RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksA game-changer, potentially no less significant to the field than Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, but in a noncanonical fashion, and void of the usual tropes ... Though the data speak for themselves, de Waal is an extremely attentive listener ... De Waal moves slowly, painstakingly so, and rarely jumps to conclusions. When it turns out that he is wrong — failing to gather enough observations, for instance — he lets the reader know. That, alone, is a prized value in the world of science ... Preferring to stay close to the data, he does not spin theories ... De Waal’s prose is concise and straightforward. His sensitivity to the prevailing zeitgeist that surrounds sex and gender is evident ... mountains of data, uncontaminated by parental or cultural expectations nor limited to self-reports and their all-pervasive biases ... There’s no end, in fact, to the fascinating details that emerge from this book, all carefully tied to supporting explanations, historical context, the prevalence of misinformation, the tendency to censor, the power of mindless biological determinism, and whatever else might be necessary for de Waal to make his point. Humor, and the curious anecdote, are never far behind. None of this, however, rises to the level of a foundational contribution to the study of sex and gender. The value of his book is the mortar that holds it all together: the underlying rationale for comparing human behavior to that of other primates ... The only misstep that I can detect — an exception that proves the rule, perhaps — is an example that de Waal uses to illustrate the ill-advised mind-body divide, the dualism conceit whereby the mind is the lofty tower in contrast with the serviceable body ... a towering achievement. Not simply does it cut through many Gordian knots that persist in the worlds of sex and gender, but de Waal manages to do so without relying on a higher authority such as a beloved theory. His data-based approach may not immediately appeal to audiences that prioritize complex reasoning and nonintuitive departures — readers who may also raise eyebrows about the wisdom of comparing de Waal to a brilliant French philosopher, as I have done — but the value outweighs the risk. We ignore important works at our own peril, especially if our goal is to better understand the many nuances and overt displays of sex and gender. A primatologist of de Waal’s stature has much to contribute to these discussions.
