Does it exist? Fuck YEAH it does.
Warrior Lovers: Erotic fiction, evolution, and female sexuality
I thought I would be the first person to look at yaoi from an evolutionary psychology perspective, but noooooo. Apparently fellow slash fan Catherine Salmon has already gone down that road, thoroughly, with the publication of her book Warrior Lovers: Erotic fiction, evolution, and female sexuality. Well it’s slash, not yaoi, but there are enough similarities to warrant celebration.
I was stunned, absolutely stunned when I found out that this book was IN DRAKE UNIVERSITY’S LIBRARY. I mean. Holy cow. I thought I was the only one who would look at slash that way (well, at least from a researcher’s point of view), but instead a book on evolutionary slash theory has been sitting right here, right opposite from where I live, for god knows how many years!
I want to do empirical research on yaoi. I can imagine myself researching yaoi for the rest of my life. Perhaps I should get in touch with Catherine Salmon and ask her if she wants more people to join her research endeavors in slash. With my extensive experience of reading and writing yaoi, and my passion for and increasing knowledge in evolutionary psychology, I am positive that by the time I graduate with my BS in Psychology, I will be more than fit enough to be a contributing member on such a scientific endeavor.
Is it pathetic though, that when I saw Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker on the back of the book endorsing it (apparently it’s part of a series), I SQUEE-ed out loud and hugged my laptop screen in an attempt to derive comfort from/express my adoration for them? Maybe it’s because I feel unloved and unaccepted as an atheist.
My parents are still convinced that there is some form of a god, though they haven’t been religious in ages (our ancestor altar is gathering dust), but I won’t – I won’t explain to them why atheism is the only rational position on religious, because they’re going to die in a couple decades and I want them to have peace of mind when they die.
This makes me think of my aunt, my third aunt, who’s an extremely intelligent, dedicated high school teacher of chemistry and occasionally math. At the same time she’s devoutly religious. How do I reconcile that with the fact that she is one of the most intelligent adults in my immediate family? (My father’s the smartest one of course; he’s in Mensa). I’ve long accepted, on an intellectual level, that religiosity and intelligence are not necessarily incompatible, and I know of the countless famous scientists who are at the same time religious, but it’s a concept that I haven’t, before this, generalized to the people I know, on a conscious level. It’s as if they live in a separate world from the Western discourse community of atheism, evolution, and religion that I’ve been submerged in. Again, isn’t this yet another effect of cultural imperialism?
[This has been one of the more decent posts I've made lately. I am relieved that my mind still has some semblance of order.]