Margaret Atwood? Ingrid Koenig? Naomi Wolf? Gavin de Becker? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: Each of us experiences different fears. A popular feminist saying presents divergent dreads:
Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.
This saying has been attributed to prominent Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, U.S. feminist Naomi Wolf, and U.S. security specialist Gavin de Becker. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In February 1982 Margaret Atwood delivered the Hagey Lecture at Waterloo University in Canada. She formulated an essay titled “Writing the Male Character” based on her speech, and published it in “This Magazine” of Toronto, Canada in September 1982. The essay included a discussion of fear. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
‘Why do men feel threatened by women?’ I asked a male friend of mine. . . . ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power.’ “They’re afraid women will laugh at them,’ he said. ‘Undercut their world view.’
Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, ‘Why do women feel threatened by men?’ “They’re afraid of being killed,’ they said.
QI hypothesizes that the modern concise saying was derived from the passage above.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Margaret Atwood’s essay “Writing the Male Character” was reprinted in her 1982 collection “Second Words: Selected Critical Prose”.2 Thus, the key passage achieved further distribution.
In 1984 Canadian artist Ingrid Koenig published “Rap on the Sublime” which contained a concise version of the saying credited to Atwood. The text in the book was all uppercase:3
THERE’S THAT THING MARGARET ATWOOD WROTE ABOUT HOW MEN ARE AFRAID WOMEN WILL LAUGH AT THEM, AND WOMEN ARE AFRAID MEN WILL KILL THEM.
In 1990 “Ms. Magazine” published a piece by Jane Caputi and Diana E. H. Russell titled “Femicide: Speaking the Unspeakable” which began with the following passage attributed to Atwood. The phrasing differed from Atwood’s original text:4
Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood once asked a male friend why men feel threatened by women. He replied: “They are afraid women will laugh at them.” She then asked a group of women why they feel threatened by men. They answered: “We’re afraid of being killed.”
In 1996 Ronald B. Shwartz published the quotation compilation “Men Are Lunatics, Women Are Nuts!” which include the following entry:5
When novelist Margaret Atwood asked women what they feared most from men, they said, “We’re afraid they’ll kill us.”
When men were asked the same question about women, they said, “We’re afraid they’ll laugh at us.”
Naomi Wolf (b. 1962)
American writer and feminist
In 1997 a book reviewer in the “Daily Herald-Tribune” of Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada examined the compilation by Ronald B. Shwartz and printed a rephrased excerpt:6
Feminist Naomi Wolf reports that when Margaret Atwood asked women what they feared from men, they said “We’re afraid they’ll kill us.” When men were asked they said, “We’re afraid they’ll laugh at us.”
Also, in 1997 Gavin de Becker published “The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence” which contained an anonymous instance of the saying:7
It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different — men and women live in different worlds. I don’t remember where I first heard this simple description of one dramatic contrast between the genders, but it is strikingly accurate: At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.
In 2003 Margaret Atwood published the science fiction novel “Oryx and Crake” which contained a male character male named Jimmy and a genetically modified female character named Oryx. The following excerpt illustrated Atwood’s viewpoint about male fears:8
“Oh Jimmy, you would like it better maybe if we all starved to death?” said Oryx, with her small rippling laugh. This was the laugh he feared most from her, because it disguised amused contempt. It chilled him: a cold breeze on a moonlit lake.
In 2015 journalist Jon Ronson published “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” which contained an instance of the saying:9
“Have you ever heard that thing, ‘Men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them’?” she said.
In conclusion, Margaret Atwood deserves credit for this saying. Her original phrasing in 1982 was prolix. Ingrid Koenig formulated a concise version in 1984 which she credited to Atwood. Other writers such as Gavin de Becker have also crafted shortened instances of the saying.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Craig Good whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Good noted the attributions to Margaret Atwood and Gavin de Becker. Also, thanks to the volunteer editors of Wikiquote who pointed to the citation in “Second Words: Selected Critical Prose”.
- 1982 September, This Magazine, Volume 16, Number 4, Writing the Male Character by Margaret Atwood, Start Page 4, Quote Page 4, Red Maple Publishing Company, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1982 Copyright, Second Words: Selected Critical Prose by Margaret Atwood, Part III: 1977-1982, Chapter 50: Writing the Male Character (1982), Start Page 412, Quote Page 413, House of Anansi Press Limited, Toronto, Canada. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1984, Rap on the Sublime by Ingrid Koenig, Unnumbered Page (Page 29), Published by Ingrid Koenig, Printed on the Heidelberg Press, The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1990 September-October, Ms. Magazine, “Femicide”: Speaking the Unspeakable by Jane Caputi and Diana E. H. Russell, Start Page 34, Quote Page 34, Lang Communications, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1996, Men Are Lunatics, Women Are Nuts!: Women and Men Talk About Men and Women, Compiled by Ronald B. Shwartz, Chapter The Difference, Quote Page 14, Running Press Book Publishers, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1997 February 11, Daily Herald-Tribune, Sweetheart reading matter by Rod Currie (The Canadian Press), Quote Page 19, Column 1, Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1997, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence by Gavin de Becker, Chapter 4: Survival Signals, Quote Page 65, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2003, Oryx and Crake: A Novel by Margaret Atwood, Chapter: Oryx, Quote Page 119, Nan A. Talese: Imprint of Doubleday, Division of Random House, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2015, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, Chapter 6: Doing Something Good, Quote Page 118, Riverhead Books, Penguin Group, New York: (Verified with scans) ↩︎