Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book provides some good descriptions of sexual and gender diversity in nature and in a variety of human cultures, and makes a number of valid criticisms of biases against diversity in the scientific community and in society at large.
Many of her attempts to criticize sexual selection theory are plausible criticisms of beliefs that don't have much connection to sexual selection theory (e.g. the belief that all sexually reproducing organisms fall into one of two gender stereotypes).
Her more direct attacks on the theory amount to claiming that "almost all diversity is good" and ignoring the arguments of sexual selection theorists who describe traits that appear to indicate reduced evolutionary fitness (see Geoffrey Miller's book The Mating Mind). She practically defines genetic defects out of existence. She tries to imply that biologists agree on her criteria for a "genetic defect", but her criteria require that a "trait be deleterious under all conditions" (I suspect most biologists would say "average" instead of "all"), and that it reduce fitness by at least 5 percent.
Her "alternative" theory, social selection, may have some value as a supplement to sexual selection theory, but I see no sign that it explains enough to replace sexual selection theory.
She sometimes talks as if she were trying to explain the evolution of homosexuality, but when doing so she is referring to bisexuality, and doesn't attempt to explain why an animal would be exclusively homosexual.
Her obsession with discrediting sexual selection comes from an exaggerated fear that the theory implies that most diversity is bad. This misrepresents sexual selection theory (which only says that some diversity represents a mix of traits with different fitnesses). It's also a symptom of her desire to treat natural as almost a synonym for good (she seems willing to hate diversity if it's created via genetic engineering).
She tries to imply that a number of traits (e.g. transsexualism) are more common than would be the case if they significantly reduced reproductive fitness, but her reasoning seems to depend on the assumption that those traits can only be caused by one possible mutation. But if there are multiple places in the genome where a mutation could produce the same trait, there's no obvious limit to how common a low-fitness trait could be.
Her policy recommendations are of very mixed quality. She wants the FDA to regulate surgical and behavioral therapies the way it regulates drugs, and claims that would stop doctors from "curing" nondiseases such as gender dysphoria. But she doesn't explain why she expects the FDA to be more tolerant of diversity than doctors. Instead, why not let the patient decide as much as possible whether to consider something a disease?

This is an exhilarating and yet strange book, written by a passionate and highly talented scientist. The book is exhilarating because it weaves personal experience and academic research into a highly politicized plea for tolerance of, indeed affection for, diversity of sexual expression. The book is strange because the object of attack, Darwinian sexual selection theory, is not a real political enemy at all. I dare say that a huge majority of evolutionary biologists both accept Darwin's theory in some form, yet also accept homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and sex change (Roughgarden reports elsewhere that when she went to Condoleezza Rice, Provost at her home institution, Stanford University, to ask if she could keep her job as tenured professor after she had a sex change operation, Rice was totally supportive). Conversely, those who are intolerant of sexual diversity are most likely to be Creationists for whom Darwinism is as close to the Devil as homosexuality. Roughgarden, it is clear, chooses her battles emotionally, not strategically.

Roughgarden rejects Darwin's theory of sexual selection because (a) it is incorrect, and (b) it perpetrates intolerance of human sexual diversity. It is wrong because it portrays sex in animals as highly uniform, with females investing heavily in each gamete (eggs are very large) and being coy and conservative concerning mating, and males being promiscuous and investing very little in gametes (sperm being exceedingly tiny). It is perpetrates intolerance because it promotes the myth that divergence from the sexual stereotype is abnormal and pathological.

Roughgarden has been accused of committing the "naturalistic fallacy," which says that "was is, is good." In this case, it is easy to think that Roughgarden claims that because there is sexual diversity in nature, and because there is homosexuality and gender change in nature, therefore it is natural that humans are sexually diverse, and those that oppose diversity are enemies of the nature expression of sexuality. This argument is of course fatally flawed. It is easy to find species in which adultery is common, species in which a new male mate kills the young of the previous male, species in which individuals abandon their young with high probability, species in which females generally mate with all the males in the group, and species in which individuals eat each other's feces. This does not make adultery, killing and abandoning offspring, or sharing feces at dinnertime, acceptable practice for humans. In fact, Roughgarden does not commit the naturalistic fallacy. Her argument is that since Victorian times we have lived in a culture that is hostile to sexual diversity, that this is a morally bad cultural bias, and it both oppresses gays, lesbians, and transsexuals today, and accounts for the poor interpretation of sexual dynamics in Darwinian theory. Moreover, she argues that it is illegitimate to use the argument that these diverse sexual practices are "against nature" as a valid critique, just as criticisms of adultery cannot be based on the absence or rarity of "adultery" in other species.

