So AskMen.com just put up the first segment of its annual 3-part Great Male Survey. Filled with strange assumptions and sometimes creepy questions, it’s a survey that reveals at least as much about the survey makers as it does the survey takers, and what it reveals ain’t good: it seems to have been written by a jaded ex-romantic ( or a committee of such) only a few short steps away from full-blown MGTOW-hood.
The survey starts off with a fairly innocuous question about basic compatibility, but quickly veers off course with question #2:
How important is it to you that your wife/future wife signs a prenup?
Hold on a second, daddy-o! We haven’t even determined if the little missy has “wife potential” yet — as question #3 puts it.
After one more question about marriage, the quiz moves on to cheating and then (perhaps inevitably) to the issue of divorce:
Do men get screwed by the courts in divorce?
Then it’s onward to kvetching about what a naggy shrew your partner is (assuming you haven’t already finalized the divorce):
Followed by the classic “Would you dump a girlfriend if she became fat?” (Just in case you’re wondering, ladies, nearly half the American guys in last year’s survey said “yes.”)
Next we get to what we might call the “creepy controlling asshole” portion of the survey. After asking whether we’ve ever snooped through our partner’s email or Facebook messages, they pose this doozy:
That quiet clattering you hear is the sound of a thousand creepy dudes Googling to see if this is possible – and, if so, the best place to put the chip.
After several more questions about Facebook and the internet, a few badly conceptualized questions about romance, and a bunch about sex, the quiz moves on to some good old-fashioned slut shaming, asking men to quantify the number of sex partners a woman is allowed to have before they consider her “promiscuous.” Ladies: you’ll be glad to know that 41% of American dudes who took the survey last year consider any women with more than 9 lifetime partners to be dirty sluts – sorry, “promiscuous.”
Then of course it’s on to an attempt to quantify exactly when women start getting all old and ugly:
Yes, one of the possible answers is “18.” You may be slightly reassured by the fact that zero percent of last year’s survey takers gave that answer. Six percent said “20,” though, and 24% said “30.”
Then we have this curiously worded question on workplace sex:
So the idea that your partner might be a big higher up on the old org chart isn’t even a possibility? What is this, 1962? Did they borrow this question from Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl? Or find it scribbled on a napkin on Don Draper’s desk just before he impulsively proposed to his new secretary?
I think we need to design our own survey.
(Note: Cartoon above borrowed, of course, from Comically Vintage.)
The best way to eat bacon is:
* Real bacon
* Bacon salt
* Bacon popcorn
* Caramel popcorn balls made with bacon popcorn
* A BLT made with Baconnaise
* All of the above
Oooh, I forgot “With beer” as one of the options!
Real bacon, cut by hand from a flitch.
I, sadly, can’t keep a flitch. My primary keeps kosher, and no bacon in the house. :<
Pecunium: Long pig.
Because at this point, they MIGHT AS WELL add cannibalism to that quiz, it couldn’t be any more dehumanizing.
Pecunium, I never knew that a flitch was until I Googled it just now. This is why I keep coming back to this thread. 😛
How does the bacon question make you feel.
A.hungry
B.horny
C.both a & b
D.oh sweet,sweet tasty bacon,mmmmmmmmm. Wut?
I have a warm fuzzy feeling about the state of humanity because last year 54% of people said they *wouldn’t* break up with their girlfriend if she got fat.
These are the good feelings one can only get from very low expectations. 🙂
The thing about the breaking up with the girlfriend if she got “fat” is that “fat” isn’t defined. I mean, if she put on 5 pounds? Went up 5 dress sizes? Took a little too long to lose the babyweight? And over what timeframe?
Early in our relationship I told my fiance I’d break up with him if he ever cut his hair short. We’ve been together almost 7 years now and at this point I wouldn’t ACTUALLY break up with him (I’ve gotten rather attached)… but I’d still be very very whiny and sad about it for a long time. Fortunately he has no plans to cut his hair 🙂
The maple kind?
Fortunately he has no plans to cut his hair
some men have the decision made for them.
So, apparently to the AskMen survey creators, male=heterosexual (or perhaps bisexual, but only if you mostly prefer women, I guess)? Practically every relationship question stated or implied that the survey-taker’s partner(s) is/was/are female.
I cannot think of any funny ManBoobz survey questions, but I wish there was a way to have the survey-takers answer variants on every “woman/girlfriend/partner” questions with a counter question about men/themselves. “Would your partner dump you if you got fat?” (Whatever that means, as Plymouth points out.) “How many sexual partners makes a man ‘promiscuous’?” “At what age do men begin to lose their looks?”
