Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality [Hardcover]

Ms. Catherine Salmon (Author), Prof. Donald Symons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0300093543 | ISBN-13: 978-0300093544

The stark contrasts between romance novels and pornography underscore how different female and male erotic fantasies are. These differences reflect human evolutionary history and the disparate selection pressures women and men experienced, say the authors of this thought-provoking book. Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons review the fundamental importance of evolutionary history to human psychology, discuss how male and female sexual psychologies differ, and then demonstrate how sex differences in erotica illustrate this. The authors focus particular attention on slash fiction, an erotic subgenre written by and for women and found on-line and in fan magazines. Slash-so-called for the punctuation mark indicating a romantic pair-depicts sexual relationships between heterosexual male television and film characters such as Starsky and Hutch (S/H) and Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock (K/S). Salmon and Symons argue that-despite some differences-slash fiction has much in common with romance novels. The authors examine the essential ingredients of female sexual fantasy and how slash fiction provides them. Their conclusions are both fascinating and original.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Darwinism Today Series

About the Author

Catherine Salmon is assistant professor of psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Redlands. Donald Symons is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300093543
• ISBN-13: 978-0300093544
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #439,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars No insights here!, May 30, 2009

By 

ProbablePossible "Constant Reader" (L.A. calif) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality (Hardcover)

A wonderful new coinage appeared a few years ago, and it is so appropriate to this book that I have added it as a tag; "mansplain." I invite the reader to google for its meaning.

This small book, ostensibly about a form of erotic romance known as "slash" spends 85 of its 100 pages of content explaining the writer's theories about "female mating strategies" as this field likes to call it, and barely 15 pages talking about its ostensible subject.

After a very cursory and confused description of the earliest forms of slash, which the authors dismiss as identical to standard hetero romance, they offer this insightful notion; "Some women don't want to become mrs. Hero, they want to be a hero too," and then note that "these women were tomboys when they were younger." This does not tell us anything illuminating. I would expect an evolutionary psychologist to be intrigued by this seeming contradiction in strategies. But that's where the book ends just where it should begin.

I will say that Symons is an unusually flexible evolutionary psychologist. He does say that biological heredity is only one of the forces that influence human choices, and, in fact, he speaks scornfully about populist theories such as "selfish genes" that "constantly whisper in the ear" about "maximizing reproduction" and suchlike. This is the reason I give the book any stars at all.

But when the authors begin explaining slash they do so in a voice that many women will recognise, I am sorry to say, that of the dismissive bemused male. I am inclined to write a scenario in my head, about the way this book got written. How much of it is actually Ms Salmon's contribution, I wonder?

And what would she change now? Given that the book is nine years old, and so very much has changed in the genre as more women add their influences and more women become more self-aware as a result of the never-ending conversations within the genre's followers, this book is absolutely, one hundred percent, a waste of time for anyone looking for actual insight into the slash phenomenon.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Infuriating and Insulting, May 31, 2006

By 

Sara J. Reyna-byler (Kennebunkport, ME) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality (Hardcover)

I found this book, as the title would suggest, infuriating and insulting. I have been a fan of slash for many years, to the point that I am writing my Masters thesis on the subject. This book completely dismisses the fact that desire can be culturally inscribed. There is more to sexual psychology than just evolution. A case is made for what is essentially the nuclear family in ancient times. It is a logical argument, but there is absolutely no proof. Slash cannot simply be dismissed as the result of female sexual psychology, or a male/male romance novel. It is infinitely more complex, as anyone who has been part of a slash community would know. Check out NASA/Trek by Constance Penley instead.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Because it is thought provoking, April 8, 2007

By 

L. SAXON - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality (Hardcover)

I'd never heard of slash fiction before this and initially expected it to be violent. No, it simply refers to the punctuation mark between the two initials eg K/S for Kirk/Spock. It does sound bizarre at first to have heterosexual women reading and writing erotic fiction revolving around a TV heterosexual male duo who eventually become sexual. This short book from the 'Darwinism Today' series attempts to explore what slash fiction can add to our understanding of female sexual psychology.

Most of the book is actually an explanation of sexual selection and adaptation in humans. Of course this is necessary when the book is an attempt to place 'slash' within the Darwinian framework but it reduces 'slash' itself to a bit-part role. It ends up more like a Symons' rehashing of his views on human sexuality which are not actually without critics even within the Darwinist world itself.

I do not believe Symons is wrong in a general sense about the broad differences between male and female sexual psychology but there are points which are not given due consideration. The idea that simply copulating with new females is the MAIN focus of the male cannot be correct as this could lead to no offspring considering how rare female ovulation actually is. It can only be a 'losers' strategy to mate mostly with strangers.

The main problem is the idea that the human female's sexual nature is monogamous. No other female animal is monogamous unless the male is also monogamous. Though the authors touch on the fact that human females are not selected to have only one mate in their life this is downplayed to the point of oblivion.
They therefore miss considering what female nature might be underneath the one that has been constructed in human societies which included male ownership and exchange of females and their breeding potential. How women have adapted to survive under such male control, including the 'story' they present to males, is not the same as being naturally what men want them to be.

Also downplayed is how different the environment was in which selection took place from how it is today and how maladaptive human sexuality is in today's environment. Numbers of males in our ancestral past would never have had a single mating with a female. The fact that sexual rejection is a major experience and fear for males of all species but rarely if ever experienced by females should point us to explore more the connection between this rejection reality for men and the desperate unreal fantasies of never, ever being rejected ie porn and prostitutes.

Evolution does, though, show us how and why the sexes are usually different to some degree. Female mammals, especially human females, are a long way from the original females that simply expelled eggs into the waters. Males have not traveled so far in the sense that their role can still be over after the sperm have left the body as it was over for those primitive ancestors.

The authors' argument that because there are gay prostitutes and gay porn actors this means that female prostitutes and porn actors are not targets of contempt is ridiculous. The two different situations cannot be compared. Female sexuality is treated differently from male sexuality no matter what its context. Men have no madonna/whore split and male sluts are never treated like female sluts whatever the context.

And finally reaching the slash fiction itself......all the authors do is use it to support the rest of their argument as it has already been played ie females are extremely monogamous and want only one perfect and totally committed mate - forgetting that women can get through romance novels - and therefore heroes - at a rate of knots!!!

I think the most interesting points to come from 'slash' are about how women can identify with men in a way men tend not to with women - as if the only way women can get beyond restricted female roles is to take on a male personna and move with the freedom and mobility of the male in a world that is his own and he can feel at home in.

Also the male-male bond is one that has been stronger in humans than either the female-female bond or the female-male bond. This is because our ancestry is one in which males stayed with their male kin and young females left their family when they were married. This obviously reduced female-female bonding potential but enforced that of kin-group males. The strongest bond for a female would be that with her offspring - especially her son as her daughter would leave at puberty.

There is a strong element in the desire for life-long commitment and a willingness to die for the other which is what a mother feels for her infant. Seeking this in a mate ie women seeking this in 'romance' or 'slash' - is really seeking it for the child who has yet to be and not necessaily for the woman herself. In slash, with two males, it is as if this is the only adult canvas on which a male can be believed to truly feel and be so committed as a mother is (and wants the father to be) for her child.

For a little book I have obvously found much food for thought. This is why I gave the book four stars though in itself the book has many faults. Though the 'slash' was essential to the book it was very limited within it and probably there is much more to slash than presented in the book. The fact that Japan has sales in the millions of 'boy love' comics for girls is a big thing that was not expanded upon. I am certainly more curious not only about slash but about the traditional romance which I have never actaully read either - though I love Star Trek!!