"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Victor Steinbok]

  Not antedating, but relevant. Fred Shapiro's citation from People
gives Gloria Steinem's T-shirt as the source (with Steinem attributing
the line further to Irina Dunn). NY Mag from
Aug. 9, 1976, (about two weeks later) attributes the quote directly to
Steinem. (Full issue available in GB.)

http://bit.ly/byB414
> Steinem sums it up: "Today a woman without a man is like a fish
> without a bicycle."

NY Mag writers came back to the same well at least twice in the
following year.

Four years later, Gloria Kaufman and Mary Kay Blakely attributed the
quote to Flo Kennedy (no date--the book is in preview mode in GB).

http://bit.ly/b0gxQI
Pulling our own strings: feminist humor & satire. By Gloria J. Kaufman,
Mary Kay Blakely. 1980. p. 16
> One of the best and most popular pickups of the movement is Flo
> Kennedy's remark, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a
> bicycle."

This gets interesting. Another 1980 publication gives a more direct
reference.

http://bit.ly/ar2JIg
The lesbian community: with an afterword. By Deborah Goleman Wolf. 1980
Epigraph on p. vi
> A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle (Graffito in
> the women's lavatory, Student Union, University of California,
> Berkeley, 1975, attributed to Flo Kennedy).

The copyright on the book is actually listed as both 1979 and 1980, so
it likely predates Kaufman&Blakely.

There is attribution to Flo Kennedy in a 1977 book The Longest War
(http://bit.ly/bRbt3M) and the snippet clearly shows it (library
searches confirm the publication date, if this is the correct book).

Another 1977 reference is The Sepia (no issue information, but the line
is visible in the snippet).

http://bit.ly/be6Ms1
> Maverick black woman lawyer Florynce Kennedy, who is an avowed
> feminist, sneers at males in these words: "A woman without a man is
> like a fish without a bicycle."

At the same time, Good Housekeeping Almanac was referencing "young women
sported shirts" with the slogan "during a 1976 Gay Liberation Day". It
seems Steinem got the shirt from the same source.

But Leta Clark (1977) attributes the quote to both ("and/or") Kennedy
and Steinem.

http://bit.ly/9M7r8p

Clark was not the only one ambivalent about the origin: http://bit.ly/9iQR1U

Issues of Mother Jones from 1978-79 contain ads for the respective
T-shirts, but I have not checked on paper how far back these go.

"The Library Journal Book Review" (is there such a thing?) is identified
in GB as a 1976 reference that also mentions "graffito".

http://bit.ly/aKdL0a
> As a graffito in /Remember Me/ has it: "A woman without a man is like
> a fish without a bicycle."

I presume, this is the Remember Me in question:

http://bit.ly/c5DfYk



There is also evidence for the "usual" retort: "Even a haddock needs a
good ride occasionally."

There is also some confusion about the original "A man without God is
like a fish without a bicycle." There is a reference to a 1973 or 1974
Herb Caen column in San Francisco Chronicle, but I have not found the
actual citation. There is a 1972 GB reference as well, but that does not
appear accurate (the date tag, not the actual quotartion, which is in
the snippet). The only likely reliable citation is from NYT for Aug 20,
1975.

The similar line "as much as a fish needs a bicycle" appears in
Vonnegut's Slapstick (1975). Vonnegut adds "as the saying goes",
implying that it's not a coinage. Given the possibility of Caen's
column, this certainly makes for an interesting hunt. All verifiable
references for all versions (woman/God; without/needs) start appearing
circa 1975. The only one that stands out is a reference to Caen column
plus an unverified GB 1972 citation.

So, Caen, Vonnegut or Flo Kennedy?

     VS-)

On 9/2/2010 11:07 AM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:
> Fred Shapiro's Freakonomics column in the NYT of 12 Aug 2010 has the
> subject quote from _People_ magazine, 26 July 1976 as quoted in the YBQ.
>
> Slightly earlier:
>
> _Seattle Times_ 5 Jun 1976 p A7 col 2
> "Sign seen in a (feminist?) dress shop in Seattle, Wash.:  "A woman
> without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." "

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org