Men Do Not Mind a Little Girl-on-Girl Cheating, Now and Again

Ah, why is this not all that surprising? Hm. A father-daughter research team (awkward) from the University of Texas at Austin took on the question of cheating, and determined that men were twice as likely to forgive women who same-sex cheated, and far less likely to continue dating women who cheated with other dudes. Meanwhile, women didn't much like cheaters at all, but were slightly more likely to stay with a guy who cheated with a woman than another guy.

According to the researchers, this supports human mating psychology, which "dictates" that men want to spread their seed around for paternity's sake, while women are afraid of being abandoned. Hence, men want a bunch of partners, while women want one committed one. And therein lies the crux of our dating difficulties! (If you believe we are as simple as mere biology.)

The study involved 700 college students, who were asked to "imagine" they were in a committed three-month relationship, and predict how would they respond to various infidelities, repeated and one-off, with women and men. Overall, men had a 50 percent likelihood of staying with a partner who had a homosexual affair. There was a 22 percent chance they'd stay with a woman who cheated on them with a man.

Meanwhile, women were far less forgiving of affairs in general (abandonment! jealousy! biology!) and had a 28 percent chance of forgiving a boyfriend who cheated with a woman, and a 21 percent likelihood of remaining with a guy who cheated with another guy.

Back to human mating psychology:

The findings suggest men are more distressed by the type of infidelity that could threaten their paternity of offspring. Men may also view a partner's homosexual affair as an opportunity to mate with more than one woman simultaneously, satisfying men's greater desire for more partners, the authors say.

The researchers say that these findings are "remarkable" since men have generally more negative attitudes toward homosexuality and are less supportive of civil rights for same-sex couples than women. Um: EXCEPT FOR THE CASE OF GIRL-ON-GIRL ACTION.

You see, our dear researchers may have forgotten to address (just touching the tip of the iceberg, really) an aspect of contemporary sexual culture in their study, which is...guys tend to think occasional lesbian or bisexual activity, at least in what they've experienced via porn and/or folklore, is not un-hot, particularly if they are invited to join in. In fact, saying the word "lesbian" can cause certain of the weaker members of that gender to revert to staring and drooling. Is this biological, or is this simply tapping into a stereotypical, but fairly -- at least anecdotally -- widely held male fantasy? And, how much should we blame how we think about sex on "biology" nowadays, anyway? There are so many parts of those damn brains we have.

More research is needed.

Study: Men More Forgiving When Women Cheat with Women [Pat's Papers]

[JDoll]