Now go a step further, and imagine that instead of branded, the baby has the end of her ear lobe cut off, again something this imaginary society only does to females.

It’d be a pretty horrific idea, and anyone suggesting we take on such practices and follow such rituals would be rightly thought not only to be utterly wrong, but entirely deranged, and no law would ever pass which would allow such a mass mutilation to take place.

But, for a moment, imagine that the affected children were instead male, and the part of the body to take a knife to at birth was not the earlobe but the penis… and you’ll find yourself not in some dystopian fantasy but in modern day America, and in parts of the UK and other countries too.

Each year, around 1.2 million male babies in the US are circumcised in medically-unnecessary procedures – and that’s discounting the cases where there is a genuine medical reason to do so, which I have absolutely no problem with. As an analogy, I can accept people having to have limbs amputated should injury or diabetes or gangrene warrant, but I’d advise against it becoming the first thing we do after cutting the umbilical cord.

Right now in San Francisco the issue of circumcision is very much in the news, after local anti-circumcision activist Lloyd Schofield collected enough signatures – more than 12,000 – to put a measure to the city ballot in November 2011, seeking to ban the practice of circumcision.

Some have dismissed the calls for the ban as being doomed to fail due to the First Amendment – state should pass no law with respect to religion – which guarantees free practice of religion. I however suspect it’s more complicated than that – were a knife to be taken to any other part of a newborn, or to the genitals of a baby girl, it would be considered a crime. That there exists a legal exemption from cutting newborn boys without fear of prosecution could itself be argued to be a law set up to give religious groups a freedom not extended to others, and certainly against the rights of the newborn child to choose whether he deems part of his body to be worthy of being removed.

Although the issue isn’t particularly big in the UK, it’s something that I actually get pretty worked up about despite having no personal stake in it other than being in possession of a penis (one which I like to think I have the right to decide what happens to it). I guess I get particularly pissed off with pro-circumcision arguments primarily for the fact that the same-old logical fallacies are trotted out to support it, yet so few people who are skeptical seem to really care, and many in fact seem to support the practice.

The arguments in favour of the practice tend to fall broadly into a number of generic topics, such as:

Tradition - eg “We’ve been doing it for years”.

To which my first response is always ‘OK. So fuck?’ It doesn’t matter if people have been doing it since the dawn of time, if it’s a long-held bad idea, it’s still a bad idea.

As it happens, it’s not been going on since the dawn of time, but rather the practice stems from the old testament, and was reinforced in America by the father of the Corn Flake, Dr John Kellogg. Kellogg believed it was a great cure for all sorts of things, including overactive libido, and even added that the fact that the practice is far from painless is a good thing, saying:

“The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment”.

Charming. And in no way convincing justification for continual circumcision of one half of the population. A bad idea can be an ancient bad idea, and still be a bad idea.

Religious – eg ‘It’s part of a covenant with God’

And again, I’d argue ‘Erm, so fuck?’ Religious people – particularly Jews and Muslims – believe circumcision is a tribute to God, inspired by a pact between God and Abraham. But just because you believe in any particular religion, you don’t get to engage in blood sacrifices – no goat killing, no slitting the throats of virgins on alters, no throwing children into volcanoes and no knives to be taken to day-old penises. This is the 21st century.

If you don’t believe in God, then this is a total non-issue – religion not being a very convincing argument in support of a practice in honour of a God you don’t believe in. Obviously.

And for those who don’t believe in a god, but do believe that believers in a god should get to make blood sacrifices by taking knives to the genitals of unsuspecting children – please, stop being a patronising arse. Essentially this viewpoint boils down to “well, I know better of course, but those deluded religious types have the right to their own savage rituals, and should be exempt from charges because of their devotion to an imaginary deity I wholeheartedly believe isn’t there”. It’s pretty patronising when you look at it.

Cultural – eg ‘I want my child to look like their father/other kids’

Now, I don’t know about you chaps, but when I was a kid I tended not to spend an awful lot of my time looking at or thinking about the penises of my family members or school mates. It just wasn’t a topic at the front of my mind.

