Google me: Cyberspace a fertile ground for gender jibes

By JULIET ROWAN

Men and women may be equal under the law, but the battle of the sexes is far from over. Just look at two stories featured in the last Weekend Herald.

"Battle of sexes in the marketplace" reported on research by Britain's Halifax bank that found men were significantly better at predicting sharemarket performance than women, while Observer columnist Barbara Ellen, in "There are no such things as nags" proclaimed her support for a study that found men don't listen to women.

The battle rages no less on Google, where punching in the words "battle of the sexes" produces 221,000 entries.

The first is an ad for a board game of that name. The object of the "outrageous and hormonally charged trivia battle", based on an Australian TV series, is to find out who is the superior sex.

Channel 4's two-part series took a scientific approach to determining whether men were the more aggressive sex.

Apparently women are better than men at faking positive emotions and suppressing negative ones.

They are also more likely to consider the long-term consequences of their actions, whereas men go for instant gratification.

But you can see for yourself on the website whether you fit the stereotype of your sex by taking the same test viewers took. The first 24 questions assess self-control, followed by a second set looking at reaction to physical aggression.

The final part consists of two games testing your ability to curb your desire to react automatically to a stimulus (called "cognitive inhibition" by psychologists).

I'm still grappling with being told I have the lightning-quick reactions of an accomplished PlayStation fan - which I'm figuring means I have no self-control.

MTV has got in on the act with a reality series called Battle of the Sexes, which appears to be less about science and more about boys and girls playing tug-of-war on the beach.

Battle of the Sexes has also been the title of at least two films: a contemporary work screened at the Sundance Film Festival, and a 1959 black-and-white starring Peter Sellers.

Further down the entries are many sites with men and women making jibes at each other's expense.

One such wisecrack, is a reminder that the battle of the sexes has been going on since the beginning of time. It goes like this:

After a few weeks by himself in the Garden of Eden, Adam got lonely. So he went to God and asked for a companion. God said he would look into it and get back to him the next day. So the next day God said to Adam: "I can make a beautiful woman who cooks, irons, cleans, never complains and is pretty much just what you want, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg. What do you think?"

Adam thought for a few seconds and then asked, "What can I get for a rib?"