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74 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's a jungle in there, September 11, 2000
A somewhat amazing book on how women can collection sperm from different partners and how the collections of sperm will duke it out within her body in the chase to fertilize the egg, among many other amazing things, including the fact that some sperm serve not to swim after the egg, but to block another man's sperm from the chase. Written from an evolutionary point of view, Robin Baker's text is very readable and certain to make many people uncomfortable. It has had a remarkable effect on me. I suddenly realized how insignificant our consciousness is even in something like reproduction. So much goes on beneath our consciousness, and many things within our consciousness are done for reasons we don't understand or are mistaken about. For example, according to Robin Baker, masturbation serves a reproductive purpose! I won't try to explain here, but he convinced me. Also group sex may actually help a husband to get his wife to bear his child! Read it. I kid you not.Women come off pretty much as unconscious instruments of the process, men to a slightly lesser degree. All this is as I have always thought, but I had no idea about the details, and I mistakenly thought people, as conscious beings, had a greater effect on reproduction than we actually do. Incidentally at least ten percent of our children are not fathered by the husband, and close to twenty percent of conceptions are from sperm other than that of the husband (revelations not unique to this book). "Nowhere is there a woman true and fair," spake the poet. The duplicity of sex is required according to Baker because the woman needs to simultaneously mate with the champion (which is what she is always trying to do) while at the same time keep a man around to help take care of the offspring. Implicit in the book is the idea that people naturally cheat on their spouses as a strategy, a strategy that has consequences, both positive and negative. Sexually speaking, as in everything else, we are instruments of the process more than we think. This is an excellent, if somewhat creepy, book with the tales of sex and infidelity and scheming by both sexes ringing entirely true. But strange to say I feel like a Victorian, wanting to have a nice cup of tea and talk about something else.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Will Turn You Into A Reproductive Specialist, April 24, 2005
While on the autobiographical website of my favorite role model, Tucker Max (TuckerMax.com), this book was recommended. In his own words Tucker said "Quite simply, this book completely changed the entire way I looked at life, at women, and at relationships. I am the person I am today because of this book and the world it opened me up too. The application and digestion of the knowledge is this book revolutionized my life."
Those are some powerful statements, so I decided to go ahead and order this book off of Amazon. When I received it, I read all 319 pages within a span of 5 days. Needless to say, I was pretty much amazed by how enlightening this book is.
Robin Baker describes 37 sexually-oriented scenarios in the 37 sections and within each section, after a description of the scenario, describes the science behind what is going on in the scenario. Each scenario is different and covers subjects such as monogamy, polygamy, fidelity, infidelity, women's menstrual cycles, both male and female masturbation, the role of orgasms (all types), the effect of different sexual positions, group sex, homosexuality, bisexuality, rape, rough-and-tumble sex, prostitution, and of course pregnancy.
Each different topic is explained in a way that is suitable for the average person (not too sciency, but still sciency enough) and even the scenarios are written extremely well. While reading this book, I suggest reading with an open mind, it will become apparent to the reader how our bodies are often manipulating our minds as means to an end. More often than not, that end is successful reproduction. In a nutshell, this book gives an explanation for every seemingly random action that has to do with reproduction. After reading just a few sections of this book it should become apparent to you that there exists pretty much no completely random action dealing with sex. Everything is done for a reason.
As for myself, I am a male (age 18) and found this book extremely enlightening, especially considering my circumstance and the circumstances of most of my peers. As young and fertile males (not that it's very different for females), we are often looking for mates, our mind is frequently thinking about mating, and this book can help in just about every field of sexual reproduction. To be quite frank, this book has completely fine-tuned the way that I think about sex and reproduction... and I mean in a good way. With all the reading that students have to do during their early lifetime (ie middle school, high school, and college) it almost seems a fluke that our conservative society (I live in California, but I am referring to the U.S. in general) has never made a book like this a mandatory read. Sure we are nearly forced to take sex-ed during our childhood, but that class is useless and only barely scratches the surface... whereas this book delves deep into just about every topic dealing with sex.
I will give a word of warning though; those people who are strongly religioius, don't believe in evolution, close-minded, believe in true love, OR think that the field of sex and reproduction are incredibly simple and one-dimensional will either find this book extremely enlightening, very hedonistic, or unbelievable. While I will state that in my opinion some of the later readings in the book, especially the ones dealing with prostitution, homosexuality and bisexuality, and rape might ignore the effects of one's environment during childhood way too much(Especially PTSD) as the author is a evolutionary scientist (there's that whole conflict over nature vs. nurture and the author is definitely on the nature side of the argument), I will admit that the large majority of the book's explanations are very believable and extremely well-supported.
While the printing quality of my book wasn't that great, I feel that some of the people have exaggerated the state of their books (either that or every book is a bit different in printing quality). Hardly ever did I have problems reading the print (although I have 20/20 vision), the slightly off angle of the printing didn't effect me, and the binding on the book stayed on without a problem throughout my whole read (and I like to manhandle my books).