However, I can see how a kid might well see a circumcised penis, different from their own uncircumcised penis, and have a few questions about why they’re different. Valid questions, even. But the best way to answer questions is with answers, not with arbitrary ritualistic removal of a part of the genitals just to avoid the questions coming up in the first place.

If you tell any inquisitive boy that “Some people believe the end of their penis should be removed, for all sorts of reasons, but we felt you were fine just as you were”, I’m pretty sure most kids can grasp it, and it means nobody has to take a knife to anyone’s reproductive organs until such a time as they’re old enough to consent.

Hygiene – eg ‘It’s cleaner to be circumcised’

This has to be one of the uglier arguments in favour of circumcision – it essentially is based on the notion that men are too stupid, too dirty or too lazy to understand how to clean parts of their own body, and therefore those parts ought to be surgically removed before said man can do himself harm from neglect.

This one boils my blood. Can you think of anything more patronising, infantilizing and misandric than labelling half of the population as incapable of even washing effectively?

Here’s a radical idea: educate boys rather than mutilating them.

Health benefits – eg ‘Circumcision helps prevent spread of HIV’

This one I admit is contentious, as there is some evidence to suggest that circumcision helps lower the chance of HIV transmission, based on the study of different groups in Uganda, one of which ritually circumcised infant boys, the other didn’t.

It may well be true that the circumcised population incurred a lower rate of infection in these studies. However, even assuming the data stands up (which I’m happy to do, being no expert in the field), there are still two clear caveats:

1. Circumcised or not, the transmission of HIV is most effectively reduced by the use of condoms. Wear a condom, and it doesn’t matter if you’re circumcised or not, the protection offered is the same, and is significantly higher than just circumcision. Uncircumcised plus condom use is exactly the same as circumcised plus condom use where HIV protection is concerned. So, if you live somewhere where the HIV infection rates are high and access to contraception is low, it might well be a useful measure. But nowhere in America, the UK or other developed-world nations meet those criteria – here, the benefits don’t outweigh the risks.
2. Lowered chance of HIV infection rates via circumcision only kicks in when the person becomes sexually active, so if it’s a step worth taking, it’s a step which can be taken once the patient is old enough to understand the procedure. Yes, the chances of complications are higher as an adult, or nearing adulthood, but in countries where the HIV rates are relatively low and the access to condoms high, it’s far better to teach a male safe sex than to take a knife to him for his own good, before he can so much as have a say in it.

Health benefits – eg ‘Circumcision prevents penile cancer’

A 1932 study by Abraham Wolbarst claimed infant circumcision eradicated the risk of penile cancer. If this is true, it sounds like a compelling health benefit of circumcision. However, it’s important to add that penile cancer is hugely rare – something like 1 in 100,000 men get it, and not all fatally so. With that in mind, even if this was true it would mean putting all men through a surgical procedure – not one without risk, albeit quite small risk – for a 10 in a million chance they’ll avoid a form of cancer. On balance, the risks just don’t add up.

What’s more, Wolbarst’s research was undermined somewhat by his beliefs – he openly agreed with Dr Kellogg that circumcision was positive because it not only discouraged masturbation, but also prevented epilepsy and infant death. So that he found a slight benefit in a practice he wholeheartedly endorsed already is perhaps no surprise – and it’s worth noting that even with his prior biases, he didn’t find circumcision clinically beneficial in those other areas.

There were other more telling flaws in his research – later studies have shown that while penile cancer is only slightly more prevalent in the uncircumcised than the circumcised (not enough to justify de facto intervention on all men) the human papilloma virus (HPV) is the most important risk factor for cancer of the penis. HPV is the virus which causes genital warts, and as it turns out HPV is more easily contracted by circumcised men. So you may have a small, disputed level of protection against cancer, but you’re more likely to contract a virus which cause cancer. Great.

Utility – eg ‘The foreskin is useless, it does nothing’:

Even if this was true, so fuck? The appendix is a vestigial organ we can live without, yet we don’t advise that all newborns have it whipped out while before they’ve even had time to cool. We leave it where it is and deal with it if it becomes a danger to the child’s health.

