had already created fingers to fill the very function that forks were now competing for. Thus, forks were seen as an affront to His masterpiece. Again, for some reason this logic was never applied to weapons, other tools, or even clothes.

The death of Byzantine Princess Theodora Doukaina from a degenerative illness was thought to be [[Divine_retribution|divine punishment]] for this act, otherwise seen as "excessive delicacy".<ref>Bridget Ann Henisch, ''Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society'' (1976), pp.185–186.</ref><ref name="Roolaart"/>

===Machismo===
{{main|Machismo}}
People who used forks were said to "lack machismo" and were [[Haggard's_Law|considered flamboyantly effeminate]].

"[[No_True_Scotsman|Real men]]", you see, dug their 
long and dirt-encrusted fingernails
 fingers deep into the food instead — the same fingers they also used to excavate an exciting range of bodily orifices.<ref name="Roolaart"/>

==Other uses==
"Fork" is also a term for online communities and their projects splitting. Sometimes the issues leading to a fork can be trivial, sometimes they can be fundamental issues about what the project should be about (e.g. should advertisement be accepted). Forks can be friendly and in good nature or result in a state of quasi cold war between the two new communities.

==See also==
*[[:Template:Fork]] — the [[RationalWiki]] tool for disambiguating similar topics
*[[Uri Geller]] — a bender of spoons but his powers are apparently too weak to bend forks

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Moral panics]]

Categories: Moral panics