Customer Reviews

Sexual Strategies: How Females Choose Thier Mates

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I was not sure as I began reading this book if it wasn't going to be a little too much of a popularization and a little too crude. But I soon started to appreciate the scope of the book and the inclusion of a wide range of evidence from insects to humans. This book is an accessible introduction to animal (including human) mating sysems and covers a wide range of aspects of reproductive behavior. This is no easy task and the author has done well to explain what can be difficult in a lively and interesting fashion.

The author makes the case for the importance of female mate choice and the misrepresentation of females as passive receivers of sperm from winner males. But she also makes the equally important recognition of the subversion of female mate choice especially in the human species where it has often been brutal.

Batten ends with the conclusion that we, as humans, have the potential to be free of the reproductive imperative though it will take hard work. Valuing male character strength rather than physical strength and arms is one requirement. The alternative is to continue with the reproductive imperative and continue maintaining the most abusive system of male dominance in all of nature and ultimately destroy ourselves by fighting resource wars and pushing ourselves towards extinction.

Recognizing the reproductive imperative behind virtually everything is surely essential. How much we can actually ultimately benefit from this biological consciousness raising no one can know. But if information really is power then using the growing information about ourselves wisely and morally is possibly the only hope we actually have for ourselves as men and women and for survival of this planet and all its species.

This is a very good addition to our increasing biological self-awareness.

I found this book very difficult to put down- I read about a quarter of it before I'd even left the bookstore. It covers a lot of ground in a short time, but lots of intriguing findings.

As one reviewer here has already pointed out, while she entertains various interesting ideas and speculations based on the studies and evidence presented, she unfortunately doesn't ever question the underlying assumption that the female SHOULD have all the power in sexual and reproductive matters. And frankly, the discussion suffers when Batten reveals her feminist agenda and, straying quite a bit a couple times, such as going through some contortions to attempt to dismiss all opposition to abortion (as either attempts to assert control over the female's reproductive power, or as an abstract attempt by males to defend their sperm/progeny).

But in all, quite interesting and thought-and-talk provoking.

What a breath of fresh air this book is. We live in a society that worships the concepts of love and marriage. It is so enlightening to learn about the natural aspects of animal and human nature without all the distortions of religious and social dogma. I think that a student of evolutionary sexology can probably learn a lot from this book. The average joe will probably be amazed with revelations he gains.

I was first introduced to Mary Batten's "Sexual Strategies" two years ago by a friend, who accurately predicted that the book would give me a breakthrough in understanding the evolutionary basis for all those human mating behaviors and social mores that cause us all so much happiness and grief. I read the book twice and haven't seen it since, but its impact was so great that I've based my morality since then on its major theses. I'm finally ordering a copy for another friend, who will doubtless order some for others. Batten's cross-species comparisons demonstrate certain universal evolutionary principles underlying and/or undermining modern sexual mores and gender politics. The book's greatest value to me was in identifying certain behaviors as evolutionarily-based, such as a female's preference for a high-status male with a willingness to commit resources. Batten's level-headed scientific analysis neatly debunks the classical chauvinist / modern feminist myth of female moral superiority, and places on a morally equal footing the male biological imperative to mate with multiple females. This gave strength to me as a struggling gender egalitarian in a feminist-dominated law school. "Sexual Strategies" is written, in a manner lost since the sexual revolution, with a refreshing absence of Puritan moral posturing. Behaviors that would cause moral outrage if confessed in polite society, such as a females' deception of a non-genetic "father", are treated with commendable neutrality. The development of hierarchical dominance traits through female sexual choice is laid out so convincingly that the male-bashing anti-testosterone politics of today seem to just evaporate in the sunshine of scientific evidence so thoughtfully analyzed. Batten's cross-cultural comparisons also contribute greatly to an understanding that "No, we're not all alike all over the world." Many cultural traditions, marital customs and sexual strictures are exposed as merely arbitrary local rules rather than logically or evolutionarily based traits, and therefore seem destined for the dustbin of social history. When read in conjunction with Robert Wright's "The Moral Animal", Mary Batten's "Sexual Strategies" becomes the cornerstone of a new era of rational morality, and possibly real happiness for a great many people who would otherwise remain stuck in the prehistoric morass of outdated social mores. Thank you Mary Batten.

