We already know that yogurt is the official food of women. (Dessert: Fling Bar.) And that real men don’t eat the savory egg tart that dare not speak its name. A.K. Whitney over at Siren (via The Frisky) has even been told — by the waiter she just ordered from — that Beef Stroganoff was “a man’s dish.” So tell: have those stereotypes — steeped in lame, undercooked notions of masculinity and femininity — made their way onto your plates? Are you a guy who gets a look for ordering salad? A gal who asks for regular…and gets served Diet?

OK, now I’m hungry. And not, it should be noted, for a rice cake.

Furnishing your Cold-War themed man cave?

From yesterday’s New York Times: New research — well, not that new — shows that as men age beyond about 30, their chance of fathering a child with an autism-spectrum disorder or schizophrenia increases, just as their overall fertility decreases. According to NYU psychiatry researcher Dr. Dolores Malaspina: “It turns out the optimal age for being a mother is the same as the optimal age for being a father.”

As the Times’s Lisa Belkin writes: “The push and pull between timetables and dreams, between our bodies and our babies, is at the core of many women’s worldview, which also means it is at the core of relationships between the sexes. This tension feeds the stereotype of woman as eager to settle down and men as reluctant, and it’s the crux of why we see women as ‘old’ and men as ‘distinguished.'”

Indeed, says Dana Goldstein of The American Prospect. “Imagine a world in which the stereotype of women rushing men to the altar, biological clocks on overdrive, simply disappeared, as men took full 50 percent ownership over the reproductive process. Or in which wealthy 50-year-old divorced men ceased to be such catches for 30-year old women, because of weakened sperm. I wouldn’t want to return to a society in which both men and women are pressured into settling down and having babies at an unduly young age. But I do like the idea of rejiggering our notions about the intersection of gender and aging. It isn’t just women who have a lot to fit into their lives in terms of career, romance, and parenthood. Science is beginning to tell us that men are facing the same pressures.”

This is not to say we want men to have reproductive challenges. But given that science shows that they do, it’d be nice if culture would catch up.

From a crispy-in-milk tipster: “Most guys can talk about cereal the way most women can talk about shoes. Jimmy what-nows? I don’t know, but let me tell you about what happened when Honeycomb changed its formula….”.

Right-o. (Or should I say Urkel-O?) (No. No one should ever say Urkel-O.)

So: study this exhaustive tribute to discontinued cereals in order to solve (or add to) a bit of gender mystery about the King Vitaman in your life.

Via VeryShortList: A group of geneticists at Penn State have found that male mice that are made to cohabitate with female mice exhibit “manlier” physiological traits — such as higher testosterone levels and longer periods of fertility — than mice made to fly solo.

The study’s abstract states that the findings “have significant implications for the maintenance of male fertility in wildlife, livestock and human populations.”

Who do ya think is rejoicing in this bit of knowledge more: pregnancy-fixated women or certified lifetime bachelors?

In an advertorial for Maserati, the Telegraph reports the results of a new study in which 100 percent of female participants had a significant increase in testosterone secretion (i.e. arousal) after listening to that particular sports car’s revving engine. (60 percent of men had the same response to a Lamborghini.)

“The roar of a luxury car engine does cause a primeval physiological response,” said researcher psychologist David Moxon, whose work was actually commissioned by a British auto insurer (i.e. insuring that people continue, despite economic downturn and concern about other kids of emissions, to buy luxury cars). He added the sound of an average car engine actually led to a decreased level of testosterone. Which, of course, is concern #1 when shopping for an automobile.

Here’s what Switched.com had to say: “So, women, say all you like about how much you appreciate a man who drives an efficient car to save the environment, we now know what you really want.” Mmmhmm. We’re the ones who want to drive the sporty roadster, once in a while, just for fun. And then go home with the guy on the waffle bike.