About 80% of this book is a pure pleasure to read, as well as being extremely informative concerning the variety of sexual behaviors in the animal world and a wide variety of human cultures through time and space. Evolution's Rainbow is also a good source of instruction in evolutionary biology as long as "Darwin's theory of sexual selection" is not in question.

The basic argument of the book is that sex is basically cooperative, not competitive and conflictive, as is presented in standard evolutionary theory. I am not sympathetic to this argument. I learned standard evolutionary biology, and accepted both the widespread validity of the coy female/promiscuous male theory without (a) believing that it is universally valid for the animal world, or (b) at all valid for humans. Moreover, I learned from modern biological theory that cooperation is just as important as competition and conflict. Indeed, the modern biological interpretation of the increase in biological complexity since the first bacteria is due to the synergy of cooperation among units of one level of complexity leading to the emergence of a new level of complexity. This process is inherently cooperative, but the emergence of a new level depends on suppressing conflict among individuals on the older level. All of biological life, I learned and I still believe, is an interaction of cooperation and conflict. This include relations between (among?) the sexes in reproduction and nurturing of offspring.

It is not impossible to treat Roughgarden's "counterexamples" as merely oddities or simple exceptions to the rule. Certainly this is what I thought before I read this book. She has convinced me that this is a poor way to think of sexual diversity in the animal world. She has also convinced me that there may be subtle but important forms of sociality in animals to which one is blind if one interprets everything through the lens of Darwin's version of sexual selection. She has not proved the case even in a single species, but she certainly raises plausible alternatives to traditional explanations.

A major issue is treated confusedly in the book, and I have found it to be perpetrated in even the most erudite reviews of the book. Darwin's theory of male decoration was what has been called the "sexy male" theory, as developed analytically by Ronald Fisher and others. This theory says that through random drift, females come to prefer some fitness-neutral aspects of the male, and the female will both mate preferentially with males having this attribute and pass the gene preferring this attribute on to her offspring. There is thus "runaway sexual selection" which is fitness-reducing for the species since it is costly to produce the trait for the male, and costly to be choosy over the trait for the female. As far as I can tell, and I have studied this theory closely, it has absolutely no support either theoretically or empirically. It is just a dead theory, despite its being a favorite of evolutionary psychology--a field dominated by researchers who cannot understand the math and do not study non-humans, but who are great popularizers and appear to have convinced a gullible public of its importance.

The correct version of the Darwinian sexual selection theory is the "costly signaling" approach, which says that decorated males are likely to have "good genes," and hence to increase the fitness of the female's offspring. Roughgarden implicitly accepts the "good genes" approach without argument, merely complaining that females care about the total contribution of the male, not just the quality of the genes passed on to the offspring. However, her general critique of the standard account of sexual dynamics in Darwinian evolutionary theory is misguided. Roughgarden gives no proof that the "good genes" theory is incorrect, or that her "social selection" theory is universally, or even frequently, superior. Her alternatives are creative and interesting, such her suggestion that male decoration is a signal of general prosociality. But it is certainly not proved. Moreover, her claim that the standard signaling theory behind the good genes model is based on generalized "deceit" perpetrated by the male is just wrong. The first principle of signaling theory is that signals that persist over time must be on balance veridical, or else the receiver would increase fitness by ignoring the signal, so some mutant that ignores the signal will eventually emerge and will eventually displace the gullible signal receivers.

Roughgarden rejects the "good genes" theory on grounds that females care about their mates' total contribution to the social resources of the group, not just the genetic quality of the male. But, what determines such total contribution if not the genetic quality of the male? One can hypothesize that males have certain personal characteristics that are not incorporated in its genome, but for most species, this is not at all plausible.

I suspect that Roughgarden's research will broaden and enrich existing models of strategic sexual interaction rather than replace them. Despite Roughgarden's insistence that her ideas are an alternative to Darwin's, I find the two quite compatible, and I suspect Darwin, were he still around, would agree.

