Space. Balls.

"If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it."
— Emerson Pugh

A little while ago, I finished Robin Baker's Sperm Wars. As much fun as it would be to make jokes about the title, it's a gravely serious book in parts that opens up the Pandora's box of evolutionary biology. Pun intended. And Sperm Wars doesn't just explore evolutionary biology, it explores competitive evolutionary biology: what events occur on the conscious, social level and the subconscious, cellular level that are constantly at work inside each and every one of us in order to maximize our chances to procreate. What have I taken away from Sperm Wars? Probably the exact opposite of what the author explicitly tries to convey.

Unilaterilly, women have evolved to be lying, cheating whores. Nothing personal, ladies. Guys are, as Baker points out, just as bad. Though while men usually take the rap for being underhanded, libidinous, and promiscuous in the extreme, it's as if this bad reputation singularly excuses the fairer sex of any guilt in the matter, which is sadly not the case. Women are just as bad as men in this regard, if not worse. If this is true, it's because sperm's rich composition of viscous flagellated swimmers is almost bland in comparison to the myriad options that women have at their disposal to increase, decrease, warp, weft, and in all other ways distort their chances of making a baby based on environmental factors. These options are exercised completely separately from the conscious mind, so a girl's ovaries are not going to obey her verbal wishes to either have or not have a baby.

Oh, there is so much more to it than that. Women, almost without exception, are motivated to find the absolute best genetic candidate to help them make a baby. More to the point, they are heavily invested in making the optimal decision in this regard because they are going to have to endure the consequences, good or bad, for the next several years of their life. Because women get saddled with the offspring, they are far more likely to be discriminating of their potential bed buddies than men are. Potential mothers have a very strong interest in making the best possible children (which come from the best possible genetic stock (and not necessarily the best possible mate or life partner (much to my chagrin))). They have to make the best possible babies because they will be charged with the task of nurturing that offspring, whereas the involved babydaddy may simply have no further interaction with the new mama further than wiping himself off and offering her a ride home:

"From the viewpoint of reproductive success, and disregarding here any social pressures to which the man may be exposed, the siring of a child with a woman other than a long-term partner need not be expensive for him. Having inseminated her, he can, if he chooses, attempt to avoid all further contact with both her and the resulting offspring. A single intercourse need have no greater cost than that involved in fending off future claims for help and support if she does have a child.... If he does not take each opportunity to inseminate a new woman as it arises, he may never get another. In which case, whoever fathers her next child, it will not be him. A man's reproductive success depends to a significant extent on his ability to make the most of one-time opportunities.
   The situation is very different for a woman. For her, conception is a major event. In may commit her to months of pregnancy and years of dedicated effort. The man concerned might desert her. Moreover, conceiving via a man later proved to be genetically inferior could result in her raising a less successful child than if she had waited for a more suitable man. Together, these two dangers mean that an incautious, one-time intercourse can considerably reduce a woman's reproductive success. Her priorities need to be when and with whom she has one-time sex, rather than how often she has it. Caution and selectivity are of maximum importance. [emphasis added]" — pg. 221

"As we have already discussed, a woman is normally more cautious and selective than a man over casual sex. All the same, having decided on a suitable time, place, and partner, she can still gain a number of advantages from casual intercourse — as long as she doesn't conceive.... In addition, she can use the intercourse to gauge a man's sexual competence, potency, and to some extent health and fertility. Casual intercourse can thus be an avenue to protection and financial or other help from a man she judges might be a suitable long-term partner. If she already has a long-term partner, casual sex with somebody else can provide a 'reserve' — a man to move on to if her current relationship breaks up." — pg. 229

What's really fascinating in all of this is that the human concept of attraction really came to a standstill back when we were still clubbing woolly mammoths and huddling in caves for defense from the elements. That was about 40,000 years ago (creationists be damned), and so the tools that modern man and women have at their disposal to replicate their DNA are absolutely identical to the tools that Fred and Wilma Flintstone had at theirs. Attraction between mates or potential mates is utterly ancient. More to the point, the stakes in the reproduction game are the highest we can possibly imagine, and so the tactics that evolved to increase an individual's chances are cold, effective, and utterly without forgiveness.

So of course this means infidelity. Infidelity, as though you couldn't guess this fact, is the quintessential speaking point of Sperm Wars. There wouldn't be a war if there were no competition, right? Baker presents his arguments in a bizarrely unique fashion: each point that he stresses is presented as a short passage of fiction, followed by an omniscient dissection of what just happened, often down to the cellular level. Keep in mind, this is a book about makin' babies, so he frequently describes reproductive scenarios in what is almost pornographic detail. Hatchi matchi, this is a good book, even if the subject matter makes me want to curl into a ball and die. Understanding the underlying evolutionary mechanisms of how and why my ex-girlfriend picked numerous other gene donors does not make it any easier to cope with the aftermath.

