Life & Mortality Quote by P. J. O'Rourke

O'Rourke lands the punch by smuggling a grim statistic into the shape of a gender-war quip. The line pretends to be a last, petty male consolation prize - one thing women "can't take away" - then reveals it as a self-own: men die sooner. The joke works because it flips the usual competitive framing of sex differences. Instead of arguing over power, pay, or social status, it drags the debate to the one finish line nobody wins.

The subtext is classic O'Rourke: an allergy to earnest grievance and a preference for mordant arithmetic. "Take away" echoes the language of loss and resentment, the idea that modern life is a zero-sum tug-of-war in which women are advancing and men are being stripped of something. By making the only "untouchable" male advantage an early grave, he ridicules that resentment without sermonizing. It's gallows humor as critique: if your best argument is that you get to exit first, your argument has collapsed.

Context matters. O'Rourke wrote in an era when second-wave feminism had moved from protest to policy and pop culture, and male backlash had become its own marketable mood. The line punctures macho mythology - toughness, risk, stoicism - by pointing out the biological and behavioral bill those traits can run up: dangerous work, violence, stress, refusing doctors, turning vulnerability into silence. It's not a tender apology for men; it's a satirical receipt. The laugh is the trap door, and the drop is consequence.