Another peculiarity of the book is that Roughgarden treats all deviations of sexuality from the standard coy female/promiscuous male model as adaptations that improve the fitness of the individuals involved. I believe generally that costly species' characteristics that required many cooperative mutations to occur are almost certain to be adaptations. But the huge variety of sexual practices and their close association with speciation makes it likely that much of this variety is random drift rather than an adaptation. In particular, it does not follow from "evolution's rainbow" that extensive sexual diversity is adaptive either for the individual or the group. Moreover, who cares? We can accept sexual diversity for its own sake, not because it arose as an adaption or is serves some adaptive purpose in modern society.

Many researchers, even those with strong moral incentives to do scientific research, are put off by how intimately Roughgarden links her moral principles to her scientific theories. This certainly makes me uncomfortable. I can work with other research intimately for years without finding out, or being interested in the least in, their political or moral positions. No one knows from my published work on human cooperation and conflict what my political and ethical view are, and I am happy to keep it that way. On the other hand, Roughgarden's personal commitment is refreshing and is an attractive aspect of this book

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.

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.

This book introduces the reader to various sexual practices and gender identifications throughout the animal world, and throughout the history of mankind. The author provides examples throughout nature where the stereotypical roles of large dominant males mating solely and exclusively with smaller, submissive females is not the norm, or even does not occur. The author catalogues and describes a comprehensive list of animals that change genders, animals with more than two genders, and animals where gender roles physiologically change whether it be seasonally, or during times of duress. The author also catalogues and describes various practices (not just instances) of homosexuality, polygamy, polygyny, and bisexuality within the animal kingdom. Thru all this description, the reader comes to understand that the creatures of this earth exhibit quite a diverse plethora of sexual behaviors and identities. Eye-opening is an understatement. The author then forwards the proposition that sexuality and gender are characteristics is more of a personaly choice than genetic heritage. Here, the author clearly shows a bias towards the political left, and a willingness to go out on a limb to argue her points. This is where the book goes from wonderful to somewhat boorish. But all in all, this is a very interesting book to read.

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.

Without any exaggeration, this book is the reason I am: a biology major, specializing in animal sexuality, a scientist at all. I read it my junior year of high school for a "science book" project - granted, with a moderate amount of interest in the aforementioned fields but certainly not moving towards them in any life-defining way - and I have loaned it out to dozens of people since then. (They just have to put up with my copious highlighting, bookmarks, and commentary.)

Whether or not one agrees with her thesis, the rejection of sexual selection - and I agree that the book alone did not convince me fully, though subsequent biology classes may have - this book is a marvelous reference and showing of the sheer, heart-stopping, mind-blowing diversity in the natural world. By page 27, Dr. Roughgarden has presented a list that would shock most people - some organisms aren't male or female for life, males and females aren't defined by XX and XY chromosomes, males aren't always bigger, males give birth in many species, there are MANY genders, males and females can be indistinguishable, sometimes females have penises and males lactate, it's far from true that males always control females, the idea that females are monogamous and males are opportunistic is a load of bunk in many species, and, well, the *only* defining characteristic of "sex" is the size of your gametes. No matter how much you already know about animal sexuality, the first section of this book will, guaranteed, tell you some amazing fact to awe you once again. That alone makes this book worth it, and a force to open eyes and minds.

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 mention that in some species they are also erogenous zones. As I am not a biologist and know that by chance only, I wonder what else might have been left out. I am not quite sure wether the "development of homosexuality" is probably happening between the ages from 1-10. In fact, I am surprised to read such a line of thought coming from this author.

Not really criticism, but constructive reasonings: It doesn't seem to occur to the author that in a certain triangle of bird relationship one male isn't mating with the female, because she is HIS MOTHER (= not the best of gene mixing choices). I would be careful to exclusively judge procreation advantage as the thing which counts in the animal kingdom. I am specifically referring to the mentioned salmons, some of them living longer, some more time in danger etc. She is basing one thesis on the preceding question of why any human isn't homosexual (as in bisexual) like the bonobos are. Well, she has forgotten that in some human societies that was or is very much the case. As in various societies on New Guinea (read Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia (Studies in Melanesian Anthropology)). Or, of potential special interest to the author, supposedly every male Samoan has had sexual encounters with a Fa'afafine at least once. ("Biological men" who in childhood are chosen to be raised to assume female gender roles.) Which concerns exactly what she elaborates on in Western society as the exception, i.e. non-fetish lovers who don't expect transsexuals to alter her body appearance.

