Robin Baker (1) (1944–)

I had been asking sex questions on a human evolution group, and was told more than once to read Sperm Wars. "It explains everything." The book focuses heavily on infidelity and explains the biological basis of sexual behavior. I was a little worried about "knowing too much"; that this knowledge would depress me and ruin my sex life. I bought a copy and lost it before reading it.

Recently, it came up in conversation again, and, feeling more along the lines of "not knowing enough" about the show more biology of sex this time, I bought another copy and pushed myself to read it.

After reading it? The biology is interesting, and some of the descriptions of subsequent human behavior are enlightening and make perfect sense to me, but some of the other conclusions are less than convincing. (And some have been disproven. See the comments on this review.) It wasn't exactly life-changing, and certainly hasn't hurt any aspect of my sex life.

Although his research found that only 4 percent of conceptions take place as a result of sperm wars, and 9 out of 10 children are born from routine monogamous intercourse, the premise of the book is that this is the "major force in the shaping of human sexuality", and all of our sexual behaviors are explained in relation to it. "Well, people that study sperm competition are a fairly conceited lot actually. They think it explains everything to do with sexual behaviour."

He says to read through his scholarly papers if you doubt his conclusions. Instead of just saying "trust me", I'd feel a lot better if he included a brief summary of the supporting data nearby.

Most importantly, many of the connections he makes between evolutionary biology and conscious behavior seem a bit too speculative, based on a narrow-minded interpretation of human ethology.

The most obvious example to me is the section where he states that men are averse to using condoms, and then goes about explaining why. For instance, men try to have sex without condoms because they "spoil the man's subconscious rationale for having routine sex". A man would only have sex with a condom so that he can trick the woman into having sex without one later. "Subconsciously, his body realizes the futility of casual sex with no chance of conception."

Of course, this is silly. Men don't like sex with condoms because it doesn't feel as good. Simple as that. Why doesn't it feel as good? Well, that's where biology comes in. But it's pretty simple: Evolution made men adept at determining whether they are in a real vagina or not, and varies the amount of pleasure they will feel accordingly. Their conscious decision of whether to use one or not is made partially on the basis of the amount of pleasure they will feel. That's it. It has nothing to do with a "subconscious" urge to impregnate women or anything.

I didn't understand why the book was so "controversial" until the last third, where he basically says that women's bodies secretly want to be raped, homosexuals are just "practicing" for heterosexuality, and women pursue prostitution as a reproductive strategy.

It's easy to use a simple model of individual natural selection to explain a desire to have sex with multiple partners, but how do you explain the fact that I and many of my friends don't want to procreate at all? The fact that some priests/monks have trouble living completely celibate lives is explained quite easily by such a model, but the fact that these men would pursue such a life in the first place, and in the majority of cases succeed, is not. Organisms certainly evolve on this level, but also on many others. He doesn't take into account the possibility of evolved behaviors that are altruistic rather than selfish, and completely ignores the cultural evolution/memetic side of things.

Describing human biology is straightforward; it either does things or it doesn't. Connecting this low-level functionality to high-level behavior is not so simple. show less

I was "cautiously" enjoying the first quarter of the book when I peeped in reviews here. The one about the lack of proper references stung me. I wrote several academic peer-reviewed papers and I absolutely cherish this tradition. Thus upon reading the review I couldn't continue just flowing with the author.

Here and there I started noticing passages and claims for which I'd rather see some sources and quotes of some serious studies behind these, now appearing spurious, claims. Since he kept show more on showering me with one sensational idea or conclusion after another I grew annoyed and he lost my trust. I gave up the book. You can't treat such a serious matter without some trustworthy sources and stats to lean upon. Otherwise it's just at best your own very private point of view. show less

Sperm Wars is essentially an evolutionary biology book which tries to explain various strategies men and women's bodies employ subconsciously to win an ongoing sexual arms race.

The book is written in a style where Baker describes a fictional scene (borrowing from newspaper articles, anecdotal evidence from friends, and other sources) which covers a specific sexual situation such as infidelity, homosexuality, rape, masturbation and so on, which is then analysed and interpreted from an show more evolutionary biology perspective.

The book suggests that an individual's body will employ a dynamic sexual reproductive strategy which is determined by it's existing genetic characteristics, environment, opportunity and circumstance, with the ultimate aim of acquiring the best possible set of genes from a mate to pass on to future generations. The strategies discussed often involve subterfuge.

I found the book fascinating and extremely insightful in places, and definitely worth the read. Baker tackles a lot of issues in the book which are not typical reading for most people, most notably gang rape and paedophilia, which are quite graphic, but every issue is approached logically and analysed appropriately. No judgements are cast on any of the scenarios.

I assume most people will have stumbled on the book from one of two avenues, either by being interested initially by the sex chapter in Dawking's Selfish Gene, and probably having read the Red Queen by Matt Ridley, or Sex is Fun by Jared Diamond, with the second group of people being those who are working their way through the reading list of Neil Strauss from The Game. I would have thought people in the first category will get the most out of this book. show less

Regardless of all the negative attention i have seen in reviews for this book i really enjoyed it. it may seem a little like porn to some people but to me it was a hard look at how people react and adapt to extreme situations when social conventions have been removed from the equation. It took a look at the baser of human needs and instincts. and though the professor seemed out there(as is any who would try this type of experiment and think to get away with it)he also had a very interesting show more proposal and i think if they wouldnt have been rescued as early as they were his dream of an isolated society without technology of any sort would have come true. show less