What’s more, there’s a growing body of research looking into the role of the foreskin, and the benefits derived from having it. From the prevention of desensitisation of the head of the penis, to the myriad of nerve endings on the inner of the foreskin, it’s actually increasingly seen as a highly important part of the penis. Also – it’s part of the fucking penis. It’s not just packaging, like the skin of a Babybell, it’s actually meant to be there.

Aesthetics – eg ‘It looks better’

Unbelievably, I’ve actually seen this argument made in the past – that ‘women think it looks better’. I’ve even heard women claim that they’d hate to sleep with man who wasn’t circumcised. Shamefully, I’ve heard it from people who should know better, too – people who would otherwise claim to be pro-gender equality and/or feminism. Again, this common argument is pretty bleak at its heart – what right does anyone have to support cosmetic surgery at birth, focused on one gender, just so their aesthetic ideals are met? It’s the equivalent to someone insisting that because he prefers false breasts and blonde hair, all girls should be surgically and permanently enhanced and dyed from birth, just to fit what he thinks a girl should look like. It’s a genuinely detestable sentiment.

If a man decides he wants to be circumcised, just as if a woman decides she’d prefer a different cup size, then it’s a decision they should be free to make – but only when old enough to make the decision, and as far removed as possible from the pressures and expectations of arrogant and shallow members of the opposite sex who believe they have the right to request the permanent alteration of the appearance other human beings in order to meet their tastes.

It’s at this point that I feel I should mention: while I don’t want to go into the issues surrounding the utterly abhorent practice of female circumcision – something I’m absolutely vocally against, as should be every skeptic – I would like to point out that I fully expect the comments on this show to be hijacked by the notion of having to compare which is worse, male or female genital mutilation, and the conclusion that it’s female. You’re right, the practice of female genital mutilation is utterly wrong. But, I think it should be enough to simply state: all genital mutilation is wrong. I don’t discriminate between which gender should suffer genital mutilation, and which shouldn’t – that very distinction, right there, is the precise definition of sexual discrimination.

Going back to San Francisco for a moment, Liberal critics of the proposed ban have suggested that a ban is unnecessary – instead, if someone disagrees with circumcision, they can simply choose not to have their child circumcised. This, however, misses the central point – it’s not a choice for a parent to make. Currently, men circumcised as babies aren’t given the choice to be circumcised or not, the choice is made for them – without their consultation or consent – and becomes something they have to live with for life, with no meaningful way of reversing the act.

So, I’m fully supportive of calls to end the ritualistic circumcision of newborn boys, and if people want to go ahead and do it as part of their religious beliefs, they can choose to do so themselves, but once they’re old enough to make an informed decision to do so.

OnePoll is an interesting beast – is business model is to pay people around 10p for their participation in a relatively quick online survey, with the idea being that the more surveys you take part in, the more you earn. The upshot of this means the quicker you complete the survey, the faster you can move on to the next one. It also means that when you’re asked a screening question like ‘Are you single or in a relationship?‘, and you can see the name of the survey is ‘Being In Relationships!‘, it’s pretty easy to see that to enter the survey and claim your shiny 10p, you obviously pretend to be in a relationship. Or pretend to be a football fan. Or pretend to be self-employed. Etc. For the sake of your 10p, you enter a load of results which become utterly meaningless.

The speed issue has a knock-on effect elsewhere, too. As I’ve pointed out before, when asked a badly designed question like ‘Which celebrity would you least like to go on holiday with?‘ where the possible responses are from a set list, rather than stopping to think, ‘Actually, I don’t care about any of these people, I’d like to tick the none of the above option, but there isn’t one‘, instead you pick a choice fairly-randomly, fairly-quickly and progress on towards your 10p, and so we get this in the newspapers: Cheryl Cole is celebrity most Brits want to holiday with unlike Katie Price.  I can imagine the most significant factor in these types of questions is often the order the options are presented, rather than their actual content, with a bias towards the options that appear first in the list (that would be my prediction, anyway).

What’s more, to get you started, when you first sign up to One Poll you get something in the region of £2, too – so it feels like a breeze to start really earning. Here’s the kicker though, and of course there is one – before you see a penny of your earnings, you need to accrue £40. At 10p per survey, that’s 400 surveys. I’ve been playing for about months now, and I’m on about £17. So, I can imagine there would be a pretty reasonable fallout rate as people became disillusioned with the process and give up, and thus often OnePoll never have to pay a penny to most of the people they survey. Which makes their business model pretty cheap, then.

Still, despite their flaws (or, more accurately, because of them) OnePoll have a quite staggering ability to make it to press, with around 3 stories a day making the mainstream news. With a bit of research, friend of the MSS Peter Wood was able to identify that these survey-turned-stories tend to net OnePoll around £3250 each. At the rate these surveys make it into the news, I’m sure business in the polling industry must well be booming. Here’s what you get for that price:

- Identify survey angle and compile questionnaire
- Design and script survey ready for upload to www.OnePoll.com
- Place survey on OnePoll’s member area (75,000 strong panel)
- Run the survey online
- Achieve minimum sample of 2,000 UK-based respondents
- Collate and present data
- Mine data and identify news angles
- Create draft news copy for approval – embed PR messages

And therein lies the rub – not only do OnePoll admit to data mining (the practice of gathering together a huge sample of data, and then looking for anomalies and potentially-interesting results within that set, aside from any pre-specified effect to examine), but they actively design and script surveys to produce data to back-up a pre-designed angle. The process is simple: write the story first, then write a survey biased in your favour to ‘discover’ what you’ve already decided in your story, then sell it as breaking research – mostly with a lovely mention of a company’s name, most frequently in the 4th paragraph.

(As a brief but important aside, the 4th paragraph rule I go on about a lot is done for a very well contrived reason – when editing copy, classically editors cut from the bottom up, originally to fit the space left for the story in that day’s newspaper. So copywriters are taught to put the most salient details in the top paragraph, and introduce supporting details in order of importance, with the least significant bits at the bottom ready to be cut if needed. So to ensure the name of the paymaster of the story isn’t cut (and often, in news-in-brief style stories, they are), the company or product name has to appear high enough up to be salvaged from the slice, but low enough to semi-obscure that the whole purpose of the article is promotion. Hence, the 4th paragraph.)

So, why am I telling you all of this? Partly, because it fascinates me. Partly, because it’s everywhere. But mostly, with OnePoll being responsible for some very irresponsible and unethical surveys of late, because there can be real damage involved in this approach. One such example bobbed to the surface this Friday, when the following article appeared in the Daily Record:

Dad by trickery

One in 10 women has tricked a man into getting them pregnant, it was claimed yesterday.

But less than half of them actually wanted the person the used to stick around once the baby was born.

Figures emerged in a poll of 3000 mums for parenting club Bounty.com

And in The Sun:

One in 10 trick dads

One in ten mums TRICKED their fella into getting them pregnant, a survey revealed yesterday.

Top ruses were lying about being on the pill or just not mentioning contraception.

A quarter of those who duped their man said he ‘would have given in one day anyway’, the survey of 3000 mums found.

But half said they were not even bothered if the father stuck around.

This was all promotion for parenting website Bounty.com, who appear to be unrelated to the tissue-paper manufacturer ‘Bounty’ or the chocolate bar ‘Bounty’, or indeed Dogg The Bounty Hunter (alas). Their press release went into a little more detail about the deception perpetrated by 10% of women:

PRESS RELEASE: Bounty

Written: Friday 29th October, 2010

One in 10 women have tricked a man into getting them pregnant with less than half actually wanting the person they ‘used’ to stick around once the baby was born. Incredibly, 23 per cent of women who hoodwinked their partner said they knew he would give in one day, but needed to be ”encouraged” to speed things up.

A third of unrepentant women said their biological clock was ticking, while 19 per cent of tricksters knew their partner never wanted to have a baby. The shocking figures emerged in a study of 3,000 mums – which also shows 65 per cent of these mums were successful the very first time they tried to trick their partner.

And those women who didn’t fall pregnant first time round continued to sleep with someone and lie to them a further nine times until they finally conceived.

Twelve per cent of ladies would simply drop a pill every now and then, and 11 per cent resorted to getting their partner drunk.