To put it in clearer terms, Baker dissects infidelity as thus: cheating on a partner is a really good reproductive strategy. Probably the best reproductive strategy possible. The only thing better than a woman convincing a loving and benevolent partner to mistakenly raise her wicked evil fuckbaby as his own is knocking up some girl who's spoken for and getting your festering offspring out into the world to be raised properly without you so much as having to visit it on weekends. So why isn't everybody doing it?

It's pretty simple, really. The benefit of cheating is strongest when it's done in limited quantities. The high advantage of infidelity is immediately canceled by the steep risks involved, but only if caught. Any person who is discovered having dipped their pen in somebody else's inkwell threatens both violence from and desertion of their partner. This ain't news, folks. This has been going on for as long as mankind has been fucking each other behind our collective hairy, stooped backs. A person who knows when to cheat (and gets away with it) gets the best of both worlds. A person who does it imperfectly or who is caught suffers potential risk to life and limb and the loss of a person who would otherwise take care of them by sharing resources and defending the family from sabre-toothed tigers. All too often, the best genetic candidate to be your biological child's father is usually the last guy you'd expect to actually stick around and raise the bastard. This brings up another interesting point: women don't seem to select for parenting potential, thus making it more advantageous for the douchebags of the world to put their egg in your nest without you knowing about it. Sure, they'll marry the guys they believe will care for them and for their offspring, but all it takes is one indiscretion and guess what? You wind up putting somebody else's kid through college, all the while justifying the situation by wondering to yourself if you've forgotten the one person in your family who had blue eyes.

No matter where she is, a fertile woman is continually evaluating her situation and checking to see if there are any suitable mates around her. Even if she's already in a committed relationship, she's subconsciously processing the information given to her to assess if there is a better gene donor out there who she can enlist to make a sperm deposit and possibly make a better baby with her than her current partner. Frequently, at least in Baker's world (and mine), this means that the best life partner is not exactly the guy whose genes you want to propagate into the world. Nurture is one thing, nature is another. On a subconscious level, ladies evaluate whether or not cheating on their partner is the best thing for enhancing their optimal reproductive success. More simply, the question one must ask herself is thus: is it worth the risks involved to cheat on the current pair bond? A calculation is made and the advantages (a better child from a better DNA source) are compared to the disadvantages (losing allegiance with the long-term partner and potentially winding up at the bottom of a tar pit). (A + B) - (C + D) = X. If X says you could wind up making a rockstar of a baby without anybody catching on to how you did it, you spread 'em. Otherwise, you don't.

Grimly, rationalization of the decision thus made in the female mind only comes after the fact. It has to, because the human consciousness is largely unaware of the mechanisms and motivations to optimize your breeding successes. As Erik von Markovik writes, "[A] woman will come up with a thousand reasons that she shouldn't have sex with you — but she will also come up with a thousand reasons for why she did." These devious mechanisms ingrained in us exist because they existed inside our ancestors and what's more, the primitive screwheads who didn't operate this way didn't have as much success reproducing. Once you find both a good pair bond and a good gene donor, you're pretty much set to go for a wild ride.

For as long as you can make it last, you enjoy all the advantages of having what is essentially two boyfriends: the stable, steady, stay-at-home one who is a great find because he pretty much pays for all of your utilities, and the go out, have-fun boyfriend who tells you great stories and takes you places, like to his favorite bar night after night. He gives you rides on his motorcycle. You can have your cake and eat it too, at this point, because while you're out carousing with Fun Boyfriend, Rent-Paying Boyfriend is sitting at home like a chump, watching TV and just hoping you're having a good time.

Let us assume for a moment, that you find yourself in a very compromising situation at some point with Fun Boyfriend. Because there are abject side-effects of going out to his favorite bar night after night. For starters, he gets you drunk. And since his favorite bar is only walking distance from his house, you two can stumble home arm in arm to go sober up. And if you wind up getting naked and underneath him in that time? Well, accidents happen. You're not even aware at this point that your evolutionary biology is telling you that you need to make a baby with this (supposedly) superior specimen of genetics. The calculation has been made. You just have to rationalize it.

