The Ideologues Are Wrong About ‘Obsession’

It was Margaret Atwood who first coined an internet-famous truism about the sexes, paraphrased as: Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.

If you’ve spent any time consuming feminist discourse online, you’ve no doubt seen this quote, which is supposed to convey how much higher the stakes are for women in negotiating heterosexual partnerships, how much more dangerous and terrifying their lives are. If you are a man, your fear of women is ridiculous; if you are a woman, your fear of men is existential. We are not the same, and ladies, woe betide you if you make the wrong choice.

I’ve seen it said that the new horror movie Obsession is one such cautionary tale, an illustration of just how dangerous men and their desires are even to the women they supposedly love. In fact, I think it’s something deeper: a lesson for everyone about how love makes fools and prisoners of us all, and how a life sentence with the wrong person can eclipse death as a thing to be feared.

The movie’s thesis, put another way: If women are afraid men will kill them, men are afraid that women will make them wish they were dead.