From the “Crap Science” files over at Jezebel:

On the heels of The Re-education of the Female, which suggests [in 2008] that women keep their men by doing chores in sexy outfits, comes a study implying that male fidelity may have more to do with genetics than wifely subservience. According to scientists at the Karolinska Institute (sounds like a ballet studio, actually a Swedish medical school), two in five men carry a gene variant that makes them less likely to commit to women.

/snip/

Men with the gene, which, as the Washington Post notes, regulates the hormone vasopressin, are more likely to live with women without marrying them; if they are married, these men are more likely to fight with their spouses and consider divorce. Their female partners (the study only looked at heterosexual couples) also “reported lower levels of satisfaction, affection, cohesion and consensus in the relationship” than partners of men without the variant.

/snip/

…This study looks at first glance like another great way to reduce human relationships to biological imperatives. As if comparisons between men and male animals weren’t popular enough, the Post cites an earlier study in which the same gene variant was found in mountain voles, who are apparently more caddish than their prairie cousins…

/snip/

The most interesting research, however, has yet to be done. The Institute plans to study whether oxytocin, another hormone, affects women’s ability to commit. This study might take some of the annoying stereotypical sting out of sex research. Thus far, much of it has been about why men “can’t commit,” with the assumption that women want them to. Corresponding research into women’s predispositions might underscore the fact that we’re not all sad little lady voles who sit around waiting for our man vole to come home. Nor are we slaves to biology. Some men and some women want to commit, and some don’t, and our goal should be to avoid a mismatch of the two, not to pore over our genes for predictors of our happiness.

Word.

You may remember the AskMen.com survey finding that 77% of men had cried over a woman, and not just on the day they heard about Natalie Portman and what’s-his-name. Now, the BBC tells us that their peers across the pond (or maybe, like, all sentient beings) aren’t so different. Here’s what makes those blokes well up:

• Making parents proud
• Birth of first child/grandchild
• Tribulations of a loved one
• Letting a loved one down
• Letting yourself down
• Saying “I’m sorry”
• Winning/losing a hard-fought game
• The farewell scene in Weekend at Bernie’s < KIDDING

I have a feeling that if we keep making TOO big a deal out of the “news” that “real men cry!” BG herself will burst into tears. But come on fellas, do tell: what turns on your waterworks?

The results of AskMen.com’s Great Male Survey are in, and some of the findings may surprise you. (Or not, assuming everyone in your relationship reads BreakupGirl.net and is therefore most excellent and discerning.) The “Internet’s top men’s lifestyle site” asked more than 70,000 readers to take the 150-question survey, which was broken down into five sections: Lifestyle, Dating, Sexuality, Power & Money, and Men in 2008. AskMen.com also teamed up with Yahoo! Shine, a lifestyles website for women, to host the Great Female Survey, which included 40 questions from the male survey about dating and sexuality. (Women, evidently, have no Power or Money, and are interesting only when talking about men.)

The survey’s goal — and this is where we’ve got their back — was challenge the all-too-common image of today’s men as immature, insensitive, and afraid of commitment. Says AskMen.com editor-in-chief James Bassil, “These survey results will be surprising to many women, most of whom have a completely different perspective of what the average man thinks and feels.” Selected results after the jump…

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Here is a supersmart — if at least PG-13 — interview with X-rated satirist and FOBG Polly Frost, whose erotic horror stories and brilliantly filthy serials capture lay very, very bare the deepest essence of human relationships.

X-rated satire? Sure. “I don’t see how you can write satire without writing about sex!” she says in the Q&A. “I mean, how can you live in this country and not write about the conflicted, crazy attitudes Americans have about sex?” (Another provocative point: “It’s sad that book publishing and bookstores do such a lousy job of appealing to men. Hey, book-publishing people: Men love reading fiction with sex in it. But they do not want to venture into the romance section to find a book!”) Check it out, if only because — speaking of books — “Lotta Drum and the 69 Pleasures” clearly needs to be on your mental nightstand.