This is a quite fascinating book which attempts to upturn the classic presumption that the male always initiates coupling experiences -- human or other animal. In addition to its intellectual value, the book contains material which an intelligent male could use to become smarter than the average bear. Read it, or you're one dead dinosaur

In "Sexual Strategies: How Females Choose Their Mates," author Mary Batten provides scientific support - based on studies across many species - that it is the females who choose from among competing males, and not vice versa! As she puts it on p. 22, "From male fireflies flashing their natural bioluminescense to men flashing credit cards, males of most species compete among themselves to advertise their quality as mates." (I also quote this passage in "Unveiling: The Inner Journey.")

Ms. Batten covers a lively and engaging range of topics, from the actual "sexual strategies" of inducing mating behaviors in many species to social and psychological considerations in humans. While readable, and while also containing the author's own point of view, it presents a wide range of material across multiple disciplines. This is an excellent book for someone who is casually interested and wants an overview, and also for someone who is doing significant sociological research and desires a reference to many interesting works.

Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.
Author (under the nom de plume Alay'nya)
"Unveiling: The Inner Journey"

This book has a wide range of topics.
1. scientific explanations for mate choice (very good)
2. sociology studies explaining human mate choice (good)
3. historical anecdotes (dubious)
4. feminist rants (disgusting)
5. unsubstantiated accusations (harmful)

I would not recommend this book to anyone, Batten should have stuck with the science.

Like the previous reviewer (who will appear here after my review), I too have read this book twice -- first from the library, then again after buying a copy some time later. There's quite a lot of interesting reading here on animal, primate, and human mating behavior from an evolutionary perspective. This puts the book in pretty good company with such books as Ridley's "The Red Queen" and Cherfas & Gribion's "The Redundant Male", Baker's "Sperm Wars" and Buss's "Evolution of Desire" both being perhaps too focused on just human behavior to be directly comparable. Still there's a lot of overlap of material. Batten's book is perhaps a bit broader than it is deep (it's only 210 pgs), but that adds to its readability, even if it causes frustration at times as certain implications which occur to the reader are not adequately acknowledged, much less explored.

Unlike the previous reviewer, I don't think the book is all that objective at times, and I think there's quite a lot of moralizing. Parts of the chapter on "subverting" female choice seemed to me to be particularly noxious. At least Batten has it right that rape (among humans) is about male powerlessless rather than male power (as we've been hearing from feminists for so long). On the other hand, she seems to buy into the fact that it's about power and not reproduction, which seems curious. Just one example of what I thought were contradictions left unresolved. Another: are males in favor of infanticide, or do the right-to-lifer's show they're against it? I could go on...

It's a common and not entirely unjustifiable complaint about this genre of science (or pseudo-science, depending on ones persuasion) that it merely reflects cultural biases and current fads in thinking. That women control the economy of eros (reproduction) is not exactly a new idea, thought the author makes it sound like this is something revolutionary. That men quite often cooperate with women in this regard perhaps isn't given enough credence here (there's an undertone that females are entitled to their choice...), thus illuminating another critique of this kind of book, namely that it reduces humans to being mere animals. We all like to believe that there is some difference, whether it be in intelligence or the ability to conceptualize the future or some other intangible. The unspoken assumption in sociobiology is that certain things are universal by virtue of their being biological, which I think is debatable.

Still, Batten's book is certain to both entertain and educate the average reader. She has a unique angle on the topic in her choice of objective things to relate and it's refreshing to hear certain sacred cows taken on and sometimes debunked. Even discussing them is an improvement compared to what passes for debate in the marketplace of ideas these days, so I hope I'm not making the book sound worse than it is.