Sperm Wars
Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles
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- $249.00
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- $249.00
Descripción editorial
This classic work on the rules of sex -- updated for a new generation -- is still as provocative as the day it was published, providing simple explanations for any and all questions about what happens in the bedroom.
Sex isn't as complicated as we make it. In Sperm Wars, evolutionary biologist Robin Baker argues that every question about human sexuality can be explained by one simple thing: sperm warfare. In the interest of promoting competition between sperm to fertilize the same egg, evolution has built men to conquer and monopolize women while women are built to seek the best genetic input on offer from potential sexual partners.
Baker reveals, through a series of provocative fictional scene, the far-reaching implications of sperm competition. 10% of children are not fathered by their "fathers;" over 99% of a man's sperm exists simply to fight off all other men's sperm; and a woman is far more likely to conceive through a casual fling than through sex with her regular partner.
From infidelity, to homosexuality, to the female orgasm, Sperm Wars turns on every light in the bedroom. Now with new material reflecting the latest research on sperm warfare, this milestone of popular science will still surprise, entertain, and even shock.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The major force in the shaping of human sexuality, claims British biologist Baker in this highly unorthodox study, is "sperm warfare," the competition among sperm from two or more men competing inside a woman to fertilize the egg. In this theory, biological imperatives shaped by evolution dictate sexual behavior. Male sexual behavior is driven by each man's need to prevent his female sexual partner from exposing his sperm to competition; or, failing that, to give his sperm the best chance of winning. A woman's sexual behavior, meanwhile, reflects her urge to maneuver her partner or to influence which male's sperm will have the best chance of succeeding. Baker views infidelity, group sex, partner-swapping, even rape and prostitution as risky strategies that nevertheless may enhance an individual's reproductive success compared with long-term monogamy. Men, he says, pursue four reproductive strategies: bisexuality, pursuit or avoidance of sperm warfare and a balancing of this pursuit/avoidance. Just which strategy a male is programmed to adopt will depend largely on his rate of sperm production. Baker's treatise unfolds as a series of graphic, fictional sex scenes, each followed by interpretive commentary. Its reliance on evolutionary biology to explain human behavior is reductionist, much in the manner of the writings of "selfish gene" proponent Richard Dawkins, but it is also challenging, intellectually provocative and likely to raise considerable and deserved debate.
