Battle of the Sexes

Related Comics: Part 1, Part 2

I played Battle of the Sexes a couple of days ago with friends. It was four women against three guys.

Almost immediately we recognized a problem with the questions. The women consistently got easier questions. Roughly half of the first questions (each card holds three) were multiple choice, with only two choices. This meant they had a fifty percent chance of guessing the correct answer on many questions.

The women were also asked a lot of general history questions. Such as the name of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Whoever wrote the questions apparently does not think much of women's knowledge of history. The men knew the answer to a majority of the questions asked of the women, not because the questions were guy specific, but because they were mosly general knowledge. You disagree? How many women don't know what a Turkey is in bowling? (The women playing with us of course all knew).

In contrast the men got questions that were either generally only known by women (which makes perfect sense), or by no one. About half of the questions were about fashion, clothing, and obscure cooking. The other half were things no one knows (including the ladies playing against us). In a fair game, I would expect the women to know roughly the same number of answers as the men.

How would you desribe the mood of Dorothy's kitten while she was away in Oz?

The actual question was "What was the name of Dorothy's kitten in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz?" A couple of days after playing the game I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the only kitten mentioned in that book is one that Toto chases which causes Dorothy to miss the hot air balloon. Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz is apparently the fourth book, which I am sure every woman in America has read. The name of the kitten is Eureka and journeyed to Oz with Dorothy, so my joke is not technically accurate, but whatever.

While I obviously exaggerated the difficulty of the men's question and the simplicity of the women's question, playing the game felt this skewed.

Overall the game was a success in that we all had a good time laughing while playing. Although we were not laughing for the right reasons.

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