Women do not prefer the Internet over sex

Posted at 4:45 PM Dec 12, 2008

By Andrea Grimes

When mainstream publication (online or off) writers want to write about some random crap they find interesting or trendy, why don't they just say so? Digging around for faux trends, ballooned statistics or anecdotal evidence does not journalistic credit make. Say what you have to say, dear journalists, and quit pretending it's A Big Damned Thing!

The latest victim of the interesting-trendy-trend is a Wall Street Journal writer who thought that an Intel-sponsored survey of 2,000 self-reporting folks was blog-worthy in "Not Tonight Dear, I'd Rather Blog." Survey says: women prefer the Internet to having sex! O noez!

Here's the deal:

An online survey commissioned by Intel has found, among other things, that 46% of women would rather go without sex for two weeks than give up the Internet for that long. The numbers get bigger for certain age groups; 49% of women aged 18-34 would make that choice, and 52% of women aged 35-44.

Not that males are immune from the siren call of the Web, but the numbers aren't so dramatic. Some 30% of all men would swap sex for the Internet for two weeks, if they had to, with 39% of men aged 18-34 willing to make that sacrifice, according to the survey. Only 23% of men aged 35-44 said they would do so.

I don't believe those numbers, not even a little bit. The entire question is preposterous. No sex for two weeks? You might be feeling a little frisky, but your life would continue as normal. No Internet for two weeks? That means missing work, missing friends, missing family, not being able to do just about every effing thing modern folks in the U.S. do. So it's not a question of preferring the Internet over sex. It's a question of wanting to live a normal life over getting boned.

I don't believe for a second that there would be much difference between the genders in their findings if people were actually faced with this decision. Men need and use the Internet just as much as women, and would be just as screwed if they didn't have it. Maybe there's a little sex-machine-machismo going into the thinking behind the men who reported that they'd rather hump than click. I don't know. But the fact remains that this survey says basically nothing about anything. To assert that women would rather blog, chat, trade stocks, play fantasy football, MUD or MOO than have sex, according to this survey, is beyond meaningless.

Thing is, Intel acknowledges that: "Intel, it should be noted, did not set out to prove a point about modern sexual behavior," writes the WSJ. Weird. 'Cause your story, WSJ, sure reads like a report on modern sexual behavior.