Survey: Women Enjoy Gaming More than Sex, Play as Much as Men

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You’re a girl, you’re just back with your date from a night on the town, the candles are lit, the mood’s set, and all you can think of is…gimme some World of Warcraft? That’s essentially (alright, more like “sort of”) what a study commissioned by Doritos (yep, Doritos, the snack chip) found after surveying thousands of men and women.

But first things first: It turns out that of 2,052 people surveyed, nearly as many women (49%) play online video games as men (50%), putting a stake (if not the first) through the notion that men are more into online gaming than women.

(PHOTOS: Silvio Berlusconi and the Politics of Sex)

Of the women who said they played online games, 84% said they “enjoy” gaming, compared with 70% who said they enjoy sex, 75% who said they enjoy taking a bath, 71% who enjoy shopping and 62% who enjoy exercising.

Okay, so the real story here isn’t that women prefer video games to sex (that’s what some are mistakenly reporting), but that—for female online gamers—games are somewhat more enjoyable than sex, bathing, shopping and working out.

Is anyone surprised? None of that’s really at odds with American sex polls, after all. One of the largest national surveys of sexual behavior conducted since 1994, published late last year, found that just 64% of women reported experiencing an orgasm during their most recent sexual experience (the percentage is presumably much higher for men), while about one-third (30%) of women actually experienced pain (compared with just 5% of men). Yikes.

What else. Roughly one in five female gamers say they play online games in bed. I’m not sure what the significance of that statistic is—your bed’s a more comfortable version of your couch? Bedrooms are the new “home office”? “Sorry honey, you’ll just have to wear earplugs?”

Women also allocate more of their online time to gaming than men, though the difference is statistically negligible: Women spend 23.1% of their online time gaming, compared with 22.3% for men.

The impetus for the survey? The launch of a Facebook game dubbed Doritos Dip Desperado. I know. “Doritos Dip”? Kind of a mood-killer right there.

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Matt Peckham is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @mattpeckham or on Facebook. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.