Interesting. As one of the authors openly attempted to mock me after I commented on the difficulty of obtaining the book and, at the same time, criticized some of the underlying science (based on his interview with Desiree). Due to my professional training in evolution and genetics, I am, ironically, actually qualified to provide a solid scientific review of their claims, but they seem a bit defensive. While I understand the defensiveness due to harsh and personal comments from people who think strict, heterosexual, lifelong monogamous relationships are the only answere for everyone, it is not a reassuring attitude to those of us used to strict academic scrutiny of ideas. In a similar vein, a lack of footnoting says, "Trust me. We did our research," which is something I trained not to do.
Nevertheless, I do plan on acquiring a copy in the nearish future and doing a thorough, scientific review of their theories.
I just finished reading it. (The author sent me a free review copy after I complained on my blog about books being expensive in Australia – how cool is that?)
I found myself nodding a lot while reading it, laughing out loud and shouting "Yes!"at various points. It was a fun, funny and interesting read.
I was slightly disappointed by a lot of the footnotes after I finished. It seemed that there were some references that were shakier than others. While a great read for a non science person, it lacked some scientific rigour.
But still, I found the authors made a great case for questioning the standard narrative of human sexuality. It addressed a lot of the problems I have with evo psych which was a relief. At times the author's style was a little repetitive, but as I usually put books down and pick them up again later, that could have been very helpful. In this case I couldn't put it down, so it sometimes bugged me.
This was a very important book. As a non-monogamous person, it was validating, but I think monogamous people could learn a great deal from reading it. Popular psychology often sets up an adversarial relationship between men and women with supposedly competing agendas, when really we should all be on the same side. Similarly, any behaviour outside of traditional monogamy and the nuclear family is "othered" and pathologised. This book offers insights into our past social structures and an alternative narrative in which love and support are separate, but not removed, from sexual behaviour. It makes a good case for why living the way we do feels so difficult sometimes and that maybe we should acknowledge the challenges rather than expecting it to come "naturally."
I am about 3/4 of the way through. I am reading Bonobo Handshake at the same time, and they are quite complimentary to read together!
One of the thoughts I keep having in reading Sex at Dawn is that while I understand that polyamory may be the natural state for humans as opposed to monogamy, where does the jealousy come from? Is it purely cultural?
I'm interviewing the author on August 13th, so I hope someone else will have read it by then and can throw out a question for him. He seems like a lovely dude.
I'm real interested in reading it, however I've got a few other books I haven't started yet which I bought recently, so I'm not allowed to buy anymore books from Amazon. :(
I'm interested in finding out how scientific it is, or if it's just sort of your usual evolutionary psychology 'just so' stories. I read 'Why is Sex Fun?' a long time ago; the topic of the evolution of human sexuality is of course very interesting to me. But sometimes the science can be a bit…fanciful.
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