The Red Queen

Before you go reading Sperm Wars, you may want to read this book.  A lot of guys after reading Sperm Wars(and some girls too), are really upset about what biology says about women.

People object to the way that the scientific evidence strips away all female(and male behavior) down to expressions of biology.  And they are especially apalled at what women seem to do to promote sperm warfare.

But, I think there's something beyond that that is really what get people confused, and pissed off.  Especially guys who already have doubts about the fairer sex.

Women are, "sugar and spice and everything nice" so when men find women "stooping" to the same low life tactics that men use, they get angry.  In fact, the start to think, "Wait a minute, I thought women are the victims..?"

Before you go off ready to "get back" at women, read this book, The Red Queen. 

It has a really interesting premise which is an analogy between evolution(assuming you believe in it) and the Red Queen from Through The Looking Glass.

When Alice meets the Red Queen she notices that to stay in one place, she has to run, and that to move forward, she has to run even faster:

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

In the book, the author uses that basic premise so that we can understand the competitive pressure that all species from the smallest bacteria, to the elephant are under to survive.

The bulk of the book is devoted to discussing the differing strategies that animals(primarily) have developed to cope with this problem of always having to stay ahead of their competition both inter- and intra-species.  The highlight for me was the study of how you can correlate an species's reproductive strategy with their biology.

The author then uses the observable behaviors, reproductive strategies, and physical attributes to hypothesize and draw conclusions on what humans' reproductive strategies are.

For some, this book is overly academic, but what I've found is that people who read this book before reading Sperm Wars, often come out a little bit more--mentally healthy, let's say.  There's something about the understanding of how all living creatures are under the same pressures that makes a guy not take it so personally.

I, of course, find it interesting that many guys have these lofty expectations of women, when even in Shakespear's time there was a work for men who's wives have cheated on them:

cuck⋅old /ˈkʌkəld/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [kuhk-uhld] 

–noun

1.	the husband of an unfaithful wife.

–verb (used with object)

2.	to make a cuckold of (a husband)

If it's good enough for Shakespeare's time, it's good enough for our times.

Anyway, read this book, if you think you might go off the deep end reading about women's infidelities.  It will give you some perspective.