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Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can't Learn About Sex from Animals Paperback – June 4, 2002

by Marlene Zuk (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 13 ratings
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Scientific discoveries about the animal kingdom fuel ideological battles on many fronts, especially battles about sex and gender. We now know that male marmosets help take care of their offspring. Is this heartening news for today's stay-at-home dads? Recent studies show that many female birds once thought to be monogamous actually have chicks that are fathered outside the primary breeding pair. Does this information spell doom for traditional marriages? And bonobo apes take part in female-female sexual encounters. Does this mean that human homosexuality is natural? This highly provocative book clearly shows that these are the wrong kinds of questions to ask about animal behavior. Marlene Zuk, a respected biologist and a feminist, gives an eye-opening tour of some of the latest developments in our knowledge of animal sexuality and evolutionary biology. Sexual Selections exposes the anthropomorphism and gender politics that have colored our understanding of the natural world and shows how feminism can help move us away from our ideological biases.

As she tells many amazing stories about animal behavior--whether of birds and apes or of rats and cockroaches--Zuk takes us to the places where our ideas about nature, gender, and culture collide. Writing in an engaging, conversational style, she discusses such politically charged topics as motherhood, the genetic basis for adultery, the female orgasm, menstruation, and homosexuality. She shows how feminism can give us the tools to examine sensitive issues such as these and to enhance our understanding of the natural world if we avoid using research to champion a feminist agenda and avoid using animals as ideological weapons.

Zuk passionately asks us to learn to see the animal world on its own terms, with its splendid array of diversity and variation. This knowledge will give us a better understanding of animals and can ultimately change our assumptions about what is natural, normal, and even possible.
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  1. Print length
    251 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    University of California Press
  4. Publication date
    June 4, 2002
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.63 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0520240758
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0520240759
  8. Lexile measure
    1450L
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Zuk takes the reader on a tour, and her message is an eloquent and important warning: because gender biases have shaped the way researchers have studied animal behaviour, and because we also look to the behaviour of animals to inform ourselves about our own behaviour, we are in danger of perpetuating these gender biases. Take heed!"--"BBC Wildlife Magazine

From the Inside Flap

"Zuk's analogies are better than anyone's--pithy, insightful, and funny. Who said feminists lack humor? Zuk made me laugh with deep pleasure more than once, as she reviewed the lessons of feminism for our understanding of non-human animals. Her main point--that studying the lives of non-humans should not be for the lessons they seem to provide for our political purposes, but for the pleasure of knowing nature on its own terms--will be compelling reading for all naturalists, feminists and not-feminists alike."--Patricia Adair Gowaty, editor of Feminism and Evolutionary Biology

"Marlene Zuk uniquely combines a great breadth of knowledge about the behavior of animals with an ability to challenge conventional wisdom. She also writes with a graceful style and a mischievous wit. The result is a bold, fresh and feminist book about how our sex lives evolved."--Matt Ridley, author of Genome

"This is an engaging and much needed book, which I hope will be widely read."--Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, author of Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; First Edition (June 4, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 251 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0520240758
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0520240759
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1450L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.63 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 13 ratings

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M. Zuk

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4.4 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Mo Cathy
    5.0 out of 5 stars Soccer, Adaptations, and Orgasms
    Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Wonderfully written book. It expanded how and why I thought of sexual selection in nature in specific ways.

    Excellent book for Biology and veterinarian majors. Pairs best with 'The Genial Gene'.
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  • Rob Hardy
    5.0 out of 5 stars Learning About Animals, Not About Morals
    Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2002
    Marlene Zuk is a biologist, and has specialized in studying insects, especially crickets. Part of the reason she had picked insects for her field is that they are very much unlike humans; she knows that studying primates, dolphins, or other mammals would be harder for her because of a human tendency to anthropomorphize. She says that with insects "it is harder to see myself reflected in their behavior." That sort of recognition of how all of us react to animals informs her remarkable book, _Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can't Learn about Sex from Animals_ (University of California Press), which is full of information about the sex lives of our fellow creatures on the planet, what we have to learn from them, and why we can't apply what we learn to ourselves. She shows that animals have incredibly varied versions of sex, and "... if we try to use animal behavior in a simplistic manner to reflect on human behavior, we will, in myriad ways, misperceive both."
    Zuk is a feminist as well as scientist, and is dismayed by the use of examples in biology to represent either feminism or "traditional family values." As a feminist, Zuk was initially heartened by the merging of environmental concern and women's rights into "ecofeminism." "Mother Nature" or some other Earth goddess is frequently invoked, but Zuk demonstrates her doubts that biological lessons show that females tend to be more caring, less aggressive, or more empathetic. She gives examples of, say, reed warbler females who practice infanticide on rivals' eggs, or female wasps that battle fiercely to take control of a colony. There is nothing wrong with showing that females do not have to be passive, but insisting that nature reinforces stereotypes of any sort will not only be futile, it will keep us from learning what animals are really doing. Birds look so industrious and caring in their efforts to make nests and nurture their young that we tend to picture them as examples of propriety, and sermons have been written on the theme. Especially with the advent of easy DNA testing, however, we are learning that males roam around to the territories of other males to intrude upon their females, and that the females were receptive of such attention. Even in the scientific literature, judgmental terms such as "adultery" and "fooling around" have been used for such behavior; perhaps these are simply more fun to say than "extra-pair copulations."
    There are surprising revelations here on many areas of animal and human sexuality, homosexuality, male and female orgasms, menstruation, and much more. Zuk knows a wide range of peculiar and completely natural animal behaviors, and her persuasive book shows that we habitually look at such behaviors through our own lenses. We will have to learn our morals elsewhere than from creatures produced by amoral evolution. In a typical humorous aside (this is a witty book that is a pleasure to read), Zuk points out that female snakes may mate with numerous males, even in writhing balls of mating snakes, and this "... must imply what? Orgies are natural? Sexually voracious females are to be applauded?" Skip the morals and object lessons, she demonstrates; intelligent watching of what evolution has produced is far more important.
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  • Dennis Littrell
    4.0 out of 5 stars Reconciling feminism and evolutionary biology
    Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2002
    University of California, Riverside biology professor Marlene Zuk, whose specialty is insects, especially crickets, makes two main points in this modest volume. One, what is "natural" as observed in nature is not necessary right and should not be used as a guide for human society; and two, how we interpret the behavior of animals is colored by our biases, both anthropomorphic and male-gendered.

