Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People

by Joan Roughgarden

Book Overview

In this innovative celebration of diversity and affirmation of individuality in animals and humans, Joan Roughgarden challenges accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation. A distinguished evolutionary biologist, Roughgarden takes on the medical establishment, the Bible, social science--and even Darwin himself. She leads the reader through a fascinating discussion of diversity in gender and sexuality among fish, reptiles, amphibians,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B01E1TIU7K
• ISBN13: 9780520280458
• Release Date: September 2013
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

4.5 Stars for Progressing Science

I read the original hardcover edition of 2004. The book has 400 regular text pages (180 about animals, for the very most part vertebrates and the occasional insect; 220 about humans), a seven-page appendix, 50 pages of footnotes and with the rest altogether 492 pages. The perspective of an openly transgendered science author is most refreshing - and necessary. Some reviewers choose to indulge in rhetoric that for the status of her transgender nature the author has to be biased automatically and as the result the book has to get dismissed. I am sorry, but I can't follow that line of thought. The most it shows is that the author has an interest to come closer to the truth. In contrast to the usual transphobic and/or homophobic biologist in a deeply transphobic and homophobic society, she is NOT biased against anyone. Occasionally, she raises questions, offers a thesis, but leaves the final answer open, as we don't know yet. She isn't sparing lesbian and gay authors either, when it comes to perception warps. Frankly, she uses science exactly as I do. (I deleted "medical" in the following quote.): "Our task as informed readers of science is to extract as best as we can the data from the layers of ... prejudice in which they're embedded." I have to say, even without any claim of final judgement by her or me, her theories make much more sense than what we are fed with by most other "education". When the establishment's biologists' theories don't add up, they get deservedly ridiculed. Joan Roughgarden is also criticizing biased language which humanizes animals, e.g. when the behavior of some birds is expressed in criminalizing vocabulary, thereby distorting what is objectively happening. She is also further developing or correcting existing knowledge, as she expects to get treated the same way. She re-thinks some of Darwin's essential theses and sinks the sexual selection theory. [Don't mind the title in this context, I recommend also reading Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can't Learn about Sex from Animals by a feminist biologist. Occasionally, Roughgarden is also summarizing parts of the modern classic Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (Stonewall Inn Editions), an encyclopedia on some 450 lesbian, gay, transgendered and "alternatively" heterosexual animal species]. Personally, I have only minor criticisms. For one thing, she isn't always providing the Latin and/or exact (sub)species name of the peculiar examples of animal ways of life. Sometimes, they are provided in the footnotes, other times not, especially concerning fish. It is very ardous to find out more about those examples elsewhere, when you don't know the exact name. Her examples are true, of course, as far as I was able to find the species and read up on them. While her general lines of thought sound correct, occasionally, she is simplifying matters by leaving out "surplus" information. For example on the function of antlers, she has forgotten to ment

a biological reason for tolerance

a very interesting and mindful book. interesting in that it shows how the gender dichotomy of western societies is ever so rigid and needs to loosen up. mindful in that it exudes tolerance and simply makes you appreciate diversity. i enjoyed reading it.

A celebration of diversity

Roughgarden's work in Evolution's Rainbow should be required reading for all college and high school students in the country. Starting with relatively simple animals and working into increasingly complex organisms (finally culminating with humans), Roughgarden convincingly and irrefutably demonstrates how sexual diversity is widespread in nature, not simply "weird statistical anomalies" as many believe. In fact, an over-abundance of examples from nature in the first section of the book is often somewhat exhausting to follow, but serves to establish the widespread nature of homosexuality, transsexuality, and even intersexuality in nature. And finally, the ending sections of the book, demonstrating how various societies have accepted/incorporpated sexually diverse elements, should serve as a motivation for LGBTI peoples around the world. Overall an excellent and politically timely book that can be appreciated by biologists and non-scientists alike.

A great start

Finally, someone is putting together all of the real, scientific information regarding sexuality and gender variance in the animal world. Roughgarden may well have taken on too much for one book - there is something of a rushed pace and she often drops dissertation-worthy bits of information into one page - but she has gathered some wonderful examples of the true nature of diversity in the animal kingdom. Her reasons for writing the book may be political and personal in nature, but I think her reasoning and biology are sound.

Maybe the most important biological book of the 21st century

Joan Roughgarden is a world-class population biologist, unusually qualified to write on this topic as she is a rare combination of a distinguished theoretician and an accomplished field experimentalist. She has produced a stunning volume that reexamines peoples' comfortable assumptions about gender identity and reevaluates Darwin's theory of sexual selection. Roughgarden brings not only her great technical expertise to bear on these topics, but she also deals clearly and compassionately with the many social issues where gender is involved. She makes a powerful plea for sane approaches to subjects that even within the scientific community are classically clouded with biological misinformation and prejudice. There are lots of books exposing the biological nonsense of racism; this is the first to do the same for homophobia and related psychoneuroses. Agree or disagree with the many conclusions, this is a book that every biologist, indeed every human being interested in sex, should read.Reviewer: Paul R. Ehrlich, author of Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect.