When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other's tale —
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man, a bear in most relations-worm and savage otherwise, —
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger —- Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue — to the scandal of The Sex!
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity — must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions — not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.
She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.
She is wedded to convictions — in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! —
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
Unprovoked and awful charges — even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons — even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish — like the Jesuit with the squaw!
So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice — which no woman understands.
And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern — shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.
— Rudyard Kipling, "The Female of the Species"
"That woman you're with—she's a killer. She's not like that overgrown ferret and his brat. She's gonna kill your old man if she gets the chance."
— Arthur Brown, the Cluemaster, Huntress/Spoiler: Blunt Trauma
"Both of the guys think their Sivana is the worst, but I can tell you, Mom, Georgia has got to be the nastiest one of the pack. She's actually killed somebody, do you know that? Took a newspaper editor and shot him in cold blood. They couldn't pin the rap on her, but we know she did it."
"What did you do with the women?"/"We shot them."/"They didn't surrender?"/"They were worse than the men, cruel and brutal. If they caught some of us we would find them mutilated. We simply couldn't capture them but had to shoot them."
— Conversation between two Wehrmacht soldiers discussing female Soviet soldiers overheard in a prisoners-of-war camp, Felix Romer's "Gewaltsame Geschlechterordnung: Wehrmacht und “Flintenweiber” an der Ostfront 1941/42"
"If you had a choice between breaking up a fight between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Seagal, or a fight between two women whose combined weight equals one of Arnie's biceps, the women seem like the safe bet, right? You could probably just stand between them with your palms on their foreheads. Boom, fight over. Well, Cronk is picking Schwarzeagal every time. And not just because they're both now senior citizens. You see, women are living in a world where it's increasingly dangerous just to be one. If they're attacked, there's a good chance they won't have a size advantage over their opponent, so they've come up with clever ways to even the playing field. The reason that "girl fights suuuuuck", according to Cronk, is simple: "Women carry mace." Hooray for equality! "I've been maced eight times as an adult man", he says. "I wouldn't wish mace upon my worst enemy. ... It's worse than the Devil's piss. I hate mace." Aside from being more likely to whip out actual bioweapons instead of their fists, Cronk has also observed a gender difference in the psychology of bar fights. In general, men will maintain a laser-like focus on the dude who pissed them off; they "only want to fight each other; they won't fight you". On the other hand, telling a violent woman what to do, for perhaps understandable reasons, will only piss her off more: "Women will fight anyone in their way. They will take a swing when you try to stop them". To make matters worse, this also means that women fight to the bitter end: "You can separate two men in a bar, and they will calm down", Cronk says. "Women won't. You have to completely remove a woman from a bar, or she will find a way to escape you and go back to fighting." It's never a good idea to try to "help" the bouncer or start a fight yourself, but if you get it into your fool head to try, do not fuck with a woman."
"When in London next, take a trip to the London Museum and have a look at the striped piece of rock that represents a geological section of the ground beneath the city. Running through it is a stripe of blackness a half-inch thick, this being the result of Boudica's burning rage. In my experience, when men get cross, they may at worst leave a dent in the side of the fridge. Heed and take note."
