"We are now ready to survey afresh the battlefield of the sexes. With The Selfish Gene as our guide, we can compile a gene-centred inventory of any participants that we come across. There are the principal antagonists: ‘male’ and ‘female’ genes in conflict and the resulting multifarious adaptations in male and female creatures. There are the victors and victims that we would otherwise have missed: the agents of genomic imprinting, visiting the feuds of the previous generation upon the children. There are the subversive opportunists: mitochondria waging their own private war against nuclear genes over their mitochondrial mausoleum, the male parts of plants. And there are the innocent bystanders: victims of collateral damage from other’s battles, such as drowned and poisoned females. So the banner of the battle of the sexes should depict not a spider’s quietus in his lover’s jaws nor the withered anthers of a flower; for they represent other concerns of genes. Nor need it depict struggle or pain, injury or death. It could instead portray the dazzling beauty of the peacock’s tail, the deep intimacy of the titis’ embrace, the finely poised equilibrium that builds a newborn baby. Such are the ways of genes that even their conflicts—‘male’ against ‘female’ genes—can appear deceptively to us as harmony and beauty in their bearers."