Faye Mingo, spokeswoman for parenting club Bounty.com, said: ”Thankfully our research found that 86 per cent women polled would never consider ‘tricking’ their partners into conceiving. But a over a quarter admitted they fell pregnant before their partner had actually agreed to ‘try for a baby’. Whilst we do understand that some women in stable relationships may feel the need to nudge things along when their biological clock starts ticking, the possible implications of tricking a partner must be considered. “

Now, remember that bit about the 4th paragraph rule? Do you think the reassuring quote from the contact at Bounty.com appears so low down in the article by coincidence? Most likely it’s there so that when editors get snipping, they cut the quote in favour of all of the juicy stats above – which is exactly what happened in both the Daily Record and The Sun. Also, bear in mind that this poll claims to be from 3000 mums, yet as I’ve demonstrated there’s a major incentive to take surveys that aren’t applicable to you, and another major incentive to skip through those surveys as quickly as possible. Do you still trust these stats?

On top of that, over a quarter of mums admitted they fell pregnant before they talked about trying to have a baby with their partner – does that really count as deceit? Or is that a misunderstanding of their cycles, making a mistake, both partners forgetting to use contraception, or one of the myriad of other reasons people fall pregnant unexpectedly? Does that still make these women liars, tricksters, and unrepentant manipulators? Absolutely not.

Speaking of unrepentent manipulators, this survey and the associated press around it are still up on OnePoll’s website, and also on Bounty’s website. That’s where they were when I first spotted them on Friday, and tweeted links to the press release behind the news. After I’d raised the story, especially with sexual health advocate Dr Petra Boynton, a lot of people made a lot of noise, rightly disgusted that Onepoll and a parenting website would raise the spectre of paternity paranoia in order to get their name in the press. How did Bounty respond? By deleting their tweet pushing the story out onto Twitter.

Clearly, then, they’re proud of their work. Fortunately, I knew well enough to screencap their promotional tweet, and made the point in a subsequent message. Here’s their response when I caught them red-handed:

Apologies 2 any1 offended by our recent research story – this was meant as a bit of seasonal fun & is by no means a judgement of anyone

By no means judgemental? They’re telling the world that women who get pregnant without their partner’s agreement are liars, based on stats that are more than questionable from a polling company with a past record of using dodgy stats, biased polls and borderline shock tactics in order to get their clients into the news. As for ‘seasonal’, I’m not sure what season it is to call women liars – maybe that one went missing from my calendar. These stories absolutely aren’t ‘fun’, though – as Dr Petra points out, the paranoia over paternity is a real fear for a lot of men, as is the idea that they’ve been tricked into fatherhood. Both fears can play a not unsubstantial role in cases of domestic abuse, so it’s easy to see how branding 10% of the female population as liars could have a significantly damaging effect.

I won’t go into the reasons why the findings from the survey are flawed here, mainly because Dr Petra is an expert in the field and has done the job far better than I ever could. I do, however, fully recommend you check out her appraisal of the story.

As for OnePoll, if you’d like to find out more about their past wrongs – and there are lots of them – check out our website under ‘bad pr’ (which is also the name of my skeptics in the pub talk, if anyone wants to book me). How did they respond to the outcry at their sexist and deeply damaging release? They emailed the following to Petra:

“As the agency which commissioned this research and distributed the resulting news story, I would like to respond. OnePoll polled 3,000 mothers on behalf of Bounty, looking into the subject of pregnancy. The stats emerged that a small percentage of women admitted to tricking their partner into getting pregnant. I’d like to say that the resulting story in no way glorifies or condones this, in fact Bounty support the very opposite in their quotes. As market research specialists and providers of national news, we would always present the stats, as they are, however controversial. I would like to apologise to anyone who was offended by this piece of research”.

Four in ten ‘feuding with their family’ with women blamed for starting trouble

Nearly 20 million Britons are not speaking to members of their family after bitter bust-ups – and the majority hold their mothers responsible, a study has found.

Eight out of ten said it was women family members who were responsible for starting trouble. A third said they had gone for periods of time not talking to their mothers.