However, I don't have to agree 100% with the author. The information and challenge value far exceeds these minor flaws of my perceptions to merit a full subtraction of a star in the rating. Her occasional colloquial inserts keep the book a fun reading on top of everything.

She is also going into the Bible a bit. Which may be the reason why some reviewers are especially jolted.

Books make a lot more sense when you talk about the elephant in the corner of the room, and in this case, that means sex. About the time that EO Wilson published Sociobiology, biologists have been applying evolutionary analysis to human beings. And the lesson has been, quite frankly, conservative. Franz de Wall writes in Our Inner Ape that "The dilemma of how to engender cooperation among sexual competitors was solved in a single stroke with the establishment of the nuclear family. The arrangement offered almost every male a chance at reproduction, hence incentives to contribute to the common good. We should look at the human pair-bond, therefore, as the key to the incredible level of cooperation that marks our species." The biologist Sarah Blaffer-Hrdy wrote Mother Nature to reconcile feminism with sociobiology, but even she conceded that "Sociobiology is not a field known for the encouraging news it offers either sex. Yet its most promising revelation to date has to be that over evolutionary time, lifelong monogamy turns out to be the cure for all sorts of detrimental devices that one sex uses to the exploit the other."

Needless to say, sociobiology is not great news for people who think that alternatives to monogamy are good. And that is where Joan Roughgarden enters the picture. She summarizes her main thesis as "Overall, sex is essentially cooperative - a natural covenant to share the genetic wealth. Sexual reproduction is not a battle." This does not fit very well with males fighting for dominance and coy females gratefully joining the harem of the winner. Traditional sociobiology teaches that sex is the ultimate winner-take-all economy. Roughgarden disagrees.

Roughgarden's main line of attack is to point out the value of genetic diversity. According to Darwinist theory, asexual species should outperform sexual species. After all, those with "great genes" should be able to donate 100% of their genetic wealth to their offspring. By contrast, a member of a sexual species can only donate 50% of their genetic wealth. So you would expect the asexual species to out compete their sexual rivals. But with a few rare exceptions, they don't. Why not? Because of the value of diversity. One butterfly may be larger and stronger than other butterflys, but only because it has enzymes optimized for a cold, damp, and dark environment. If the climate gets warmer and sunnier, its rivals with "inferior" enzymes will outcome it. Asexual species are force to put all their eggs in one basket (pun intended). When the environment changes, they die. The reason why sexual species do better is because of their genetic diversity.

Roughgarden argues (p.21) that this puts sociobiologists into a tough spot. On one hand they agree that genetic diversity is good for adapting to a changing environment, but on the other hand, they say that females prefer the alpha males with "great genes". Sociobiologists can't have it both ways, Roughgarden says. The essence of her theory is that sex and alternatives to monogamy are ways for this rich genetic diversity to be shared by the group. So the battle lines are drawn. Orthodox sociobiology has a dark vision of sex and human nature. It holds that males fight to demonstrate their "great genes" to females. Thus monogamy is really a type of detente. Monogamy deescalates the sexual competition between males. Roughgarden stands this on its head. She says that promiscuity is good because it spreads the genetic diversity widely. And beta males are not genetic losers; they just have novel reproductive strategies, such as by adopting feminine traits as a way to show females that they would be devoted caregivers rather than goonish alpha males.

However, there is no paradox in orthodox sociobiology and sociobiologists can have it both ways. I'm sure everyone has heard of the prisoner's dilemma - the most famous problem in game theory. The police arrest two bank robbers but they only have enough evidence to convict them for a minor crime. So they separate the two prisoners and make each of them a deal: testify against your partner and your jail sentence will be reduced. If you stay silent and your partner testifies against you, then you will go to jail for bank robbery while he gets the light sentence. I don't want to get too bogged down in the details of the prisoner's dilemma, but the main point is that no matter what the other guy does, your best play is to testify against him. But since the other guy faces the same incentives, he will also testify against you. The upshot is that the police end out getting the testimony of both prisoners and they both go to jail for robbery.

