DR Robin Baker hopes that anyone who reads his new book on sexual behaviour will never see that intimate "damp patch" in the same way again. That may be, if the image of millions of marauding killer white cells tackling millions of surf boarding sperm in a sea of "smart" cervical mucous is what turns you on.
It is more likely, however, that what readers will remember about Sperm Wars Infidelity, Sexual Conflict And Other Bedroom Battles are the inventive new excuses which Baker offers to unfaithful spouses. For generations, those caught in the act have repeated the same unoriginal lines My wife/husband doesn't understand me", "she/he has become cold sexually" and that old chestnut, "we've grown apart".
But after reading Sperm Wars the unfaithful spouse will be able to say with full conviction and equally full biological, justification "I'm sorry, darling, I still love you but I was actually following evolutionary forces beyond my control."
People who have extramarital affairs are fulfilling their biological destiny, Baker argues. So that the woman who is "unfaithful" to her husband, may be behaving in a manner which is actually "faithful" to her body's urge to ensure the genetic strength and diversity of her progeny.
These sexual urges, Baker argues, are passed on from generation to generation through inherited subconscious sexual patterns so subtle, powerful and ingenious that you have to be made of pretty strong stuff to resist them. His view is that we don't control our bodies, our bodies control us.
"The potential exists to revolutionise the way we all think about sex. The main message from this revolution is that our sexual behaviour has been programmed and shaped by evolutionary forces which acted on our ancestors and which still act on us, even today. The main thrust of these forces was directed at our bodies, not our consciousness. Our bodies simply use our brains to manipulate us into behaving in a way dictated by our programming," he says.
If you want to know why you have behaved sexually the way you have look to your grandmother, goes the argument, who is more likely to have passed on to you her subconscious antennae for a good genetic coupling than the family silver.
The genetics of sex seem pretty simple people who are most successful at procreating have the most progeny. Each of us, no matter who we are, has a core biological agenda which is to have as many grandchildren as possible. Most of our descendants also had the same agenda and since they were successful, had to be very good at sexual reproduction. What made them so accomplished wasn't necessarily monogamy but variety. So women are inevitably inheriting genes which programme them to want to vary their partners according to which man has the best genes and the strongest sperm, while men are inheriting genes which make them want to dominate their partners so that no other man's sperm can lodge within them.
It doesn't sound fair, does it? Men, Baker tells us, are the pathetic losers in the fertility war. Women have always tricked men into thinking they were the fathers of children they were unrelated to, while also tricking the men who were actually the fathers into thinking that the children are not theirs. He even goes so far as to say that the reason the sex fantasy about the postman/plumber/window cleaner/gardener fathering little Johnnie is a cliche, is because it's true.
The goal for women is to get the best possible genes and the best possible long term relationship. And the two are not necessarily available from the same man. A good partner may be a bad genetic choice, while a man with good genes may be a hopeless marriage prospect. The woman will be impregnated by the unreliable chance lover and marry the good provider every time, he thinks.
AT least one in 10 children are not fathered by their fathers, Baker claims on the book jacket. But inside, he needs no encouragement to admit that he actually believes that as many as 30 per cent of men have been duped into thinking that they are the "fathers" of children fathered by others.
Poor men are more likely to be duped into supporting another man's child than rich ones because women subconsciously desire the genes of wealthy men even when they cannot marry the wealthy men themselves. Women have a strong biological instinct not to get pregnant by losers men who are physically and or economically weak and to become pregnant by winners. Successful men in terms of money, intellect and the arts will always be in demand by women single and married who want these men's genes. Even if the strongest males merely contribute their genes and nothing else no emotional support and no money these women are still winning biologically speaking because they will haven children and grandchildren of good stock. If they play the game right, these women will also have their children reared by unwitting males who wrongly believe that they are the fathers.
Condemn it if you like, but there's no use fighting it, Baker believes. Our bodies will not reproduce with people who are genetically unsuitable even when we are married to them and are only too willing to reproduce with those who are. This is why an "infertile" woman married for years without a child may become pregnant on a one night stand, and why an "infertile" man may unknowingly have fathered a couple of children during affairs.
The body, in other words, is amoral and in control and there is not a thing we can do about it.
Women who fail to conceal their infidelity may be punished with beatings, divorce, broken families, complex step families, incestuous sex abuse of their children by their new partners and so on, while those who manage to keep their infidelity secret are rewarded on every level.
It doesn't take too much reading of Baker's theories to realise that a) he has put himself out on a very brittle limb scientifically speaking and b) that he doesn't appear that keen on women.
The central force in all this dubious programming is what Baker calls sperm warfare", a concept which cannot fail to fascinate and which is based on Baker's scientific paper, published last year, "Human Sperm Competition Copulation, Masturbation and Infidelity", written with Dr Mark Bellis. In part consciously, but much more importantly subconsciously, all of our sexual attitudes, emotions, responses and behaviour revolve around sperm warfare and all human sexual behaviour can be reinterpreted from this new perspective," Baker claims.
Bellis and Baker discovered that whenever a woman's body contains sperm from two or more different men at the same time, the sperm from those men compete for the "prize" of fertilising her egg. Women unconsciously set themselves up for these battles by arranging to have themselves impregnated by different men at about the same time. Then it is literally a case of the best sperm wins, which means the best genes enter her egg.
Each man's ejaculation is not the collection of squirming minnows we have all seen in the sex education videos, but rather a complex battle plan containing all kinds of different sperm including killer sperm (to kill the other man's sperm that's already there), egg getter sperm (to fertilise the egg) and blocker sperm (to stop a future lover's sperm getting through).
The salient point is that only one per cent of an individual male's sperm are capable of fertilising an egg the rest are infertile "kamikaze" sperm whose function it is to prevent another man's sperm from ever fertilising anything.
Sperm warfare also explains why a woman is more likely to conceive through a casual fling than through sex with her regular partner. Routine sex makes the female reproductive system less susceptible to her partner's sperm, partly due to the dullness of the sex, which makes orgasm and thus conception less likely. At the same time, the partner's routine sperm are more likely to be defender and killer types, less likely to be egg getter types.
And just as women practise subconscious conception, they also practise subconscious contraception, Baker claims.
Who is Dr Robin Baker and is there an agenda behind his extraordinary claims? A research biologist and Reader in Zoology at Manchester University, the credentials are there but his most impressive claim to fame seems to be that his ideas have caught the public imagination and that of the media.
Why are his ideas catching on? It seems the real issue here is power the ultimate power of who controls the next generation. In the UK currently, there is intense and angry debate over the new trend of young, usually poor and State dependent women having large families of several children by different fathers. These young women take their destiny into their own hands by running their families and their sex lives autonomously while at the same time demanding through the controversial child support system that the putative father of their offspring support them financially. In that way as Baker takes pains to point out a woman can have several different men supporting her at the same time. Yet these men may not actually be the children's fathers at all. Baker tells us that 15 per cent of child support agency, paternity investigations turn out to be false. What greater fear of women can there be, than that they will control the" gene pool because men have lost their ability to keep women dependent on them?
WEATHER Baker himself realises his own agenda is unclear from the book.
It's a good read and I had a hard time keeping the book in my possession, so eager were friends to read it. But this popular use of science to seduce the reader into belief may dangerously mask Baker's true role.
Could it be, for instance, that in the tradition of a conservative male dominated scientific establishment, he is using scientific theory to project certain traits on to women in this case projecting on to them trickery and the exploitation of men as gene bearers, just as in Victorian times scientists used pseudo medical information to make women appear dependent, weak and mentally unreliable.
I personally do not believe that the majority of women are out there attempting to corral men into offering the best sperm consciously or unconsciously.
His central message is that man is a pathetic creature and that woman is crafty and wily in her ability to use trickery to get the best possible gene samples for her ripening eggs. He predicts that the family of the future will be one mother, several children and as many fathers paying her child support.
A more depressing view of human relationships you will never read.