Warrior Lovers

Book excerpt: "The stark contrasts between romance novels and pornography - both multi-billion-dollar global industries - underscore how different female and male erotic fantasies are. These differences reflect human evolutionary history and the disparate selection pressures women and men experienced, say the authors of this thought-provoking book. Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons provide a concise review of the fundamental importance of evolutionary history to human psychology, discuss how male and female sexual psychologies differ, and then demonstrate how sex differences in erotica illustrate this." "The authors focus particular attention on a new erotic subgenre - slash fiction - written mostly by and for women. Slash depicts romantic and sexual relationships between heterosexual male characters in television and film, such as Starsky and Hutch (S/H) and Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock (K/S), and is so named for the punctuation mark indicating the pair. Salmon and Symons argue that slash fiction has much in common with the romance genre and that the heroes of both genres are "warrior lovers" who embody the qualities our female ancestors valued in a mate. But while romance novel readers fantasize about being "Mrs. Warrior," slash fans prefer the fantasy of being "co-warrior." The authors consider why this might be so and examine the essential ingredients of female sexual fantasy. Their conclusions are both fascinating and original."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved