Offering a wealth of examples ranging from cannibal spiders to sex-switching reef fish, Cooke dismantles a mass of misconceptions about binary sex roles, many of which can be traced back to that beloved bearded icon, Charles Darwin ... Cooke gleefully rebuts many of these assumptions about male dominance and female docility ..so full of marvellous surprises about sex roles that I sensed Cooke herself was transformed in its writing.
Cooke is willing to question the scientific validity of the evolutionary story as handed down by Darwin – a scientific sacred cow. To do so even now is to invite controversy and even anger, but the author does so with a charming mix of wit and scientific analysis. Cooke’s career in television began in comedy production, which is not surprising given her often hilarious descriptions of the sexual lives of hermaphrodite hagfish, lesbian albatrosses and bisexual bonobos ... Aside from knocking males off their evolutionary perch and empowering women, this book can inspire the LGBTQ community, as it’s clear that their identities and lives are reflected across the natural world.
... riveting research ... Cooke, a superb science writer with a Masters in zoology, covers the spectrum of female sexuality (and many other topics) throughout the animal kingdom, including more about spiders and hyenas than you ever thought you wanted to know.
Cooke likes to shock the reader ... This is a colourful, committed and deeply informed book, and it makes a good case for reappraisal. There are problems, though. When she is being funny, Cooke sometimes indulges in the kind of throaty feminism where you cheer whenever the boys lose. I found my sense of humour failing ... More important, she never quite convinces that the old paradigm is as busted as she claims. It matters that female dominance exists in the animal kingdom. But how common is it? We never find out the answer ... The chapter on sex binaries overclaims the loudest ... Cooke is clearly right that science was long distorted by sexism. But if it is true that scientists of the past were 'vulnerable to cultural pollution', then it is equally true today. It is no good replacing patriarchal bias with the liberal kind.
Noted TED speaker and author Cooke dives into sex and gender across the animal kingdom, dispelling all the misogynist notions of females being the weaker sex ... With humor and candor, she also discusses the diversity of female genitalia ... Cooke also places much-needed female faces to related studies, citing the work of Jeanne Altmann, Patricia Gowaty, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, and others. Their pioneering research shows that sex and gender have always been complex, innovative, and varied throughout the animal kingdom. This book elevates not just the science itself but the scientists that have been marginalized for too long.
Cooke freshly analyzes a hot-button topic ... Cooke expertly explains current scientific research with engaging humor, interspersed with first-person accounts and an impressive number of interviews with scientists who are rewriting the binary narrative. Her book encourages reflection but never overwhelms with information, even when, for instance, debunking accepted wisdom about XX and XY chromosomes ... Zoological notions of gender will challenge general readers to appreciate sexual diversity in animals and reassess human notions of 'female.'
A cheerful and knowledgeable popular science review of female animals ... A skilled journalist, Cooke has traveled the world to interview experts, most of them women, who have performed groundbreaking research and are unafraid to confront skeptical male colleagues ... Readers will receive a superb education in the evolution and mechanics of animal sex as well as countless colorful anecdotes describing bizarre reproductive behavior. Readers will find the familiar account of female spiders eating males as they try to mate, but there is much more to discover in Cooke’s fascinating pages ... A top-notch book of natural science that busts myths as it entertains.
... zippy ... The author has a charmingly irreverent style that, among other things, pokes holes in the sexist scientific research of old that used cherry-picked data to conclude females weren’t worth studying. This hits the right balance between informative and entertaining; popular science fans will want to check it out.
