Product Description
Scientific discoveries about the animal kingdom fuel ideological battles on many fronts, especially battles about sex and gender. We now know that male marmosets help take care of their offspring. Is this heartening news for today's stay-at-home dads? Recent studies show that many female birds once thought to be monogamous actually have chicks that are fathered outside the primary breeding pair. Does this information spell doom for traditional marriages? And bonobo apes take part in female-female sexual encounters. Does this mean that human homosexuality is natural? This highly provocative book clearly shows that these are the wrong kinds of questions to ask about animal behavior. Marlene Zuk, a respected biologist and a feminist, gives an eye-opening tour of some of the latest developments in our knowledge of animal sexuality and evolutionary biology. Sexual Selections exposes the anthropomorphism and gender politics that have colored our understanding of the natural world and shows how feminism can help move us away from our ideological biases.

As she tells many amazing stories about animal behavior--whether of birds and apes or of rats and cockroaches--Zuk takes us to the places where our ideas about nature, gender, and culture collide. Writing in an engaging, conversational style, she discusses such politically charged topics as motherhood, the genetic basis for adultery, the female orgasm, menstruation, and homosexuality. She shows how feminism can give us the tools to examine sensitive issues such as these and to enhance our understanding of the natural world if we avoid using research to champion a feminist agenda and avoid using animals as ideological weapons.

Zuk passionately asks us to learn to see the animal world on its own terms, with its splendid array of diversity and variation. This knowledge will give us a better understanding of animals and can ultimately change our assumptions about what is natural, normal, and even possible.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 7 reviews)

Zoology From a "Liberal Feminist" Perspective, Not Without Some Counter-Bias Nevertheless

I read the original hard cover edition of 2002. The 256 page book contains 212 regular text pages. Author Marlene Zuk defines herself by some other people's term of "liberal feminism". As that she distances herself from "ecofeminists" who shape their interpretation of the animal world to fit contemporary feminist doctrine. Well... it is very necessary to get a biologist's perspective that is not patriarchal. In rare instances, I find some remarks not really that blatantly feminist either. Though after surfing the net for one Dr. Susan Block's dresscode made me think about the idea of maybe forgiving Zuk for making a sqibbing insinuation about the good doctor's choice of attire - or lack of it. In principle that is every individual woman's choice, of course. At least I have never heard anything similar about some male media expert's choice of clothing.

As a "liberal feminist" Zuk isn't actively set to discriminate homosexuals. However, she isn't exactly unbiased either, when it comes to interpretations. On the one hand, she's self-critically musing about her former ignorance on witnessing male crickets (her animal of expertise) love singing to other male crickets without her thinking of anything obvious before reading Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (Stonewall Inn Editions) on some 450 species of scientifically witnessed homosexual behavior. One the other hand, she is nullifying that statement in the same breath by claiming this wouldn't necessarily mean anything as she also witnessed some crickets singing to twigs and leaves. Well, there was an Asian prince once (for real!), who only fell in love with ducks. Does that mean, there aren't any homosexual men on this planet? Speaking of which, later she writes about sexual imprinting of mallards, averring that they are sexually imprinted on their mother - and that this is a good idea. Shortly later it becomes clear that she means in opposition to the bad idea of getting sexually imprinted on a red balloon or a human, as some ever-wicked scientists experimented. Meaning probably not that straightforward in opposition to male-male imprinting. Nevertheless, exactly this impression is made on the reader. However, "Natural Exuberance" should have taught her that mallards can become quite homosexual, especially in large bachelor groups. That mother('s sex) imprint doesn's seem to be that strong after all. Or, obviously, Zuk (and the scientists she is quoting) failed to get the idea that not only the mother was around during the critical time of sexual imprinting, but also the male siblings. Which may still be considered a good idea, depending on the personal bias. All I am saying is: We have to be extra careful about thinking that our objectivity isn't biased, even if we attempt not to mean so. I recommend reading Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, which elaborates in that direction and which is written from a transsexual biologist's point of view.

