During our frequent public arguments about the hostilities between the sexes, one thing Gina Barreca and I have agreed on is the obvious, self-serving fraudulence of a certain stubborn male excuse for bad behavior: that the urge to philander is innate, hard-wired into our genes to better perpetuate the species. Thus, it was with a sense of extreme mutual tragic sadness that Gina and I recently learned ...
Gina: Oh, please.
Gene: Let me finish. It was with a humongous sense of ginormous anguish that both of us -- ardent feminists that we are -- learned the results of a recent highly scientific study in Sweden that ...
Gina: You were exuberant.
Gene: ... that, extrapolating from research done on voles and then tested on people, a gene variant present in nearly 40 percent of men can make it harder for them, through no fault of their own (emphasis mine), to resist a shapely, non-matrimonial butt. A gene for philandering! Gina, you glower. Is this not right?
Gina: There are some things that are "right" that are still "wrong."
Gene: Are you saying that these study results were so socially dangerous they should not have been released?
Gina: No, but they should have been reported completely and interpreted correctly. The fact is, the scientists not only confirmed that men with the gene variant were more likely to cheat, but also that they were more likely to be emotionally unavailable, unaffectionate and personally disagreeable. What the Swedes have scientifically discovered here was not the cheating gene, it was the jackass gene. And, based on personal experience, that 40 percent of men sounds like the right number.
Gene: Forty percent of men are jackasses? Do you think that might be a little high?
Gina: It might be a little low. You didn't see it reported this way, but this is the gene responsible for rolling up cigarette packs in a T-shirt sleeve, and for crushing cans of beer against the forehead for amusement, and for jumping up to swat awnings, and for being obsessed with odometer readings.
Gene: That went too far.
Gina: What?