No you heard me right – I said he HAS the largest penis in showbusiness, not that he IS the largest penis in showbusiness. As reported in multiple sources last week, including our old friend The Sun:

A survey carried out among 4,000 housewives revealed a large portion of them think Clarkson is the proud owner of a ten-and-a-quarter inch penis.

Unsurprisingly, of course, The Sun went with the headline ‘Clarkson in Poll Pole Position‘. See what they did there? That’s called journalism. Or something.

Apparently, according to this definitely-scientific survey of random women (and I love the specific implication that they were housewives – more of that later), the Top Gear hosting, Daily Mail writing, right wing caricature Clarkson is in possession of a ten and a quarter inch effort, downstairs, with Gordon Ramsey closely following behind him – or at least as closely as his speculated 9 and a half inches will allow, at any rate.

Now, those of you of a more skeptical bent – and I believe there are quite a few of you out there – will have spotted the inherent flaw in this entire piece: no, I’m not talking about the continuation of some rather dodgy and long-debunked myths regarding size, ego and masculinity; or that the numbers involved are ludicrously and comically out of kilter with the real average underpants size of a fella; or even the fact that they’re clearly confused by the fact that Clarkson is a massive cock, rather than that he possesses such. No, I’m talking about the glaring fact that this survey purports to have surveyed people’s opinions and speculations of something which is grounded in fact. At the moment, Clarkson’s piece is entirely safely secreted in his over-tight dad-jeans, and thus while there is a factual answer to the penis problem, there’s only baseless speculation at this stage. Were we able to open the box, we’d be able to put the speculation aside and start dealing in facts.

What we have, in short, ladies and gentleman, is Schrödinger’s Cock.

Still, I’m a bit obsessive and irritant when it comes to these kinds of nonsense stories – clearly, there’s something afoot here, and I’m not talking about the almost-a-foot purported Clarkson package. Reading on in the Sun’s tadger tale, we see this little chick of light in the curtain of cock-ypop. Quoting the story:

‘A spokesman for the online dating website who carried out the survey said: “The majority of the blokes in the poll have huge egos and women clearly think some have packages to match.’

Ah-hah – so the survey was commissioned for an online dating site, eh? Interesting. Well, this led me to do a bit of digging, and by digging I mean googling the exact phrase the spokesman used, in order to find the initial press release this whole nonsense came from. Really, it’s often that simple. Especially in this case, where the quick google search turned up the source of the story… the PR survey firm One Poll.

Now, what’s good about being able to get to the actual press release, apart from giving you the ability to track directly the way in which these stories hit the tabloid near word-for-word from the initial release, is that you get to see the small changes the newspaper editor makes, often to try and make the story look less like the bullshit excuse for getting a brand name into the national press that it actually is.  Quoting the press release:

“The poll was carried out in the wake of Sarah Brighman’s declaration that ex-husband  Andrew Lloyd Webber has one of the biggest manhoods in Britain. Over 4,000 ladies voted in the poll, conducted by www.F-Buddy.co.uk, an online no-strings dating site for adults. Yesterday a spokesman for F-Buddy.co.uk said: ”The majority of the blokes in the poll have huge egos and women clearly think some have packages to match.”

So, this ‘online dating site’ is in fact a site called ‘F-Buddy’. Three points and an explicit tag for anyone who can guess what the F stands for. Yeah. They describe themselves as ‘the original and best place for adults looking for no strings attached sex’.

What we have here, then, is a simply an advert for a sex site, masquerading as a lighthearted news piece, which made it to the front cover of the Daily Star on Thursday April 15th (fyi, the headline that day was ‘Jordon Holiday Boobs Horror: Breast implants explode on Red Sea scuba dive’).

Where’s the harm here? Well, besides being another example of the shocking ease in which national newspapers can be manipulated – likely willingly – by cynical pr surveys to run adverts as front page news, I think there’s something deeper here, too. While it’s always been true that sex sells, there’s a real cynicism to selling via the engendering of insecurity-preying stereotypes – the underlying message is clearly that size matters, with the full press release even including the downright infuriating line:

“The poll revealed a quarter of women would dump a bloke if their manhood didn’t measure up to the mark.”