    Professor Zuk writes from the avowed position of a feminist, although she makes it clear that she is not an "ecofeminist" nor does she agree with those feminists who believe that the exercise of science and "attempts to study the world are just culturally derived exercises relevant only in a certain social context." (p. 16)

    In other words, Zuk wants to reconcile the ways of science, especially evolutionary biology, to feminists while pointing out to biologists that many of their preconceptions contain a male bias. She recalls a poem from A.E. Housman that includes the phrase "witless nature" which she takes as a cornerstone for her position. Nature "is not kind, not cruel, not red in tooth and claw, nor benign in its ministrations. It is utterly, absolutely impartial." (p. 15)

    From this it follows (for most of us anyway) that we should not draw moral conclusions about how people should behave, nor should we form notions of what is "right" or "wrong" from observations of nature. This is a position that most professionals in evolutionary biology today appreciate, although this was not always the case, as Zuk is quick to remind us. She sees the antiquated notion of scala naturae (from Aristotle) which puts humans at the pinnacle of evolution as part of the reason for the errors of the past. Humans were seen as the positive norm, and to the extent that the behavior of other animals deviated from that they were inferior. Zuk also points to a "male model in biology" assumed by biologists (consciously or unconsciously), as an addition source of bias. She points to the idea that males are more aggressive than females as an example of an unwarranted preconception.

    My experience (for what it's worth--I coached girl's basketball some years ago, and believe me the girls were VERY aggressive), and from what I know of aggressiveness theoretically, suggests that females are indeed just as aggressive as males in going after what they want. The reason that women use violence (a kind of aggressiveness) less than men do has to do with social conditioning of course, but also with the fact that a woman's reproductive capability is seldom if ever enhanced by the use of physical force while a male may use force to his reproductive advantage. In the case of non-human animals I am thinking especially of male lions killing the cubs of another male to bring the female into estrus. In the case of humans I am thinking of human males using the spoils of war to gain access to females and to nurture their offspring. (I am NOT thinking of rape since that sort of unsocial, high-risk behavior seldom leads to successful reproduction; more often it leads to ostracization and an early demise for the rapist, a state of affairs that is not adaptive.)

    Zuk writes in a witty style that is easy to read. Her target readership is the non-specialist; indeed one gets the sense that she is addressing her undergraduate students. Politically speaking, she steers a middle course between the extremes of the sociobiological right and the socialist left, a fact underscored by the appearance on the cover of endorsements from Matt Ridley on the right, Patricia Adair Gowaty from the left, and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy from somewhere in the middle.

    I would give a more ringing endorsement of this book were it not for the fact that there is virtually nothing new in Zuk's very agreeable presentation, and my lingering sense that a person who identifies herself as "feminist" biologist (instead of merely a biologist) is not entirely objective any more than the old guys from the patriarchy were. However, to be fair, at no place in the book does Zuk espouse anything close to a preference for the politically correct at the expense of scientific inquiry, as feminists sometimes do when the conclusions are not what they want. Zuk knows that to make science subordinate to what is politically and socially agreeable is to sacrifice science completely. Indeed, I see this as the profound central message of her book, and a reason to hope this book receives a wide readership.

    --Dennis Littrell, author of "Understanding Evolution and Ourselves"
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  • hoang ho
    2.0 out of 5 stars Two Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2018
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  • shorebird
    4.0 out of 5 stars 行動生態学とフェミニズム
    Reviewed in Japan on August 11, 2003
    Verified Purchase
    ハミルトン博士と一緒に性選択パラサイト説を論文にしたズック博士（この方は女性です）の性選択の本だと思って飛びついて読みました．中身は性選択の本というよりはフェミニズムと行動生態学が社会に与える意味（そして急進的なフェミニズムがいかにイデオロギー的で真実から遠く離れてしまうか）についての本でした．悩みぬいたことを本にしている迫力は感じます．ところどころの行動生態学的なエピソードも楽しい．
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  • Thedogman
    5.0 out of 5 stars Everone should read this.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 29, 2011
    Verified Purchase
    If I were a biology professor and not some lowly student I would definitely invite this author to talk at my University. She gives some really fresh insights into what a model species is, why we should not anthropomorhise, how we still to this day use our own cultural biases to judge the behaviour of animals and to manipulate our interpretations of animal behaviour in select species to create judgements for ourselves on both sides of the idealogical spectrum.

    I had actually bought the book (due to the lack of any review here that told me otherwise) because I hoped to look into her research on jungle wild fowl, which I had read a couple of papers referring to. It was going to be more for research regarding testosterone/ parasites and sexual selection than anything else. And those areas are not really covered here. In fact I was a little mortified to find it was a 'feminist' book, since all I have experienced of 'feminists' have been scary separatist, extreme, manhaters... I'm not kidding.

    So it was pleasantly surprising to find that this author seems to be none of those things. In fact she is as much attempting to re-educate feminists on attitudes to biology, and uses feminism only to open useful questions about our tilted interpretations of biology. This is a real mind opener.
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