Customer Reviews

The Sexual Spectrum: Why We're All Different

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've probably recommended this book to twenty different people (one of my most-recommended, period). An absolutely incredible overview of the topic of sexuality. Anyone who is serious about understanding human sexuality -- that is: no going "ew" when taboo subjects are brought up. Serious people are interested in discovering all that they can about the human condition and seeing things through the eyes of other people -- has to check out this book.

Highly, highly recommended.

Those having only a casual familiarity with the topic of this book will likely be delighted with it. Johnson synthesizes a huge range of scientific literature using a lucid prose style that many will find attractive. But the style papers over many, many disturbing generalizations, contradictions, and exclusions of contrary arguments. Although Johnson attempts to offer an interactionist argument (nature interacts with nurture) about sex and sexuality, but her background in the sciences causes her to privilege nature over nurture, to the larger detriment of the text. Those with greater familiarity with the topic will likely be frustrated, if not angered by some of the casual slippages in Johnson's argument and certain word choices. Though she seems to want to celebrate human diversity, it's NATURAL not social diversity that's privileged here.

Anne Fausto-Sterling and other feminist critics of science have seriously challenged research on physical sexual differences. Their critique is largely absent here. Fausto-Sterling's germinal 1990 book Sexing the body is not cited in the chapters on sexual differentiation of the brain, and feminist criticisms are dismissed with the astonishing claim that "science is neutral about its findings"(40). No one who knows anything about the history of scientific studies of race, sex, or sexual orientation will believe this eye-popping claim. For those who need more proof, I highly recommend Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man.

Transgendered people will likely be livid with Johnson's inexplicable neglect of this community. The discussion that does appear is subsumed under an offensive section on transsexualism. Queer academics will be surprised to learn that we've been "lumping ALL non-heterosexual groups under the umbrella term 'transgender' (122)! My jaw literally dropped when I read this. It's clear that the author has no familiarity with the emerging transgender studies literature and how it complicates the story of her book. Most amusing is her effort to retain an essentialist notion of sexual orientation when discussing transsexual individuals; arguing that transpeople can be homosexual but that this is based on the sex of birth bodies, not An individual's sexual attractions. For Johnson, as with many psychologists, the sex of the body we are born with holds the truth of our existence, regardless of our assertion to the contrary.

Johnson is irritatingly wedded to a binary paradigm for the sexed body even when this leads to circular logic: behaviors typical of males are ascribed to particular anatomical structures which are then described as "male" or "female," even when they appear in humans who would be categorized as the 'opposite' sex. This leads to the humorous description of "male" and "female" aspects of homosexual males' brains, which presents gay men as if they're somehow a separate sex category. Why should anyone be surprised if gay males score "in a male direction" on certain psychological tests? Why, when straight men score similarly to women, no one calls their brains "female"? Weird.

In summary, I encourage readers of this text to be extremely cautious of Johnson's claims and read texts by other scholars on this topic, to get a more balanced picture. As an introduction to the topic, it's not balanced enough for me (or my students).

"The Sexual Spectrum", by Olive Skene Johnson, is perhaps the single best reference on the topic of gender and sexual orientation/preference. The depth & breadth of the research reviewed, as well as the quality of scholarship are impressive for both their clarity as well as conciseness. Dr. Johnson should be commended for a work which should be required reading in all university courses dealing with the topics of gender identity & sexual preference, and a prime resource for clinicians working with these issues.