Men Are From Cuddle, Women Are From Penis

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http://www.slate.com/id/2299024/

Ever since the founding of the Kinsey Institute, conservatives have accused it of spreading perversion and destroying sexual virtue. Now the institute has produced a study that's being touted as proof of family values. According to media reports, the study, published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, shows that promiscuity makes you sad, commitment makes you happy, and men prefer love and cuddling. Is any of this true? Let's look at the data.

1. Men need cuddling. This is the most popular takeaway. "Men Need to Cuddle More Than Women," says L.A. Weekly. "Guys like to cuddle more," says MSNBC. "Cuddling key to happy relationships—for men," says CBS News.

Don't bet on it. The study didn't measure what people need or like. And the cuddle gap was small. Men whose relationships included frequent kissing and cuddling were about 12 percent more likely than other men to say they were happy in the relationship (see Table 6). Slate's Dave Johns is a fine example. Among women, the increase in happiness associated with kissing and cuddling was more like 9 percent.

The cuddle gap looks bigger in the published paper because the authors, in their analysis, combine cuddling with caressing. They note that the two activities—lumped together in the institute's press release as "tenderness"—increased the probability of reporting relationship happiness about twice as much among men as they did among women. But the questionnaire used in the study defined "caress" erotically. It asked how often you've been "sexually touched and caressed by your partner." (See Table 1.) That's more than tenderness. A kiss is just a kiss, but a thigh is a thigh.