Morgues Prefer to Hire Women

About

Morgues Prefer to Hire Women is an internet axiom and a series of posts and memes claiming that morgues prefer to hire women, vaguely suggesting that there is a disturbing but obvious reason why this is. The posts suggest that morgues prefer to hire women because men are more likely to commit acts of necrophilia on the corpses. Posts making the claim became increasingly popularized online starting in March 2023 and continued to go viral leading into 2024. Although the claim is widespread and while there are reports that the funeral industry is seeing a rise in female workers, there is no confirmed source claiming that men are avoided in hiring due to fears of necrophilia. Additionally worth noting, a study from the 1980s claims that the majority of necrophiles are male.

Origin

On March 13th, 2023, X^[1] user @prnjbrn quote-reposted a post reading, "Wait until the men find out that there are waxers ONLY wax women and don’t see male clients," writing, "There’s also some morgues that strictly only hire women and I think y’all can put two and two together as to why," garnering over 122,000 likes in a year (shown below). It has been presumed that the reason is because men are more prone to committing acts of necrophilia.

The user does not provide a source for this claim and there does not appear to be any source directly claiming that morgues prefer to hire women over fears of necrophilia. However, a 1989 study by Jonathan P. Rosman, MD and Phillip J. Resnick, MD claims that, in studying 122 cases of necrophilia, 92 percent of necrophiles were found to be men.^[2]

Further, in 2018, Next Avenue^[3] reported that, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, "16 percent of its current membership is female, up from 10 percent in 2004." The article also claims that, in 2016, 61 percent of students in mortuary science programs majors were female. Again, they do not specify this as being due to fears of necrophilia, instead mentioning how women are more naturally comforting and compassionate.

Spread

This claim gained viral spread throughout 2023, continuing to spread in 2024. On June 16th, 2023, TikToker^[4] @nimay.ndolo55 posted a video about the claim, garnering over 1.4 million views in a year (shown below).

On March 17th, Distractify^[5] published an article about a now-deleted TikTok video making the claim. On July 9th, Threads^[6] user celinaspookyboo posted, "Morgues prefer to hire women. Yep, that’s why," garnering over 1,000 likes in a year.

On July 14th, 2023, X^[7] user @BornAKang reposted a now-deleted video by TikToker @talialichtstein in which she stitches a woman suggesting that other men like a "youthful-looking" woman to share the claim that morgues hire more women because of necrophilia, writing, "Damn who is that down bad my goodness," garnering over 72,000 likes in a year (shown below).

Damn who is that down bad my goodness pic.twitter.com/cbqsc6cpBb

— Lance🇱🇨 (@BornAKang) July 14, 2023

Also on July 14th, X^[8] user @ymmayer posted, "the tiktok where the woman is telling other women to look youthful and healthy because men like that and then someone stitches it to say men f so many dead bodies that morgues try not to hire them should win some sort of award," garnering over 139,000 likes in the same span of time (shown below). On July 15th, the post was reposted to the subreddit /r/BrandNewSentence,^[9] garnering over 3,400 upvotes in a year.

On July 17th, 2024, TikToker^[10] @desert..r0se posted a video sharing the claim, garnering over 1.5 million views in a week and sparking some renewed interest in the claim. On July 26th, Redditor u/Careless-Bridge8829 posted a screenshot of Reel from an unknown creator sharing the same claim to /r/PeterExplainsTheJoke,^[11] garnering over 12,000 upvotes in under a day (shown below).

Search Interest

External References