The prisoner's dilemma highlights a crucial problem in the social and behavioral sciences. Sometimes what is good for individuals is bad for the group. The good of the group would be advanced if the prisoners could both cooperate (stay silent). But the good of the individual is advanced if they choose to defect (testify). In these cases, individuals tend to choose their own self-interest and the group suffers. And that's exactly what happens in matters of sex and reproduction. The good of the group is promoted by females making choices that value sexual diversity, but it is in the self-interest of each female to choose the fittest male butterfly possible. Sure, the environment may change, but it probably won't. So her best odds are by choosing males adapted to the current environment. So the prisoner's dilemma leads to males fighting battles for dominance and females choosing the alpha males. They are the fittest strongest males in the current environment. The only way to solve the prisoner's dilemma is to force people to stop defecting. Sometimes the government can do this (such as by regulating environment pollution). But in this case, the solution comes from sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction promotes genetic diversity in comparison to asexual reproduction. But only partially. Females can still free ride by choosing to reproduce with the most dominant male. Thus traditional sociobiology is not in a bind at all. Genetic diversity is good for the species, but bad for individuals.

That takes me back to Franz de Waal's quote. The way to get a group to cooperate is to find a way to stop sexual competition between males. Some species like birds and humans do this with monogamy, which works pretty well (as long as people go along with it and don't have affairs). The eusocial species like leafcutter ants solve the problem of sexual competition by creating a special reproductive caste. The queens and male drones can reproduce but the workers cannot. Either way, you've cut down on sexual competition dramatically.

Thus, I think the core of Roughgarden's thesis is flawed. But it is in the details where she truly shines. She points to some fascinating examples of species that seemingly violate the paradigm of competing males and coy females. She points to cliff swallows where females openly commit adultery, fish species in which females prefer "feminine, beta" males over the "masculine" and "alpha" males, and many other cases. And in doing so she builds on Sandra Vehrencamp's theory of a sexual labor market. Roughgarden writes (p.70)

"the basic idea is that an animal helps another in exchange for access to reproductive opportunity. Some individuals, the privileged, are envisioned to have control of reproductive opportunity, and to pay out some of that opportunity to others who do not have similar access. In return for this paycheck, the underprivileged contribute labor to assist the privileged in their reproduction."

A good example of this is that some female fish prefer beta males to alpha males with "great genes." That is because the beta males will stick around to raise the children, but the alpha males will not. The alpha male will abandon her to look for other females to procreate with. Thus the beta male offers help raising the children and "outbids" the alpha male. An even more radical example comes from cliff swallows. Female cliff swallows sometimes openly commit adultery, but their mates do not seem to mind. This doesn't make any sense at all under traditional sociobiology, which predicts that a jealous male will "mate-guard" his spouse in order to prevent adultery. Instead he goes along with it. But Roughgarden suggests that the correct way to think about it is that the female is buying "dead spouse" insurance. If the male dies then a rival male might destroy her eggs. But if the rival male has copulated with the female, he won't do want to do that. He might destroy his own eggs.

I think that Roughgarden and Vehrencamp's view of a labor market for sexual opportunity is powerful (who hasn't talked about the "marriage market" or the "sexual marketplace"), but it is flawed for two reasons. I've already pointed out the first flaw: that there is such a thing as "great genes". A promiscuous world gives males with "great genes" a lot of power, and it creates an incentive for males to fight for dominance to prove that they have the "great genes." That gives us a second reason why a female might openly commit adultery. It could be that the cuckolded male is a "beta male" with low quality genes and he simply does not have the bargaining power in the sexual marketplace to negotiate for his wife to be faithful. Basically the beta male says, "Look, I get it. You're out of my league. But we can still be together. You can see other men and I'll raise your children regardless of whether they are by me or some other man." Personally I think both models correctly predict adultery. Supposedly the swinger movement started with fighter pilots in World War II. They had an extremely high mortality rate and were realistically worried that they might not be around to raise their children. So they slept with each others' wives. They didn't know who their biological kids were. That would make it easy for the other pilots to take on the role of second father for the pilots who died - they might be raising their own biological children. But I do not think that most cuckolds are like fighter pilots, who are prototypical alpha males. Although I'm not aware of any empirical research, I suspect that most cuckolds are beta males, not alpha males. In that sense, applying Roughgarden's insights to orthodox sociobiology gives us the richest and most powerful theory of sex and reproduction yet.

