Writers Kill Women because People Care Less if Men Die

Why some writers “fridge” women

The hierarchy for storytelling deaths follows the ancient code: save the women and children first. If you want your audience to care a little about a death, kill a man. If you want them to care a lot, kill a woman. If you want them to care intensely, kill a child.

(Pets fit into the rule with more flexibility. I suspect killing one has more impact than killing a man and less impact than killing a child or a woman. The John Wick movies begin with the killing of his dog, who is clearly a stand-in for the generic choice in stories about men, a woman who loves him.)

Killing female characters became known as fridging after outraged comic book fans created Women in Refrigerators, a site about the many deaths of female characters in the ’80s and ’90s, a time when mainstream comic books also slaughtered many male characters. The site’s name comes from a scene in which a Green Lantern finds his girlfriend dead in a refrigerator. That story’s writer, Ron Marz, had a reasonable response to the accusation this was sexist:

To me the real difference is less male-female than main character-supporting character. In most cases, main characters, “title” characters who support their own books, are male. Historically, male characters have been…