‘Fart rape.’ Yes, you read that right.

Remember the good old days when you would sit around the kitchen table with a cup of strong coffee brewed on the stove and share the different sections of the newspaper with your spouse while waiting to watch the sun come up?

Now that’s changed into sipping a caramel latte from your 10-second Keurig machine while scrolling through your Google feed or social media and hoping to find something that even remotely resembles real honest-to-goodness, unbiased news.

Instead of sharing pages of the printed press, these days my husband will read something and then show me his phone while saying, “Well THIS you have to see to believe.”

The problem is most of what you see on your phone you CAN’T believe anymore. Memes, video clips, bits of a story taken out of context, misapplied quotes … I’m telling you, they’re all out there. You actually have to put more work into researching a meme quote then we used to have to do for term papers in college.

And both sides of every issue are guilty of doing it, too.

Democrats, Republicans, Christians, Atheists … it’s getting to where I flat out don’t believe anything I see or read these days unless I’ve taken the time to look it up myself and can find at least 10 reputable sources that verify its validity.

And by reputable I do NOT mean Wikipedia or websites like the Onion or Reddit. In fact, sometimes I don’t mean CNN or Fox News either.

But out of all the crazy stories, memes and quotes I’ve seen over the last few years, the one this morning took the cake. Blasted all over Facebook was a photo of some chick in purple glasses with the headline: “Fart Rape.”

Yes, you read that right.

Along with it is a quote from selfproclaimed feminist Ashleigh Ingle that read: “By farting louder, the man is using passive aggressive violence to position himself as dominant. This intimidates the woman to subconsciously not release as much flatulence and thus the woman, fearing for her safety, doesn’t fart as loud as a sign of submissiveness. This, in turn, contributes to rape culture and women being oppressed.”

Folks, I’ve read some ignorant mess in my lifetime but this has to win the stupid award of the decade. In fact, it’s SO stupid that I thought at first it must either be a joke, or some total messed up, misapplied quote. Surely nobody is dumb enough to say something like this, right?

Yeah ... wrong.

The term “fart rape” originates from the rape culture theory, stemming all the way back to a documentary from 1975 called “Rape Culture.” Apparently, there was a conference held at the University of Toronto in 2013 in which a bunch of geniuses got together to explore the idea that male flatulence may be considered misogynistic. (Yes, this is obviously what Canada wastes it’s time on.)

Anyway, Ingle was an instructor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the time (Geez, I hope she has since been removed from ANYTHING to do with education) and she made herself into the poster child for the anti-fart-rape movement by making that ridiculous statement.

I’ve no idea why it’s now making the Facebook rounds a good six years after it happened, but it is in fact a real quote and not a made-up joke.

And a real educated college professor, who professes to be a feminist, really did say it. At a fart conference, no less.

And just when I was trying to give feminists a little bit of credit for not being COMPLETE nut jobs. I mean, it’s kind of hard when you see female protestors these days running around wearing giant hats that look like female reproductive parts or topless women with orange hair and “my uterus, my say-so” painted on their stomachs, but hey … I gave it a shot.

Too bad Gas-x doesn’t cure stupidity.

Camille Bissell is a longtime guest columnist for The Saline Courier. Her opinions are her own and do not represent this publication or its employees.