Another criticism before I compliment Zuk on this book: She is writing about sexperts, but most certainly she isn't one herself. Nobody has to be, but multiplied sex myths get scientific blessing when they come from a biologist. Reading this book, one can get the impression that females are able to get an orgasm via the clitoris only, males via the penis only. Such a male orgasm (supposedly automatic) would make up for prostate cancer. Well, the jury is still out as far as I know, but some studies claim that NEGLECTING prostate-orgasms CAUSES prostate problems, such as cancer. For sure, males can get such an orgasm, which usually dwarfs the penile one, and yes, they can become multiple. Something Zuk thinks isn't possible in males. She is also not correcting a quote that women can't ejaculate. Let ME quote a sexpert, named Annie: "They don't call me Sprinkle for nothing." Thinking about that potential, Zuk is wrong in claiming that males can't judge wether a female's orgasm really was one in EVERY case. By the way, not all women do, but only a woman can assume that men can't successfully fake an orgasm. The difference to female fakes is: The male fake is less talked about for reasons of gender-based performance expectations. Ironically, Zuk references the Pacific people of the Mangaians, in which supposedly the men know more about female anatomy than European physicians. Well, let's include US-feminist biologists in this comparison...

All of the above explains the subtraction of a star. In reality, it is a five star book in the sense that some criticism is in place, but shouldn't deter from reading the otherwise excellent and oftentimes humorously written book. It may be a bit more about the human perception of animals than about the animals themselves, but that doesn't mean that the book isn't worth the reading time any less. On the contrary. And there are many obscure animal behaviors described still. One of the central issues is the abandoning of the "scala naturae", the systematic classification of the animal world according to perfectionism - and according to past human arrogant thinking. More people should read this book. Such as filmmakers. Zuk laments about some CGI-animated ant flicks, in which in reality female-only workers are turned male in Hollywood. Well, at least, that reality isn't that well-known. But in 2007 Hollywood made a similar movie about bees (Bee Movie (Widescreen Edition)), in which the workers are male (wannabe) super heroes. And everybody knows that the bees we usually see are all female... Which keeps this book fresh and necessary.

Also read Riddled with Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are by the same author. It's on evolution from an entirely different perspective and even better than this one.
June 03, 2008

Important points in an easy read

So, what can and can't we learn about sex from animals? Marlene Zuk has written an easy read that actually makes important points about our human-biased and, especially, male-biased interpretations of nature. She points out that nature is 'witless' - the world comes without an agenda - and that selection has produced an enormous diversity of behaviour including that of the sexes.

When we look objectively at other animals there is no universal way of being 'male' or 'female' regarding, for example, aggression, parental care or multiple sexual partners. In the last four chapters Zuk looks at menstruation, orgasm, homosexuality and spatial ability and discusses how looking at a wide variety of other species may shed more light on our own behaviour than ignoring other species or limiting our attention to only a few species.

An important point Zuk makes is that we cannot regard evolution as hierarchical and when we stop ranking species we can then simply look at how selection works to create enormous diversity. By looking objectively at all species our assumptions are challenged about what it means to be 'female' or 'male'. There is no reason for feminists to either oppose science nor to use 'nature' to assert some sort of female superiority. There is nothing in nature that tells us about relative values of the sexes or how we should or should not behave. And there is much in nature that can horrify us, such as parasitioids, so the 'naturalistic fallacy' needs to be avoided by us all.

Animals can show us how selection has worked to create enormous diversity and that humans have also been a part of this process. They can challenge our assumptions of what we believe to be natural, normal or even possible. Women's involvement in science can show up our biases in how we interpret various animal behaviours (eg female 'promiscuity' or 'adultery' or aggression compared to the same behaviour in the male). Any particular animal behaviour cannot be used to impose or justify the same behaviour in humans.

Marlene Zuk is making very important points about how we study ourselves and how we relate this to other species including the errors we are susceptible to on both fronts. For me the book misses five stars because it lacks enough examples of animal behaviours and enough depth of discussion and I am not sure that anti-science or eco-feminists, whom the book seems to be mainly aimed at, will be totally convinced by the argument.

January 07, 2006

waste of time

if you think you might learn something from the animals, you will be very disappointed.
July 04, 2005

Open your mind.

An eye opener for male and female readers alike.
March 06, 2003

Open your mind.

An eye opener for male and female readers alike.
March 06, 2003

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Riddled with Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are
by Marlene Zuk

Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People
by Joan Roughgarden

Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex
by Olivia Judson

Promiscuity: An Evolutionary History of Sperm Competition
by Tim Birkhead

Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (Stonewall Inn Editions)
by Bruce Bagemihl