You've probably seen them at the bottom of a dusty bin in an old hardware store or tucked away in your grandfather’s workbench. Maybe you've even been tempted to make one yourself during a late-night DIY crisis. I’m talking about the plug to plug adapter, often referred to by electricians as a "suicide cord" or "widowmaker." It’s a device that consists of two male ends—prongs on both sides—designed to connect two female outlets together.
It sounds convenient. It looks simple. It’s actually a recipe for a house fire or a trip to the emergency room.
Most people go looking for a plug to plug adapter because they’ve hung their Christmas lights backward or they’re trying to backfeed a generator into their home during a power outage. It feels like a quick fix. "I'll just bridge this gap," you think. But electricity doesn't care about your holiday spirit or your need for a hot shower during a blackout. It follows the path of least resistance, and in this case, that path often leads through your body or your home's insulation.
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The Electrical Nightmare of Backfeeding
When you use a plug to plug adapter to connect a generator to a wall outlet, you are engaging in a practice called "backfeeding." This is illegal in many jurisdictions for a very good reason. Essentially, you're sending electricity the wrong way through your home's wiring. Instead of power coming from the utility grid, through your meter, and into your breaker box, you’re shoving it into a single outlet and forcing it to flow backward.
The primary danger here isn't just to you. It's to the utility workers.
Think about it. The transformer outside your house works both ways. If it’s designed to step down high-voltage power from the street to the 120V or 240V your house uses, it will also step up the 120V from your generator back into thousands of volts on the power lines. A line worker, thinking the grid is dead because they’ve pulled the main fuse, could be electrocuted by the power you’re pumping out of your garage via a plug to plug adapter. According to the Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI), backfeeding is one of the leading causes of injury to utility personnel during storm recovery.
Then there’s the "hot" prongs. If one end of that cord is plugged into a live source, the prongs on the other end are live, exposed, and waiting to touch something. Or someone. If a child pulls that cord out of the wall, they are holding a bare, electrified conductor. There is no safety mechanism. No shielding. Just raw voltage.
Why People Keep Trying to Use Them
Despite the warnings, these things persist in the dark corners of the internet and DIY forums. The most common scenario involves string lights. You’ve spent three hours on a ladder, stapling five strands of LED lights to your eaves, only to realize you’ve ended up with a female plug at the end where the extension cord is.
It’s frustrating.
You don't want to take them all down. So, you search for a plug to plug adapter or, worse, you cut the ends off two old cords and twist the wires together with some electrical tape. Honestly, I get the impulse. Nobody wants to redo work. But a $10 mistake in light hanging isn't worth a $100,000 house fire. Modern Christmas lights are designed with fuses in the male plug for a reason. When you bypass that orientation, you’re bypassing the safety protections built into the product.
The Technical Reality of Overloading Your Circuits
Wiring is not just "pipes for electricity." It's a calibrated system. Your home's 15-amp or 20-amp circuits are protected by breakers that are designed to trip if the load gets too high. When you use a plug to plug adapter to feed power into a circuit, you are often bypassing the breaker's ability to protect the entire system.
If you feed 20 amps into a bedroom outlet using a generator and a male-to-male cord, and then you turn on a space heater and a microwave on that same circuit, you can easily exceed the wire's rating. Since the power is coming in "the back door," the breaker in your panel might not see that overload. The wire inside your wall gets hot. The insulation melts. The wooden studs catch fire. You won't even know it's happening until you smell smoke.
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This isn't theoretical. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) specifically warns against the use of "suicide cords" in their NFPA 70 (National Electrical Code) guidelines. They mandate that any portable power source must be connected via a properly installed transfer switch or a power inlet box that uses a recessed male plug protected by a housing.
Better, Safer Alternatives
If you're reading this because you need a way to connect power, stop looking for a plug to plug adapter. There are legitimate ways to solve these problems that won't end in disaster.
For generator owners, the gold standard is a manual transfer switch. A licensed electrician installs this next to your main panel. It physically disconnects your home from the utility grid before allowing the generator to provide power. This eliminates the risk to line workers and ensures your home’s breakers still function as intended.
If a transfer switch is too expensive, look into an interlock kit. It’s a mechanical device that prevents the "main" breaker and the "generator" breaker from being turned on at the same time. It’s a cheap, elegant solution that keeps everything legal and safe.
As for the Christmas light dilemma? Just bite the bullet. Take the lights down and flip them. Or, if you’re lucky, you can find a "gender changer" that is specifically rated for low-voltage applications, though even these are rare and often frowned upon by UL (Underwriters Laboratories). Usually, the simplest answer is the right one: buy a longer extension cord and run it to the correct end of the strand.
What to Do If You Own One
If you actually have a plug to plug adapter in your garage, do the world a favor.
- Unplug it immediately if it’s in use.
- Take a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters.
- Cut the cord into three or four pieces.
- Throw them in the trash.
Don't give it to a neighbor. Don't sell it at a yard sale. These devices are fundamentally unsafe because they rely on the user never making a mistake. In the world of electrical engineering, that’s called a "single point of failure." Humans are not perfect. We trip over cords, we forget which end is live, and we get distracted. A safe electrical system is one that accounts for human error. The plug to plug adapter does the opposite—it invites it.
The Verdict on Safety
You’ll find people on forums claiming they’ve used a male-to-male cord for twenty years without an issue. Good for them. They’ve been lucky. But survivorship bias is a dangerous thing to rely on when it involves 120 volts of alternating current. The technical community, from the IEEE to local fire marshals, is unanimous on this. There is no "safe" way to use a plug to plug adapter in a standard residential setting.
Stick to the code. Your house, your family, and your local utility workers will thank you. If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing without creating a fire hazard.
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Next Steps for Electrical Safety:
- Audit your emergency kit: Ensure you have a heavy-duty, outdoor-rated extension cord rather than makeshift adapters.
- Check your lights: Before hanging seasonal decorations, verify the male/female orientation to avoid the "backward strand" trap.
- Consult a pro: If you need to power your home during a blackout, call an electrician to discuss an interlock kit or a transfer switch installation.
- Dispose of hazards: Physically destroy any male-to-male "suicide cords" currently in your possession to prevent accidental use by others.