That's why I believe that her book is incredibly brilliant and insightful even when I disagree. I think that Roughgarden's ideas on the labor market theory of reproduction are powerful, but they make much more sense light of the fact that alpha males have good genes and beta males have (relatively) bad genes. And that just takes us back to the view of males as sexual competitors and coy females siding with alpha males. What Roughgarden does do is show that sometimes males don't have to fight. Sometimes low status beta males develop feminine traits as a way of internalizing their low status. And that takes me to the biggest problem with her theory, which is that inequality would always be with us. The price of feminine males and dividing males into those who are high status and those who are low status. You can have sexual diversity or you can have sexual equality. But not both.

Joan Roughgarden's book "Evolution's Rainbow" is something of a disappointment.

It's badly edited, written in colloquial language, and covers a lot of topics not really relevant to the subject (such as Bible interpretation). There are other problems as well. The author protests strongly against expressions such as "transvestite snake", but has no problem calling male bighorn sheep "gay"! Of course, snakes are no more into transvestism than sheep are into the California gay subculture... (I think - I admit that the world would have been a more interesting place, had they been so.) On a somewhat stranger note, I noticed the author's strong aversion to asexually reproducing organisms. Aren't they a legitimate part of the rainbow?

This is all very unfortunate, since Roughgarden does mention many salient facts and makes interesting criticisms of the current paradigms.

One controversial point is her claim that "gender" is a biological category among humans. People who are transgendered really were "born that way". The usual position among anthropologists is, of course, that gender is a socially constructed category. Since Roughgarden believes otherwise, she can compare gender among humans with gender among animals and plants (a biological category).

In her polemic against androcentric sociobiology and its theory of "parental investment" (which supposedly makes Mother Nature patriarchal and sexist), the author points out that there are pipefish in the North Sea that reverse the sociobiological scenario. Among these fish, the *males* make the largest parental investment, while the females are aggressive, fight over the males and form dominance hierarchies. Ah, poor sociobiologists! Disconfirmed by Mother as usual. There is also an entertaining chapter on homosexual behaviour among animals, including birds where male-male couples occasionally raise the young. This "gay" behaviour has been observed among Black Swans, amongst others. Gay romance, anyone? There is even a lizard in Texas which is quite literally lesbian - all members of the species are female and reproduce asexually, but they nevertheless have non-reproductive sex!

Unfortunately, the badly edited chapters of this book sometimes make the arguments of the author quite weak. Thus, Roughgarden believes that gender bias may have led researchers to confuse cooperation among birds with brood parasitism. The male birds aren't really "cuckolded" at all, but involved in a complex system of reciprocal altruism within a larger colony. Perhaps they are, but this doesn't falsify Neo-Darwinism, which has no problem with *reciprocal* altruism. This isn't sufficiently emphasized by the author, making her proposals sound more earth-shattering than they really are. They may disprove one faction of Neo-Darwinists, but not Neo-Darwinism as such. As for the "female mimics", the author believes that they cannot really fool the other males, since they aren't perfect mimics to begin with. Maybe. And then, maybe not. For instance, most small passerines recognize their own eggs, but (weirdly) don't recognize their own chicks, which explains why cuckoo eggs mimic those of the host bird, while cuckoo chicks don't have to be mimics. Since song birds have surprisingly uneven cognitive abilities, this might go for other animals as well, and can explain the existence of "female mimics". Perhaps the mimics only need to mimic some key traits? Once again, a more extensive discussion seems called for.

The frankly worst chapter in the whole book is Joan Roughgarden's attempts to interpret the Bible as pro-gay. No, Joan, it isn't. Ruth and Naomi weren't lesbians. Paul wasn't warning gay couples of the dangers of sexually transmitted disease. When the Ethiopian eunuch was quoting Isaiah, he was pointing to a passage all Christians believe is a prophecy about Jesus. He wasn't calling for transgendered activism against the powers that be! Ur-Christianity may have had some interesting ideas, but they certainly weren't pro-gay. Incidentally, the Ethiopian eunuch was Jewish, yet Roughgarden implies that Christianity was more "inclusive" than Judaism, using the baptism of this person as an example. Really?

Despite everything, "Evolution's Rainbow" was worth reading, since it does contain original and provocative angles on many questions. However, I don't think it deserves five stars. I give it three.