Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality

Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality is a book by Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons which looks at slash fanfiction from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. The warrior lovers of the title refer to their theory that slash is popular with straight women because it allows them to experience a romance of equals where both partners get to do all the things in canon that make the usually male protagonists interesting character.
In 2004, Salmon and Symons published an article for the Journal of Sex Research called Slash fiction and human mating psychology. It covers a lot of the same ground and relies on the same research as the book. 
==Summary==
Google Books provides the following summary of the book:
The stark contrasts between romance novels and pornography underscore how different female and male erotic fantasies are. These differences relflect (sic) human evolotionary (sic) history and the disparate selection pressures women and men experienced, say the authors of this thought-provoking book. Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons review 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 slash fiction, an erotic subgenre written by and for women and found on-line and in fan magazines. Slash--so-called for the punctuation mark indicating a romantic pair--depicts sexual relationships between heterosexual male television and film characters such as Starsky and Hutch (S/H) and Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock (K/S). Salmon and Symons argue that--despite some differences--slash fiction has much in common with romance novels. The authors examine the essential ingredients of female sexual fantasy and how slash fiction provides them. Their conclusions are both fascinating and original.Google Books unsourced book description, accessed July 25, 2011
== "THE SEXUAL WORLD: Don Symons: Slash Fiction" 2009 Interview== 
One of the authors, Donald Symons, discussed slash fiction in an interview uploaded to YouTube in January 2009 in a video titled "THE SEXUAL WORLD: Don Symons: Slash Fiction.", YouTube video, uploaded January 3, 2009, accessed July 25, 2011 He never mentions Catherine Salmon, his co-author, in the interview.
Below are comments by fans regarding the interview, the article "Slash fiction and human mating psychology", and the book where the article was printed "Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality."
The video contains several cutaways to about a dozen images. Some of them are of chapter titles in the book. Two are to the covers of two mainstream "bodice ripper" romance books, and one is to a "Conan the Barbarian"-type of art (perhaps by Frank Frazetta?). The other five images are to unattributed fanart (1. at .58 Kirk/Spock from an unknown print zine by an unknown artist, 2. at 1.19, a Highlander manip, artist unknown. 3. at 1.24 Bashir/Garak by TACS cover of Tarkalean Tea, 4. at 1.30 Bodie/Doyle by TACS, unknown source, 5. at 1.35 a McShep manip, artist unknown.
All comments are from or the LiveJournal crosspost. 
See many, many more comments at "THE SEXUAL WORLD: Don Symons: Slash Fiction" 2009 Interview.
==An Interview on BBC's "Woman's Hour"==
From Woman's Hour Interview with Catherine Salmon:
==Fan Reactions== 
Judith Proctor's Blakes 7 site has a review by Proctor of the book. In her fairly positive review, Proctor describes the book as following a single line of argument about slash fanfiction: 
blacksquirrel describes the book in a very different way in 2007, and takes aim at the field of evolutionary psychology in general as well as the book in particular: 
A Pros fan wrote in 2001:
==Editorial Reviews==
Review by Elizabeth Sourbut in New Scientist Magazine. (requires registration to access, reprinted here).
Ogi Ogas reviews the book on Goodreads, calling it a, "Completely overlooked minor masterpiece." while attributing the most meaningful, to him, theme of the book to Symons alone.Ogi Ogas review of Warrior Lovers, accessed July 25, 2011
==References==
Category:2001 Academic Commentary
Category:2003 Academic Commentary
Category:Slash Academic Commentary