In case you’ve been hiding under a rock lately — or watching the soon-to-canceled TV show Playboy Club – so-called benevolent sexism is doing or saying nice things for sexist reasons. Killing them with kindness, as it were. For example, holding open a door for a woman (when you don’t do it for men), or offering to install a female co-worker’s computer (again, when you wouldn’t offer the same help to a man). It’s “subjective affection as a form of prejudice,” according to researchers Peter Glick and Susan T. Fiske, who first came up with the term benevolent sexism. So sexism is not always hostile — does that mean that the kinder, gentler version is a good thing? Or, at least, not a bad thing?

The funny part is — or, perhaps, the utterly depressing part — that this debate has been going on for, um, twenty years. Yes, twenty years ago Glick and Fiske developed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), which measures both Hostile Sexism and Benevolent Sexism. Since then, thousands of people in dozens of countries have taken the survey. And the results are still in: benevolent sexism sucks. It sucks like sexism. It is sexism. Because in every country where this survey was administered, hostile and benevolent sexism are in a co-dependent relationship. You can’t have one without the other. The only difference is, with hostile (or obvious) sexism you are punished for not behaving appropriately and with benevolent (or old-school or stealth) sexism you are rewarded for behaving appropriately.

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Lists of survey percentages can feel so blah on the page — even when they’re about sex. Not so anymore! Introducing The Sexualizer 1000 — an interactive visualization of the 20-question sex survey results of 1000 Brits. (And the fact that it’s about UK citizens only makes it slightly less interesting). The Sexualizer, an offshoot of the Sexperience website from the Channel 4 Sex Education Show, allows you to ask questions and follow each individual’s response…

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Guy A: How are things going with your new baby?

Guy B: Oh, you know, that’s pretty much Amy’s deal.

We swear to god, this is an exact transcript of a conversation that took place between a friend of ours and one of his college buddies. Sure, it’s an extreme example, but it’s not an isolated incident. Another guy told Em’s husband that his social life had altered “about 10%” since having a kid. And even many evolved, sensitive, awesome guys that we know can hover around the perimeter during the early stages of fatherhood — more like a friendly uncle than a parent. It’s understandable, in many ways, given how mom-focused (okay, boob-focused) most babies are.

But it turns out that, despite all this, men’s bodies biologically adapt to parenthood, too. And we don’t just mean the shooting sperm part. As we reported earlier this week, a new study found that men’s testosterone drops when they become dads. What’s even more interesting is that the more the man gets involved with that whole parenting gig, the more his testosterone stops.

Don’t worry, dudes, it’s not the kind of plummet that would cause you to lose your chest hair or grow moobs. More like the kind of gentle dip that might make you slightly less susceptible to a flirtatious waitress… and slightly more open to singing “The Wheels on the Bus” for the hundredth time that week.

In other words, it looks like men’s bodies have evolved to help them commit to their families once kids show up. Which means that, evolutionarily speaking, nature wants men to change diapers.

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photo via flickr

The female orgasm is a mystery, and not just in that how-the-hell-can-I-make-my-girlfriend-climax kind of way. Scientists just can’t seem to figure out what it’s there for. The most recent theory — popularized in the 2005 book The Case of the Female Orgasm — was that it was just an accidental evolutionary by-product of the male orgasm. Meaning, the orgasm is important for men (no shit) and women share biology with them, in the same way that men have non-functioning (unless you count orgasm via nipple clamps) nipples. But anyway, a recent study of thousands of twins, and how they do or don’t orgasm, failed to prove this theory.

Two scientists – Brendan Zietsch, a geneticist at the University of Queensland and Pekka Santtila of Finland’s Abo Akedemi University — surveyed 1,803 pairs of opposite-sex twins and 2,287 pairs of same-sex twins. If the female orgasm was just a by-product, the thought went, then opposite-sex twins should have similar orgasmic function. But… they didn’t. (Though same-sex twins did seem to have similar orgasmic tendencies.) The theory hasn’t been shot down completely, the researchers note, because self-reported orgasm data is notoriously unreliable. But still, “hasn’t been shot down completely” isn’t exactly the research breakthrough we were hoping for. Which means it’s back to the drawing board for the men in women in lab coats who are trying to get to the bottom of the female orgasm. Hey, if it’s any consolation, most women we know can more than empathize.

• This post is a part of Sundance Channel’s Naked Love Blog
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Here’s a fascinating but not all that surprising study from the University of Buffalo: they recently analyzed more than 1,000 images of men and women on Rolling Stone covers over the course of 43 years (they chose Rolling Stone since it’s a well-established, pop-culture media outlet) and found the following:

• In the 1960s, 11 percent of men and 44 percent of women on the covers of Rolling Stone were sexualized.
• In the 2000s, 17 percent of men were sexualized (an increase of 55 percent from the 1960s), and 83 percent of women were sexualized (an increase of 89 percent).
• Among those images that were sexualized, 2 percent of men and 61 percent of women were hypersexualized.
• In the 2000s, there were 10 times more hypersexualized images of women than men, and 11 times more non-sexualized images of men than of women.

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• Teens having sex in committed relationships are less likely to be delinquent than their abstaining peers. But teens having casual sex are more likely to exhibit “anti-social behavior” than either group.
• Study finds more and more parents choosing to live together without marrying.
• Catholic church gives more priests temporary permission to absolve the “sin” of abortion and “de-excommunicate” women who have had one. Phew!
• Scientists attempt to debunk the pheromone myth. (What works for silkworms may not necessarily work for us humans.)

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photo via flickr

A recent study published in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine looked at the masturbation habits of American teenagers (age 14-17) — and the results are likely to please both the self-lovers and those who think that adolescent boys and girls should be forced to sleep in mittens to keep themselves pure.

So here’s the news that will please Team Masturbation: Among teens who engage in oral or vaginal sex, boys who masturbate were eight times more likely to use a condom than boys who don’t. (Unfortunately there was no correlation for girls.) Of course, correlation is not causation, but still, it’s something. For whatever reason — the study authors say they need to do more research to know exactly why — masturbation seems to be associated with a more careful attitude to safer sex. Go salami slappers!

And here’s the news that will no doubt provide ammunition to the Anti-Mastubation Brigade: Kids who masturbated (both boys and girls) reported having more sex, both vaginal and oral, than the non-masturbators. Again, correlation does not equal causation, but for anyone wanting to argue that masturbation is a slippery slope, we think they’ll like this finding.

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image from nDevilTV

It’s not exactly rocket science to say that men orgasm more often than women when they have sex with each other. Now, if you had to guess, what do you think happens to this orgasm gap as a relationship progresses from casual hookup to repeated hookup to serious commitment? Yep, the orgasm gap closes. According to new research by Elizabeth Armstrong, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan, women orgasm about 80% as often as men do in close relationships — but only 32% as often in first hookups. This research is based on feedback from 12,000 college students across the country. In other words, yes, the undergraduate female orgasm is a rare and special beast. This is likely due in part to the fact that fellatio tends to be consistent across all relationship types, while cunnilingus comes into play mostly in long-term relationships.

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photo via flickr

• A study published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior claims that a woman is more likely to orgasm during intercourse with a man if he rates highly in the categories of “objectively-measured facial masculinity, observer-rated facial masculinity, partner-rated masculinity, and partner-rated dominance.” Just try fitting that on a Valentine’s card to your lover.
• Why normalizing teen sex under the family roof may ultimately give parents more influence and control. “Influence” and “control” both being relative concepts when it comes to teens and sex, of course.
• Russell Brand remembers his friend fellow addict Amy Winehouse. We never thought we’d say this, but it’s too bad she never married a nice man like Russell.
• Straight out of the no-shit-Sherlock department: Research shows that women buy cosmetic products for primarily emotional reasons.

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photo via Flickr

It seems like every few years scientists come up with some new way to get us all talking about penis size again — and to freak out men, convincing them that women will be able to guess at their penis size just by looking at their hands. The latest research comes out of Korea, where urologists claim to have found a connection between the ratio of the length of a man’s index finger to that of his ring finger, and the length of… you guessed it, his penis. The lower the ratio between the two fingers, the longer the penis, goes their theory. (But only on the right hand — apparently the left hand varies too much to be a reliable indicator.)

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