Well, if it means more people sign up to websites to anonymously-screw their fears away, it’s all in a good cause, I guess… In the same vein, Phones 4U recently told us that Men with iPhones are more attractive to women, while City Deal website Groupola.com want men to know that it’s Simon Cowell’s power that makes him the most desired one-night-stand amongst women.

That smell you’re getting a whiff of is the scent of more male dignity being sacrificed on the fire of brand awareness.

Seriously, nothing. Age, hair colour, eye colour, general shape – all alien to us men. Really. It’s remarkable we’re even able to pick them out of a police line-up. Although try asking them what the hell they’re doing in a police line-up, and you’re in trouble. Bloody Women. Harumph. Oops, that might have been wildly sterotypically ignorantly sexist towards the end there, and I can’t go around like that…

…because clearly wild, ignorant, sexist stereotyping is the Daily Mail’s job, as evidenced by their stunningly-accurate-and-definitely-not-made-up research on the amount we fellas know about our missuses:

“Think he knows you? Think again! How millions of men don’t know their partner’s dress size, date of birth, or even eye colour“

Millions of men! Millions of men don’t know their partner’s date of birth! If the UK population is 60 million, let’s simplify things and say that 50% are male (ratios tend to favour a higher female population, bloody women harumph and all that), that’s 30 million men at most, of which millions don’t know their partners’ eye colour! That’s assuming all have partners. And are straight. Realistically, we’re probably talking about 15 or 20 million men who are straight and attached. So the Mail’s ‘millions’ of ignorant men speaks to a real epidemic! What bastards we are!

ORRRR the Mail made it up. Hmm. Let’s read on beyond the headline, and see if we come out the other side.

“For despite their claims to the contrary, millions of British men are completely clueless about their partner’s clothes size, her natural hair colour and even the colour of her eyes.”

Well, that seems solid enough. Not sure where the Mail got their figures – did I miss a survey? Was there a census I wasn’t told about? I’m always missing those, I mean Family Fortunes asks 100 people stuff every week and they’ve never asked me anything (quick aside – I love the idea of finding out the location of the Family Fortunes survey, gathering 99 mates and then REALLY fucking with their figures… I need to see the day when the question is ‘We asked 100 people to name a flavour of ice cream’ and the answers include Dead Bird, Back to the Future Part II and Shame. Take that, surveys).

Back to the Mail, and their sexist gibberish:

“The failure to pay attention can, at best, lead to awkward conversations. And for some hapless men, not knowing these everyday details can cause major problems with almost one in 10 women ending their relationship or getting perilously close to ending it and a further eight per cent having serious rows”

Wait, 1 in 10 women ‘ending their relationship or getting perilously close to ending it’ and ‘eight per cent having serious rows’? Well that hardly sounds like the outrageous levels of neglect and ignorance put upon these poor creatures by we heartless, unthoughtful, brutish males. Only 2 in 25 couples have serious rows, and 1 in 10 come close to breaking up? That sounds actually pretty positive… 90% of people stay together, even despite the male’s inability to remember his partner’s name or where he left his shoes or how to breathe or whatever else the Mail think men forget. Those numbers seem way too low for real life, let alone life in the nightmarish scenario depicted by the Mail.

“The full extent of men’s failure to pay attention emerged from a survey of 2,000 men conducted for The Perfume Shop”

And the penny drops. The ‘millions’ of men is an extrapolation from a pretty small (comparatively) sample size. The study is a meaningless survey, funded by a high-street chain with a marked interest in the Day Of Pinkandloveandhugsandwearegreattogetherseeeveryoneseeseesee (TM). I wonder what else is on the list of things The Perfume Shop scientifically-discovered (ie made up) that men don’t know about their girlfriends:

“However when questioned 12 per cent did not know their partner’s eye colour, 10 per cent did not know their partner’s date of birth and a further eight per cent did not know their natural hair colour.

