AskMen has, in fact, asked men, and their “Great Male Survey 2010” determines that guys envy Italians, dislike having doctors touch their balls — and, as a whole, are actually pretty nice.
In an apparently “Ipsos-approved” poll of over 100,000 men in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, AskMen posed important questions about everything from whether cheating is okay to whether cooking is women’s work. The hodgepodge of topics produces a pretty amusing read: “In your opinion, which country has the best-dressed men?” (41% say Italy) is followed up directly with “How comfortable do you feel having a doctor examine your genitals?” (37% are somewhat uncomfortable). Would men be more at ease with a stylish Italian doctor perusing their junk? We’ll have to wait til 2011 to find out.
But there are more important things in life than clothes and balls. Like gossip! A full 82% of men say that “gossip is for women,” which I tried to get mad about but mostly find kind of hilarious (maybe because I can imagine a mobster yelling this to silence his minions?). Slightly more annoying: 5% of men say “cooking is women’s work,” which still seems kind of high. This is 2010, people!
Not to fear, though — in many departments, AskMen’s dudes are big softies. Thirty-eight percent wouldn’t cheat even if their partner could never find out, because “cheating violates my morals.” A further 38% wouldn’t do it because “I love and respect her too much.” Seventy-six percent are most motivated towards romantic gestures by “feeling close to my partner,” while only 16% are hoping to get sex, and 0% get romantic to earn “a personal favor.” Eighty-five percent would be cool with dating a woman who made more money than them, and 81% would never “track [their] partner’s physical movement (with a GPS implant, for example).” You charmers, you.
Cooking and gossip (and the fact that an overwhelming majority feel divorce laws are unfair to men) aside, the guys AskMen surveyed seem pretty decent. Of course, it’s not a random sampling — a representative from AskMen told us that while the questions were “endorsed by [market research organization] Ipsos,” the survey itself “was hosted on AskMen.com and open to all readers over a two month period.” To find out what men really think about having their genitals examined, you’d have to call them up at random and ask them, which would certainly be “uncomfortable.”
That said, AskMen isn’t exactly a bastion of feminism, so it’s nice to know its readers aren’t totally fucked up. One even points out an obvious blind spot in the study: gay men, who might have some interesting input into, say, AskMen’s question about “the institution of marriage.” But as another commenter points out, the opinions of gay men weren’t the only thing left out of the survey — “Scenty” writes, “I wish they had included questions on the preferences that men would like there woman’s private to smell like. I’d choose mint.”
Image via kaczor58/Shutterstock.com.
The Great Male Survey 2010 Edition [AskMen.com]