Sex at Dawn

Some really good perspective-shifting stuff about primatology and human anatomy that makes you question the status quo is followed by a bizarrely disappointing conclusion. So much of the book is about questioning what we assume is natural about human sexuality due to cultural bias, but the end seems to take male infidelity of the modern day at face value without examining alternate causes (e.g. how societal male socialization limits men from forming platonic emotional bonds) and leaves prior discussion of natural female promiscuity out of a modern lens entirely. Flop ending to an otherwise very interesting read!

it's just not good

This review can also be found on my blog.

I've read some of the criticisms of this book, and also recognize that it was published almost a decade ago and may be a bit outdated. Regardless, it's nice to read a book that validates your sexuality and makes you feel more “normal” than society at large might have you believe. As a queer, polyamorous woman I thought this was a really good starting point to learn about human sexuality. I'll certainly be picking up some other works and doing further research, but I found this book to be well-written, humorous, and just what I needed.

An interesting take on the history of monogamy in humans, our ancestors and our relatives. The important thing to put aside when reading this one is any preconception of ethics or morality. This is a scientific and historical study of how societies have structured societies in different cultures.

An interesting take on the history of monogamy in humans, our ancestors and our relatives. The important thing to put aside when reading this one is any preconception of ethics or morality. This is a scientific and historical study of how societies have structured societies in different cultures.

One of the best and most comprehensive books that I've read on human relations. Coming from a deeply religious background, and being force-fed the standard narrative of human relations - this book was a gust of much needed fresh air. I'm reading it again with my partner!

This has been on my to-read list for awhile just because it gets referenced so often. (Dan Savage et. al.)

It's a pretty fun and interesting read, and encourages the questioning of assumptions, which is always a good thing! I can't speak to the quality of the science, though I hear it is arguably no better than the evo psych nonsense it strives to debunk.

Even so, it's certainly a more hopeful model of the human psyche, and so I like it. If I'm going to choose to believe one heavily culturally-biased narrative over another when the science on both sides is dubious, I'm okay with being on the side of the bonobos.

This book covers so much ground! I cannot even begin to summarize, except to say that if I had somehow been able to read it in magical hypertext that took me to all the other books it even talks about, I would still be lost in reference material. And I want to read them all!

Also - ever wondered why the average woman is louder during sex than the average man? What about the cause of men's mid-life crises? Are humans naturally monogamous as a species? Why or why not?

I am aware that another book has been written just to rebut this one. I might read it. I will at least take a look and consider it, to be fair.

I'll keep it short. Having grown up in a conservative, religious household, I must enforce open-mindedness deliberately. And I genuinely tried to with this book, especially since Mr Savage mentioned it in a column ages ago, and I rather like him, even if we don't always agree.

So I read it, intending to be open, expecting to like it.

It was...dump.

Granted, I was seldom bored, which is nice; and it had some interesting ideas. But, in the end, it seemed to contradict itself. Men apparently can never change their sexual preference, and they will cheat because they need variety. This is never discussed as a societal issue beyond the authors saying monogamy = monotony. But they spend plenty of time discussing female sexual freedom, and the fact that our closest primate relations have randy females having multiple male partners (at least in part to enable sperm competition). But women never want to cheat, just men. Women don't need variety? Essentially, that's what the last chapter seems to say. And they consider none of these things forced upon humans by society.

I mean, maybe I missed something in there. But that was just one bit of seemingly contradictory information.

AH, and this book was easily as much about the ills of agriculture as it was about human sexuality.

I really did not care for the lighthearted, sometimes snarky tone the writers used either. There are more things to say, but it's 4 AM, this goes back to the library in the morning, and I just can't.

OH OH OH, and they rolled out the “Semen Makes Women Happy” study too.

So are lesbians depressed, then?

Monogamy is bullshit. It's unnatural. Everybody knows that, yet we spend our lives living and defending the lie. How did the myth get started? Why does it persist? In a word: agriculture. It's a long and convoluted story, but it all boils down to Stuff. Once we settled down and started accumulating Stuff, we had to start defending it. And “Stuff”, of course, includes wimminfolk. There you go.

It's hard to imagine prehistory. Really hard. There's not much to go on... but there's a lot more every year: archaeological evidence, anthropological, DNA analysis, behavioral studies of our Bonobo cousins. And all of it – all of it – points to a history that's different from what we grew up believing. The last 10,000 years are an aberration, and one that's making us sick.

Sex at Dawn is the most thorough study I've yet read on the subject. It's also the most readable. Ryan and Jethá present the evidence clearly, in a sometimes chiding but always loving voice. They don't always agree with the conclusions of the scientists whose work they cite... but they gently show how even the scientists themselves don't agree with the evidence they've collected. (It's understandable: we've all got a lot of misconceptions to outgrow, and that's hard.)

Sex at Dawn explains us better than anything I've yet read. This is an important book, well worth reading and thinking about.