Creativity Quote by Mike Harding

Harding’s line lands like a pub joke that knows exactly how the room is wired. On the surface it’s sci-fi slapstick: aliens touch down, chaos ensues, cue the protective scramble. The laugh, though, comes from the immediate pivot away from cosmic wonder to small, recognizably human pettiness. Faced with the unimaginable, the speaker doesn’t ask what the visitors want or whether we’re about to be vaporized; he worries about the women in the house. That’s the gag and the indictment.

The intent is to puncture heroic narratives of “first contact” with a very earthly suspicion: men, whether human or alien, are presumed to be predators; women are presumed to be at risk. Harding frames this as commonsense advice, which is where the sting sits. The joke works because it treats a bleak expectation as an instinctive household protocol, revealing how normalized fear and possessiveness can be. “Your back yard” and “in the house” aren’t neutral locations either: they map masculinity onto property and control, drawing a tight circle of ownership around women’s bodies.

Contextually, Harding comes out of British folk and comedy traditions that use a throwaway one-liner to smuggle social critique into an easy laugh. It’s not a sermon; it’s a sideways glance at the gender politics embedded in everyday talk. The alien invasion is just cover. The real subject is the grim predictability of male behavior - and how quickly we reach for protection that can shade into policing.