One in three had no idea what her favourite perfume is. A further 30 per cent was oblivious to their partner’s bra size, 11 per cent did not know their job title and 12 per cent did not know the name of their wife or girlfriend’s best friend”

Wow, apparently a shop that sells perfume thinks men need help in buying perfume for their girlfriends who like perfume. And as if to ram home the point:

“This lack of basic knowledge can turn shopping for gifts into a minefield”

Now, clearly there’s the obvious easy angle on this – a non-event story timed to coincide with the time men will be looking for gifts for their girlfriends, framed in a way to encourage women to ask men certain facts about themselves, including the name of the perfume they like. Chided-and-chastised-Man then slopes off to those helpful people at the shop of perfume, who turn their minefield into a cakewalk yaddah yaddah yaddah. That bits very clear, very old-hat, very Flat Earth News.

But there’s more to this. For one, the complete bastardisation of the maths involved – while the story tells us that millions of men don’t know a range of facts about their loved one, in actuality we have a small number of men who didn’t know individual facts. The article/PR-puff-piece doesn’t treat the scores for those facts individually, but takes the separate percentages and represents them as a majority – a bit like saying 60% of people have dark hair, 50% have brown eyes, therefore %110 of people have dark hair or brown eyes. Erm, no.

We also have the opposite implication in part too – that men know nothing, a combination of forgotten features. Yet one of the 240/2000 men who didn’t know their partner’s eye colour is not necessarily also in the 220/2000 who didn’t know their girlfriend’s job title. On top of that, did they not know, or could they not remember? Two very different scenarios. If I was asked the name of my girlfriend’s best friend, I’d have to answer I don’t know – which does she like best? I doubt she’d make a choice, why should I? Did that scenario get captured in the stats, or did it go down as a male-fail? 30% didn’t know their partner’s bra size – is that because they’re terrible men, or because they’re not obsessed with cup size? Personally I think it’s actually pretty cool that way more men knew their girlfriend’s job title and best friend’s name than the size of her boobs – that’s actual intimacy there.

“Researchers revealed a healthy six out of ten males believed they knew their partner inside out”

Even better! So 40% would say they don’t know their partner’s every detail, yet only 10% couldn’t recall their girlfriend’s date of birth (22.07.1981, by the way!) – 30% of guys give themselves way too little credit, then.

What’s most annoying about this made up PR nonsense is the associated opportunity for relationship ‘experts’ to tell women why their men are useless, in sweeping ignorant statements:

Relationship expert Francine Kaye said the crux of the problem was that whereas knowledge of small details is important to woman, it is unimportant to men.

‘These things are vitally important to women. But men are wired differently. We’re not talking about one in a hundred men who fail to notice basic details. We’re talking about the majority.

‘However, you can’t expect men to change without prompting and reminding. You need to be a pragmatist”

Francine – if, in you’re experience, men fail to notice basic details, maybe it’s because you’re an ignorant sexist moron? It’s OK, we can’t expect you to change that without prompting and reminding. We’re pragmatic too. For anyone who’s not aware, Francine is ‘The Divorce Doctor’ and appears on Channel 5′s procession of idiocy ‘The Wright Stuff’ from time to time, to dispense her self-help guff like a particularly misandric mould periodically spluttering out it’s sexist spores. And she’s not alone:

Michelle D’vaz, spokeswoman for The Perfume Shop, agreed men would benefit from learning basic details about their partners.

‘The results of the survey are actually quite shocking,’ she said.

‘The basic details like date of birth and hair colour are what you expect your partner to know about you, but it seems many men don’t. This is especially the case with everyday things like eye colour, or the perfume they spray on each morning’.

Here’s a few subtle details I’ve noticed, Michelle:

1. You work for The Perfume Shop, and you’re advice is to pay attention to what perfume girls spray on each morning.
2. You say many men don’t know the date of birth or hair colour of their partner, but the stats don’t support that.
3. You work for The Perfume Shop, and are therefore in no way an expert or authority on relationships, the male psychology or statistics.
4. Your company paid for a cheap 2000 person survey, mangled the stats into something sexist, extrapolated the results into something nationwide, and then threw it out there to try and sell perfume.

And they say we men don’t notice the little things…

*For anyone who wondered, I correctly answered 9/10 for definite, and was pretty confident about the 10th.