I’m kind of with Dan Savage when it comes to partners becoming unattractive (whether it’s getting fat or something else). I do believe that we have a responsibility to our partners to try and keep ourselves attractive for them.
I mean, aging gets everyone in the end, and that’s to be expected. And you can’t start dating someone who’s a particular body type and then expect them to change. And if your partner has medical problems that are causing the changes, it’s rather dickish to leave.
That being said – if my boyfriend put on a few pounds, I wouldn’t care. But if he just up and stopped caring about himself or his appearance… yeah, there’s some issues there.
Q: When you see a sandwich, what is your first thought?
A- Ooh, delicious, convenient lunch
B- This better have been made by female hands!
C- If a woman did indeed make this, then all is right in my world.
D- It’s not visible long enough for me to think much about it.
When a woman is talking, what does it sound like to you?
A) The Charlie Brown adults (wah wah wah).
B) A screeching bird or monkey.
C) A lumbering, mooing cow.
D) A sentient human being.
E) Background noise — I don’t even hear it.
F) Spitting.
“Spitting” has to be added as an option to every question, regardless of what it is.
I also tried to take the quiz and gave up because half the questions only have jerkwad-compatible answers. And, yes, the two questions about sex with coworkers (why two? who knows?) seem to envision a situation less like Jim and Pam on “The Office” and more like Don Draper screwing his way through the secretarial pool. Ick.
“Spitting” has to be added as an option to every question, regardless of what it is.
O yeah. perfect!
Ew, bacon. 🙁
A person in your workplace who is senior and holds your career in his hands, is making advances and sexual demands, even though you have made it plain that you are heterosexual and not interested. Do you:
A) file a harassment complaint with HR, even though the other males will ridicule you for dressing slutty.
B) beat the senior associate and put him into the hospital, and later claim “gay panic”.
C) submit happily.
D) Quietly find another job, even if it pays less and has less opportunity for advancement.
D) spit on him.
Oh, oh, I have one!
A woman tells you about several times she was harassed/abused/groped by a stranger in public. What do you do?
A) Offer compassion and sympathy. Resolve to speak up the next time you see a woman being harassed in public, because change has to start with you.
B) Ask if she might not have mis-interpreted or exaggerated the incident. Explore it from the point of view of the groper: it’s just touching, what is the big deal?
C) Decide she is lying and you’d better not make a pass at her, even tho you only became her friend to do just that, because she’d probably false-rape-accuse you or something. Crazy bitch.
D) No woman has ever told me about an incident like this. Therefore it never happens.
Oh, or E) Wait for her to spit on you, because that’s all bitches know how to do, amirite?!
What skills could you contribute to the ManBoobz Community in the event of the apocalypse?
A. Hunting/fishing skills
B. Farming/gathering skills
C. Child bearing skills
D. Child rearing skills
E. Construction skills
F. Zombie-killing skills
G. All of the above skills
For the record, also state your gender and how you acquired said skills.
You need to buy a bathtub. Do you
(A) Look for a capacious model, so all the virgin-blood doesn’t spill out on the floor.
(B) Look for a sturdy model, so that fat chick you’ll probably end up banging doesn’t break it with her fatness.
(C) Look for a solid-gold model, so to better attract hot alpha golddiggers.
(D) Decide against getting a bathtub. After all, you’re Going Your Own Way. Why live up to society’s expectations of hygiene now?
(E) Run out of the store without buying any bathtub because the beta salesgirls all spit on you.
F. Zombie-killing skills
hey now.
Have you stopped beating your significant other?
A) Yes.
B) No.
C) None of those entitled alpha bitches hang around long enough for me to beat them! But I’m a nice guy!
Sex robot. What’dya say?
(A) Yes! The only reason I have any communication with women anyway is in the off chance that I’ll get some freaky robot sex with one of them.
(B) No, my hatred of women extends to robot bitches as well.
(C) It depends. I have to pay child support for all these children I couldn’t force my ex to abort, due to the feminist jurisprudence and whatnot. How much is the cheapest model?
(D) It depends. Can I program the sex robot to spit on me?
At what point does a woman owe you sex?
A) After I have claimed ownership by “putting a ring on it”
B) After I slay a mammoth for her
C) Once I’ve purchased it by paying for dinner and a movie
D) Once I’ve earned it by being such a nice guy and listening to her bitch about that bad boy thug she’s dating
E) When I say, and she better not spit on me by thinking she doesn’t owe me anything
(I feel dirty.)