Men are from Mars

I participated in a game of Battle of the Sexes last night. The guys spent the first half of the game complaining that the game was rigged. Despite the fact that none of us are rednecks, the girls' team was able to answer a question about NASCAR correctly (When in doubt, go with Dale Earnhardt). Maybe it has to do with societal expectations that men have to be manly at all times, but women are allowed (and in some cases, encouraged) to drift to the other side and be "tomboys." We were able to answer several questions about tools and cars with such knowledge, while the boys had trouble coming up with the names of the characters on "Sex and the City." Is it our fault we have a greater breadth of knowledge? I'm not going to start a political discussion on which sex is smarter or whether we should all be feminists, but I think the boys' behavior toward the end of the game speaks for itself.

Maybe we had an advantage because almost every member of the boys' team was the spouse/significant other/roommate of one of the girls, so they had an idea of what knowledge their other half possessed. We were able to cut several of their turns short in this way (thus the carefully chosen "Sex and the City" question). We were able to stump them on difficult questions and avoid practically giving points away by asking "What is sashimi?" to a team of at least three sushi lovers. I would argue, however, that the difficulty level was similar on both the Male and Female decks, and that the difference lay solely in the amount of knowledge each team possessed. Then again, I could be biased...

The game progressed to a point where the guys were about five questions behind, and we only needed one correct answer to win. Several of us noted independently that the questions seemed to become more obscure, but this observation was not shared until after the game ended. While previously we had been able to answer at least one question, at least every other turn, we were now seemingly unable to get anything right! One of our questions toward the end was "What is the highest number of Playboy bunnies Hugh Hefner has ever had in bed at once?" We didn't want to imagine the situation to wager a guess, and decided on 14 for lack of a better answer. The correct answer: 37. GOO! The boys seemed to be doing just as poorly as they had been. Soon enough, though, they too were within one question of winning. We accused them of using reverse psychology on us on several occasions (which they had actually tried, unsuccessfully, earlier in the game). We also accused them of switching question cards, which they were caught red-handed doing about halfway through.

I think the final question was "What was the name of Britney Spears' perfume?" Somehow they came up with the correct name ("Curious") to win the game. The girls were disappointed, but we were happy with the fact that we had demonstrated our superiority early in the game and had simply fallen to a string of tough cards at the end. However, in a casual conversation reflecting the dishonesty of the attempted card-switching, one of the boys actually admitted to participating in more cheating than we had detected.

Turns out the boys were so worried about losing to us girls that, when threatened with us winning and presented with a card full of questions they were afraid we could answer, they resorted to just plain fabricating questions. And answers. Yes, folks, the Hugh Hefner question was fake. The world may never know how many bunnies fit in his bed. (And I think the world is better off not knowing.) They only admitted to making up two questions, and one of them actually had a correct answer (I googled it after the confession), but my guess is (a) that's a lie and (b) the only reason they stopped is because they finally got enough right to beat us. I'm pretty sure they would have kept cheating unabashedly for as long as it took to win. All I know is that most of the guys were in the doghouse, some rather cruel name-calling took place, and I wouldn't be surprised if several of them had to sleep on the couch last night.

I don't know if I'm more upset that they cheated or that we didn't think of it first. I'm a huge supporter of honesty in relationships. Unless, of course, it keeps me from winning a board game.