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Love & Passion Quote by Ogden Nash

"I have an idea that the phrase 'weaker sex' was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm"

About this Quote

Nash slips a stiletto into a doily. On its face, the line sounds like a gallant reversal: the old chestnut about women being the "weaker sex" gets mocked as laughably wrong. But Nash, a poet who made his living on domestic irony, doesn’t deliver feminist uplift so much as a comic power play. The joke hinges on a bait-and-switch: "weaker" isn’t a description, it’s a strategy. The supposed insult becomes a mask women can choose to wear, a piece of social theater that lowers male defenses right before the ambush.

That framing matters. Written in a 20th-century culture where chivalry and sexism often came bundled together, Nash imagines gender as an arms race fought with manners instead of weapons. Men get saddled with the self-flattering myth of their own strength; women, in Nash’s telling, exploit that vanity. It’s not just that the stereotype is false. It’s that the stereotype is useful - to the people it pretends to diminish.

The subtext is deliciously cynical: power doesn’t always look like power, especially when open dominance is socially punished. Nash also quietly flatters women as clever operators while keeping the battlefield safely comedic, not revolutionary. It’s a joke that punctures male complacency without demanding structural change - which is exactly why it lands: it lets the audience laugh at sexism while still recognizing how gender roles can be performed, negotiated, and weaponized in everyday life.

Quote Details

TopicWitty One-Liners
Source
Later attribution: Tune Him In, Turn Him On (Servet Hasan, 2013) modern compilationISBN: 9780738721798 · ID: LS7yufM11f8C
Text match: 98.04%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
... I have an idea that the phrase " weaker sex ” was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm . -Ogden Nash You Can Have Your Heart's Desire 7.
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Nash, Ogden. (2026, March 21). I have an idea that the phrase 'weaker sex' was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-have-an-idea-that-the-phrase-weaker-sex-was-13941/

Chicago Style
Nash, Ogden. "I have an idea that the phrase 'weaker sex' was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm." FixQuotes. March 21, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-have-an-idea-that-the-phrase-weaker-sex-was-13941/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I have an idea that the phrase 'weaker sex' was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm." FixQuotes, 21 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-have-an-idea-that-the-phrase-weaker-sex-was-13941/. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.

More Quotes by Ogden Add to List
Weaker Sex: Ogden Nash's Witty Take on Gender Roles
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About the Author

Ogden Nash

Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 - May 19, 1971) was a Poet from USA.

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