Christopher Ryan (1)

A popular science book for people who hate science, Sex at Dawn manages to combine weak arguments with a prose style of such overbearing condescension that I had to grit my teeth to get through it. Everything is couched in terms of facile jokiness or, even worse, of coy euphemism, so that we have the ghastly prospect of a supposedly serious book about sexuality that can talk about a ‘human female's naughty bits’.

The basic argument is that evolutionary psychologists, anthropologists and show more palaeontologists are conspiring to propagate the ‘lie’ that human beings have evolved to be broadly monogamous. The few studies that ‘dare’ to question this narrative are hailed as revolutionary, while the rest of the scientific community is written off as ‘the clipboard-carrying crowd’, who ‘rigidly insist’ on the status quo. Unfortunately this blanket dismissal of an entire discipline succeeds only in fatally damaging the authors' own credibility.

The debate over prehistoric sexuality is one that I have followed amateurishly, but with some interest, so I was quite looking forward to seeing what kind of evidence was going to be brought forward. By about page 40 I had realised with a sinking feeling that there wasn't going to be any. Instead, their approach is simply to restate their opponents' arguments in the most ludicrously simplistic terms they can, and hope that will stand for a rebuttal.

For instance, there is a mountain of evidence suggesting that prehistoric females were in the habit of ‘bartering’ sex, consciously or otherwise, for access to protection and resources supplied by males. This is a complicated and sophisticated argument, which Ryan and Jethá summarise like so:

Darwin says your mother's a whore. Simple as that.

After reading that I gave up any hope of finding a serious argument in here.

Of the book's other stylistic tics, I will just highlight a few of the more irritating. There is a tendency to ask rhetorical questions as a substitute for actually making an argument: Could it be possible that…? Dare we ask whether…? ‘How many families are fractured by this common, tragic, undetected sequence of events?’ I don't know – do you?? If not, stop asking stupid questions and show me some evidence. (It reminds me of a tabloid headline like ARE IMMIGRANTS CAUSING CANCER?, where the rest of the article amounts to a long admission that the answer is ‘no’.)

A few other representative quotations: ‘Sexual monogamy itself may be shrinking men's balls’; ‘Homo sapiens: the great ape with the great penis!’; ‘ancestral females were shameless trollops’; ‘Who's your daddies?’; ‘We've no space for a comprehensive response to this’; ‘Yabba-dabba-doo’. Malthus is introduced, laughably, as ‘Wikipedia's eightieth Most Influential Person in History’.

If you're worried about missing the subtle message hidden in all this facile nudge-nudge-wink-winking, have no fear, because they will simply put entire sentences that they consider important in italics. Reading these passages feels like being talked down to by someone who doesn't even properly understand their own arguments. They also repeatedly make the infuriating implication that anyone who disagrees with them is doing so because they're morally offended or out of political expediency.

What makes it all so sad is that a book offering some new ideas on hot topics like male parental investment or female sexual receptivity would actually be very welcome. This is not that book. What it really is is a plea for a return to an imagined ‘ancient [sexual] egalitarianism’ where humans – especially men – had repercussion-free sex with multiple partners. I would be more than happy to read a book promoting the benefits of polyamory, but please, don't dress it up as science.

Sex at Dawn was condemned by most of the academic community, but it was widely promoted by people like Dan Savage and Peter Sagal, and ended up on the New York Times bestseller list. It doesn't deserve the attention, and I wish I'd done a bit more research on it before I bought a copy. Instead, my advice is to consider the response that a pseudonymous primatologist was moved to write, [book:Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn|15892127]. Because my impression of this one is that it's a disastrous blend of wilful misrepresentations with very poor writing. show less

A fascinating audiobook narrated by the author. Most of his arguments I already supported but he did a good job pulling them all together into a clear theme. Of course, we can't go back to foraging in 150-person tribes, nor would we necessarily want to. (Impossible with 8 billion humans and a deteriorating environment.) But we can learn what worked for them for eons of time before agriculture, and incorporate some of their habits into our hectic, high tech world.

He delved into some taboo show more topics like routine infant circumcision, which began in the U.S. in the 1800s to prevent masterb*tion -- without the infant's consent, of course, or anesthesia. Only in the U.S. with their sex-obsessed Christians.

And co-sleeping. An infant alone all night in their "nursery" is unnatural and frightening. Thank you, Christopher, for your courage in bringing this up. Co-sleeping can be done safely, such as setting the crib by the parents' bed where the baby can be patted to sleep.

I always wondered why we have so much stuff, entertainment, and conveniences, and yet everyone is still so mad and sad. (Think road rage, shootings, suicide.) This book may hold the key.

Fortunately, some of the old methods can be applied to modern life to help heal our "civilization." But many cannot.

Overall, an engaging look at our modern "civilized" world.

Highly recommended! show less

By examining physical, cultural, and anthropological data in modern humans, ancient human ancestors, and our closest living primate kin, Ryan presents revolutionary evidence that our prehistoric sexual and relationship dynamic was one involving multiple partners.

One disquieting takeaway is in the chapters speculating upon naturally-occurring violence among primates: it turns out that this supposedly inborn tendency toward violence, observed by anthropologists Goodall and Chagnon, commenced show more only upon the introduction of food or resources via the researchers themselves! Although somewhat dryly presented at times -- surprising, given the potentially provocative subject matter! -- I have to admit that the argument against instinctive monogamy is fairly convincing. However, if it is true that monogamy is, for humans, entirely a culturally and religiously prescribed practice rather than an innate inclination, where does that leave us? It is one thing to understand or accept the science in one's brain, but what of one's heart? And how to reconcile it with the culture of today? show less

Fun read that comes with pre-packaged sarcasm about the illogical ways we have structured our society since agriculture. This contains an accessible analysis of how statistics have been used to distort ideas about both female and male sexuality and cites studies that have good quality validity in terms of measuring what they purport to measure. 10,000 years is a blip in human evolution, not nearly enough to shift us to monogamy and the authors make a compelling argument for the show more archaelogical, anthopological and even extant biological evidence in our current bodies for why our culture does monogamy so poorly - and for why we maybe, just maybe, first shouldn't feel so bad about that, and second can then consider working out relationship arrangements that actually work for us.

I work in a library, and watched three little girls waiting to check out their books with their guardian yesterday. They came together for a group hug - one that involved ostentatious and stylized kissing - and then, giggling, decided they liked it so much they wanted to do it again. The forthright enjoyment of human contact and expression of desire for that contact may seem like a simple and direct thing, but gods, I can't remember the last time I was touched. We are social creatures, and I wish we had more forthright acknowledgement of the fact that we need physical contact, sexual and platonic.

Maybe the work peeps will be interested in instituting voluntary group hug time in the schedule. show less