Now you have a decision to make. Knowing that your boyfriend is not the sharing kind, you can pretty much be sure that as soon as he finds out, the relationship is over. At best, he will kick you out — and you know that Fun Boyfriend really isn't going to be able to pay your utilities for you. At worst, Rent-Paying Boyfriend will probably beat you to death with a stick. All options suck, and so since you really can't find a good way to tell Rent-Paying Boyfriend that Fun Boyfriend just busted his nut all over you, you don't. It's not really "dinner conversation". So you do what anyone in that circumstance would do. You shower off, get dressed, and go home to Rent-Paying Boyfriend and act like nothing happened. Sperm from a better donor? Check. Good place to live? Check. The advantage goes to? Your progeny.

Of course, it would be weird for you to suddenly stop going out every night with Fun Boyfriend. That would be suspicious. So you keep at it. This enhances your odds of reproductive success because you're giving yourself opportunities to get more and more good sperm. You return to his favorite bar, you continue throwing back drinks with him, and you continue stumbling back to his place. And again, you wind up nude and underneath him.

In for a penny, in for a pounding.

So this goes on until finally the conscious part of your mind develops guilt. Guilt is an anathema to the evolutionary model because it presupposes a moral code or ethic. Yet biology does not regret, apologize, or forgive. So the presence of guilt, really, is just the exertion of your rational mind putting together the fact that you're jeopardizing caution, selectivity, or both. The guilt starts to eat away at you, and eventually you break it off with Fun Boyfriend because you a) are completely aware that Fun Boyfriend has had (and continues to have) a bevy of other interchangeable Fun Sluts he regularly relies upon for his bedroom antics and b) you are just going to eventually turn him from Fun Boyfriend into Doesn't Pay Child Support Boyfriend, and that's going to be even harder to slip passed Rent-Paying Boyfriend once he puts together that the kid you told him was his doesn't look a damned thing like him. Fun Boyfriend has no problems keeping your little secret. After all, he got all the advantages of another potential incubator for his demon seed, and all of the attention, affection, gifts, sex, and food preparation without having to actually provide for you, help you move, talk about finances, or handle you when you're in a bad mood. Banging somebody else's girlfriend really is a great gig if you can manage it.

You, on the other hand, wind up in the interesting position of trying desperately to make sure that Rent-Paying Boyfriend never, ever finds out. Not just because you can probably imagine a future with this extremely reliable resource: houses, kids, and family vacations to Bermuda for the next 50 years or so, but also because you may find yourself dead or alone if he ever catches on to your mating strategy. He may be great parenting material and capable of raising your bairn, but he's really lacking in the fathering department. Rent-Paying Boyfriend is good husband material, if by "husband" you mean "financially secure" and "doesn't know about your other gene donors". So you play a little game, called Pretend I Never Fuck Other People. It's not a particularly fun game, and there are a lot of rules you need to follow in order to make sure you win. It's a game that women have been playing for forever and a day. A game that females in every species of bird, mammal, and lizard play. It's a great game to play because it dramatically increases the chances that you'll make better babies, but the risks are unfathomably steep.

It's funny how the various advantages and disadvantages transcend species, and hell, even languages. I share an office with a Chinese woman, and I had to explain to her last week how even though I wear a ring on my finger, I'm not married. I told her about how I moved across the country on a nice little 5-figure nest egg that I was saving up to use on a diamond. Once I'd convinced her that I wasn't referring to an actual egg, the rest of the sticky details were implicitly understood by her without further need for question.

There's a good quote from another book I'm reading, one closely related in subject matter to Sperm Wars, called The Red Queen by Matt Ridley. I doubt it will warrant its own review, but there's a rather succinct synopsis of human mating in the book that spells it out pretty plainly:

"[D]eep in the mind of a modern woman is the same basic hunter-gatherer calculator, too recently evolved to have changed much: Strive to acquire a provider husband who will invest food and care in your children; strive to find a lover who can give those children first-class genes. Only if she is very lucky will they be the same man. It began with a woman who married the best unmarried hunter in the tribe and had an affair with the best married hunter, thus ensuring her children a rich supply of meat. It continues with a rich tycoon's wife bearing a baby that grows up to resemble her beefy bodyguard. Men are to be exploited as providers of parental care, wealth, and genes."
"   Cynical? Not half as cynical as most accounts of human history." —The Red Queen, pg. 244

I just can't put it any better than that. Of course, I take exception with calling any of a handful of shiftless career-abortive alcoholics as having "first-class genes", but hey, that's just my opinion. Sometimes he just has a motorcycle that goes "vroom" and that makes her moist like a spongecake. Sigh.