My bottom line: This book is a great read, I know it has already changed the way I look at reproduction (and I mean that in an incredibly good way); I believe that every man (at least the alpha-males) should read this book, and perhaps every woman, and I can pretty much guarantee that by reading this book you will undoubtedly have a better chance at reproductive success.
P.S. I strongly suggest using a highlighter to highlight some of the major points of the book while reading through. You'll find it helpful when you want to go back and read over a certain part again.
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101 of 124 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mostly a rebuttal to the negative reviews, July 9, 2001
There's a lot of silly stuff in some of the negative reviews below (quotations are paraphrased):1) "Baker's soft porn examples only deal with seedy, sleazy minority behavior. What about the vast majority who are monogamous?" This is multidimensionally silly. Firstly, statistics show that there is no such vast majority; to the extent that there is, it's a vast majority of people who are socialized into paying lip service to one set of ideals while furtively doing something else as their subconscious constructs rationalizations and excuses for why their bodies didn't follow the socialization to do X and went and did Y instead. Secondly, even if a set of circumstances is somewhat atypical, it can still exert decisive evolutionary pressure on a population, given millions of years to operate. If only 1% of people die in car wrecks, over time this will select against people who are bad drivers for genetic reasons (slow reactions, bad eyesight, weak attention span, etc.), though it may take many generations. Thirdly, if a minority trait or a tendency to a particular reproductive choice exists in a population to any significant degree (e.g., bisexuality, or women conceiving ~10% of children through cuckoldry), there *must* be an evolutionary reason for that trait or tendency to have not been eradicated by natural selection pressure. Baker's "soft porn" examples merely work through some of the concrete reasons and situations for why these traits and tendencies might be preserved. Agree or disagree with them if you will, or suggest your own reasons, but merely dismissing them as minority cases is a cop-out. 2) Several reviewers complained about "no hard data or bibliography." As another reviewer stated, the book written for academics by the same authors (Human Sperm Competition) has tons of hard data and a reference/bibliography section that goes on for twenty pages. "Sperm Wars" is written for the general public, so they (wisely) kept all the academic clutter out of this popularization. 3) "It's partly speculation and/or partly-unproven theories." Yes, the authors included some of their more daring ideas in the book (and it's usually obvious where they do, sometimes because they say so); the authors speculate on the reason bisexuality exists, for example, and every educated reader should know without explicit disclaimers by the authors that there is no unanimity within science as to why it exists. Ditto on the authors' ideas about why semen contains many different sperm types. However, I don't agree with those who think that the layman should be excluded from reading about science that remains unfinished or getting the opinions of the various protagonists. The most interesting parts of science are often those where there is vigorous debate; covering the public's ears while the scientists thrash it out is like sequestering the jury just when the lawyers are getting to the juicy stuff. And in this case, the issues being discussed affect everyone's personal life and aren't merely academic debates about missing dark matter in the cosmos or why dinosaurs became extinct. 4) Finally, something that's just incorrect rather than silly. One reviewer remarked that the math didn't work out right on the authors' theory about bisexuality (namely that bisexuality is not eradicated by natural selection because while bisexuals have fewer children, they have them earlier in life). However, the math does work out. Suppose one has two populations N and N*, and that the individuals of each population have on average M and M* children, respectively. After n generations, population N will grow to be N(n) = N(0)xM^n, where N(0) is the size of the initial population and N(n) is the size after n generations, with M^n denoting "M raised to the power n." Similarly, N*(k) = N*(0) x M*^k for the N* population after k generations (having k not equal to n is crucial; I suspect this was the other reviewer's mistake). Dividing the two equations, one gets N*(k)/N(n) = {N*(0)/N(0)} x {M*^k/M^n} (call this equation I). If the ratio of the two populations remains stationary over time (e.g., bisexuals vs. heterosexuals), then N*(k)/N(n) = N*(0)/N(0) (call this equation II), PROVIDED that generation k of the N* population is alive at the same time that generation n of the N population is alive. If it takes the N population T years to reproduce and the N* population T* years to reproduce, then if t is the total elapsed number of years, n = t/T and k = t/T* (call these equations III & IV). If we apply equations II, III, and IV to equation I, we get that (M*)^(t/T*) = (M)^(t/T). Taking the logarithm of both sides and using the fact that log(a^b) = b x log(a), we get (t/T*) x log(M*) = (t/T) x log(M), and cancelling the t from both sides and rearranging yields the result T*/T = log(M*)/log(M). That's the condition that must be satisfied if the ratio of the two populations is to stay the same over time. So if heterosexuals on average have 4 children and bisexuals on average have 3 children, then log(3)/log(4) = 0.79, so bisexuals must reproduce the next generation on average in a time T* equal to 79% of T if their percentage of the population is to stay the same over time.
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