Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker flips a common Freudian idea to suggest men are more insecure about their bodies.
In plain terms
Men worry more about their sexual organs than women do.
What can you take from it?
Challenge assumptions about gender insecurity.

Where it applies

  • debating gender roles
  • psychological analysis

Putting it to work

  • questioning stereotypes
  • examining male anxiety

Questions to consider

  • What insecurities do men face?
  • How do gender norms affect us?

Another view

It simplifies complex psychological theories into a slogan.

More from Joseph Heller

  1. Women my wife's age with broken marriages take up robustly with fellows much younger than themselves, sometimes boys, and their husbands don't like that part o…

    Permalink to quote #31
  2. Whether God is dead or not hardly matters, for we would use him no differently anyway.

    Permalink to quote #33
  3. In my middle years, I have exchanged the position of the fetus for the position of a corpse.

    Permalink to quote #30

Related quotes

  1. A woman's body is a dark and monstrous mystery; between her supple thighs a heavy whirlpool swirls, two rivers crash, and woe to him who slips and falls!

    Nikos KazantzakisNikos Kazantzakis quote #103
  2. First, then, a woman will or won't, depend on 't; If she will do 't, she will; and there 's an end on 't. But if she won't, since safe and sound your trust is,…

    Aaron HillAaron Hill quote #1
  3. It is sexual energy which governs the structure of human feeling and thinking.

    Wilhelm ReichWilhelm Reich quote #2