I remember hearing a joke - I think it was sort of a throw away I heard during a stand up act.
It was something like this:
I’m not that sure about any of it - except the woman part had something to do with her fearing physical harm - it could have been: kidnapped, raped, cut up into little pieces etc.
The guy part was like foolish,idiot, or something.
I’m fairly sure it was a stand up comic
I’m fairly sure that comic was male
I think it may have involved online dating
I think it was in the last five years
I wanna say it was kinda along the lines of Louie CK, Bill Burr, Patton Oswalt - but I cant seem to find it.
It is possible I heard it during live standup and it doesn’t exist on the web somewhere, but I have a feeling I saw it while watching TV.
Thanks for the quick responses - I had thought I had heard it from Louie CK, but he or whoever may have been prefacing it by “It’s like that old saying” or something. And I was in no way sure it was him.
I definitely didn’t hear it from Margaret Atwood - unless she has been doing standup.
I found a reference using the two suggestions given as early as 1980 giving credit to Atwood
Louie did have a bit like this. It wasn’t something that could be summed up a sentence. His bit was basically something like, "imagune if you were a dude and you had to go out with a gigantic bear. That’s what women feel like.’ It was much better worded, obviously. And funnier. It was off one of his newer releases. Pretty sure it wasn’t Oh My God. And it wasnt’t as far back as Chewed Up or Hilarious. So it must have been either Beacon Theater od the Carnegie Hall performance unless i’m forgetting one in between the ones I mentioned.
[QUOTE=abderian]
It’s not a joke, but rather a truth. Gavin De Becker wrote it in “The Gift of Fear” (Bloomsbury, 2000):
[/QUOTE]
That book should be required reading for every college student. I give copies of The Gift of Fear to every woman I know. That said, the statement didn’t originate with de Becker. My mom has used that statement (seriously, not jokingly) for years and she’s never read the book.
I just asked her where/when she heard it, and she said she thinks she read it somewhere, “many years ago”. FWIW…
I wouldn’t go that far. It is about risk perception; whilst in reality, men are significantly more likely to killed(by all sources), women are more likely to be afraid of being killed.
Yes, it is a good book. And you’re correct. I took another look – the full quote is:
“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.” [emphasis added]
Moreover, women are much more likely to be killed by an intimate acquaintance than men are.
So yes, realistically speaking it does make sense that among heterosexual couples, women would be more afraid of being the victim of violence at the hands of someone they’re dating than men would be. Of course, even for women that risk is still quite low.
So that commercial with Michael Jordan a few years ago didn’t have it quite right. On their lunch breaks, women don’t play “boxers or briefs.” It’s “rapist and murderer or simply rapist.”
No, the two statements don’t contradict each other. They don’t even lead to contradictory interpretations.
Women are statistically much less likely to commit murder than men are. Even the fact that murders committed by women are much more likely to target intimates than strangers doesn’t cancel out that men are statistically much more likely to commit murders of all kinds.
That’s why a woman’s risk of being killed by a spouse/intimate acquaintance is still significantly higher than a man’s, even though 60% of female-committed murders target intimates while 80% of male-committed murders target strangers.
And of course, if we’re talking about rape and other kinds of assault as well as murder, the risk to women from male violence is even more disproportionately high compared to the risk to men from female violence.
None of this is intended to accuse men in general of typically being violent. Even minor acts of violence, much less rape and murder, are something that the majority of men would never commit.
But it does help explain why women are much more fearful of physical violence from men than vice versa.
True, but this thread is discussing the disparity of fears that men and women tend to have about dating each other.
