Sperm Wars Quotes

“Everything is compromise, and time is limited. If a person settles too readily for a poor compromise, they may miss the chance of a much better compromise later. However, spending too long in search of the best compromise can be equally disadvantageous. He or she may then pay the price of having to settle for a worse compromise, or even of failing to attract anybody at all. The best prizes go to the people who judge correctly when to continue their search and when to settle for what they can get - if only for the time being.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“Surveys of many cultures around the world consistently show that, in looking for a long-term partner, women prefer men who have, or have the potential of, wealth, status, stability and durability.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“All women alive today are the genetic descendants of the more cautious of female ancestors, not their more reckless contemporaries. Men, on the other hand, are genetically programmed to be urgent and single-minded about one-off sex. In past generations, men who were not urgent and persuasive were less successful reproductively than those who were. All men alive today are the genetic descendants of the more urgent of male ancestors, not their more complacent contemporaries.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“In choosing a man to help raise her children, a woman is only secondarily impressed by looks, whereas in choosing a short-term partner for sex, looks are much more important.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“A woman's difficulty is that she has a much wider choice of men to provide her with genes than she has of long-term partners. She could probably persuade many men of her choice to give her their genes — it takes only a few minutes of sex, after all. Her options for a long-term partner, though, are much more limited.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“Those men In Scene 34 who decided not to rape the young girl did not live to produce more children who would inherit their compassion, whereas one of the men who raped her did produce a child to inherit his lack of compassion. It is by this process of weeding the genes that do not enhance reproductive success that evolution has saddled the majority of men with the propensity to behave as rapists in the appropriate situation.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“As for female mink, if they do not experience physical trauma at the male's hands, they do not ovulate.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“it was found that girls who were exposed to an attempt at date rape were three times more likely to resume their relationship with the man concerned if his attempt succeeded than if it failed”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“Since women are seeking different attributes in short-term and long-term partners, but have more choice of short-term they may again have to compromise. They have two main options. They can choose the best available long-term partner, and then rely on infidelity to obtain the best genes. This can succeed, but only if they successfully avoid the disadvantages of infidelity that we have already discussed. Alternatively, they can choose a man who, although neither the best provider of genes nor the best partner, is at least the best available compromise.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“studies show that when a woman leaves one partner for another, she invariably moves up the scale to a better compromise”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“In choosing a man or men with whom to share her life, a woman has two major issues to consider. On the one hand, she needs a man who can help her raise her children. On the other, she needs genes that in combination with her own will produce attractive, fertile and successful children.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“If you were a human sperm, there is no prize for coming second.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“This conclusion does not mean, as people often assume, that a woman should therefore seek to be raped. On the contrary, it is reproductively important to the woman that her body collect genes from only the most successful of rapists. If she conceives to an inept rapist, doomed quickly to be caught and to suffer social retribution and incarceration, her male descendants would inherit unsuccessful characteristics.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“In some species, females are so successful as prostitutes that they never need to find food themselves.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“If the male migratory bird] is ousted by another, the female does not leave with her former partner, but allows the new male to mate with her in exchange for being permitted to carry on living in what is now his territory. The female is intent on living in a particular territory and is prepared to mate with any male who successfully lays claim to that territory in order to do so. In principle, this is still prostitution — the trading of sex for resources — even though it is taking place within a monogamous relationship. As such it is little different from the behaviour of the majority of women around the world, few of whom would consider themselves to be prostitutes.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“older women often 'fit in' a stable homo-sexual relationship between successive heterosexual ones”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“One of the criteria that a woman can add to her list when selecting a mate, therefore, is his ability to overcome her physical resistance”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“Whether a man is twenty or seventy, therefore, his preferred age for a new partner is about twenty, or even younger.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“Often, a woman is already pregnant when she settles down with a long-term partner, and occasionally this partner is not the father of her child. Sometimes he knows this and takes on the woman and her child anyway, for reasons we have discussed, but sometimes he doesn't know. The woman is least likely to be unfaithful in the weeks or months preceding the conception of her second child. Subsequent children, however, are more and more likely to be the product of infidelity.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“One of the most revealing studies of the problem concerns a bird, the blue tit. The females of this species show all of the behaviour we have just described for women. Those lucky ones paired to genetically superior males with the best territories are totally faithful. Neighbouring females, paired to genetically inferior males, take every opportunity to seek infidelity with the superior males. They sneak into the better males' territories, solicit intercourse, then return unobserved to the partner they have just cheated. On average, about a third of young birds in a nest have not been sired by their mother's partner. Actual levels range from 0 per cent in the nests of the most favoured males to about 80 per cent in the nests of the least favoured ones.
A surprisingly similar pattern is found in humans. On average, about 10 per cent of children are not sired by their supposed father. Some men, however, have a higher chance of being deceived in this way than others — and it is those of low wealth and status who fare worst. Actual figures range from 1 per cent in high-status areas of Switzerland and the USA, through 5-6 per cent for moderate-status males in Britain and the USA, to 10-30 per cent for lower-status males in Britain, France and the USA.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“Conversation became strained as they each waited for a sign that they would not be rebuffed.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“Small families are not a new invention. For most of human history, from about one million years ago until as recently as ten to fifteen thousand years ago, all people lived as hunter-gatherers. Men hunted animals and women foraged for fruit and vegetables. Societies were made up of small, scattered bands of people. They had a good, protein-rich diet and most deaths were due to accident, predation and inter-group warfare rather than disease. The children of hunter-gatherers had an excellent chance of survival. Using nothing but the natural, stress-related methods we have discussed, women gave birth to only three or four children in their lifetime. Of these, two or three survived.
Large families did not appear until about ten thousand years or so ago, when agriculture brought a change of lifestyle. In the most fertile areas, large and concentrated communities developed, living on a carbohydrate-rich diet. Disease and infant mortality were rife. The average number of children was about seven or eight, but double figures were commonplace. Even so, whole families could be wiped out in days by virulent disease. As with the hunter-gatherers, on average, only two or three in each survived.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“Most readers will recognise the seduction of the young window-cleaner as a cliché. It, or something similar, has been used as a not very imaginative 'dramatic device' in a multitude of films, plays and books. If the man involved is not a window-cleaner, he is an electrician, a plumber, a builder, a TV repair man or (in Britain, the biggest cliché of all) a milkman. In short, he is any man who has a legitimate reason for visiting a woman in her home while her partner is absent.
Indeed, so hackneyed is this scenario that there is a danger, if we are not careful, of missing the important point: namely, that the behaviour has become hackneyed precisely because it is so common.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“Since the aim of masturbation is to give the male an edge over others in sperm warfare, he gains most if he masturbates but can dissuade those around him from doing so. That way, he gains competitive benefits that his rivals do not. The world-wide tendency to criticise, even victimise, other people for masturbating while continuing to masturbate oneself is thus as strategic as masturbation itself.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“The more men and women drink, the more they both seek intercourse — or, at least, the less they resist it.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles

“Lion prides contain two or three males and up to eight females and their young. Wandering over the savannah are bachelor groups of two or three males, each group looking for a pride from which they can oust the current males. If they succeed, the first thing they do is kill the cubs, the pride's legacy from the previous males.”
― Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles