Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.

In this aphorism, Jong satirizes the gendered socialization of guilt. The line implies that chronic guilt is treated as a default condition of womanhood—inculcated by cultural expectations around sexuality, caretaking, appearance, and “niceness”—while men are granted (or claim) greater permission to act without self-reproach. The punchline reverses the usual logic: a woman entirely free of guilt would be so culturally “unfeminine” that she would be read as male. As a feminist quip, it critiques how moral scrutiny and self-policing are unevenly distributed, and how women’s autonomy is often constrained less by law than by internalized judgment.