Taking Sex Differences Seriously Hardcover – May 1, 2004

To be sure, this is a valuable and provocative book, and extremely readable. The argument, though, takes the biology-is-destiny school of thought a little too far and reduces to a homogenous pulp the variety within the broad schematic of male/female that Rhoads sketches. While it is certainly a mistake to deny all innate differences between the sexes (or as they are more popularly called "genders"), one can go equally astray by reifying them. In the universe according to Rhoads, men pretty much are all testosterone-driven, insensitive clods who need to be civilized by their "estrogen-bathed" mates, who in turn will find the meaning of life in changing diapers, especially if they breast-feed their babies and therefore find the smell of their poopoo particularly appealing (no kidding). To resist this division of labor is to court serious unhappiness and most probably divorce.

One of Rhoads' former students reminisces fondly about one of his lectures on sex difference: "you stated your view that if an alien came to our planet and asked you to show him what happiness looked like, you'd show him a recently engaged woman." Perhaps, having let loose with such overcharged rhetoric, Rhoads should question the reporting he gets back from his undergraduate students and graduate assistants. On that topic, a strange irony is that much of the research assistance and many of the psychological studies that form the basis of his work were done by women. If the world were re-made without day-care centers and if more women just stayed home and followed their biological imperative to procreate, I wonder what Rhoads thinks would happen to these bright and productive women students? The University of Virginia, where he teaches, was the last public university to go coed, back in, I believe, 1970; the program he espouses would lead us inevitably back to those days.

On the other hand, many of his more focused suggestions make a lot of sense: His chapter on Title IX, for example, should be read by the bureaucrats in Washington who make the ham-handed regulations that are slowly decimating men's sports, and his observation that men use parental leave differently (and need it less) than women is an important insight. I hope that, as Rhoads evolves as a scholar, he will find a way to combine these important policy observations with a more nuanced approach to sex difference.

The challenge for modern society is to adjust underlying sex differences to the realities of a complex information society to which women, like men, have a great deal to contribute. While social policy cannot pretend away the profound differences between the sexes, it also cannot ignore the changes in reproductive technology and the workplace that have leveled the field between the sexes. Our society needs a strong voice for common sense in this discussion. Rhoads, unfortunately, too often allows anecdotal evidence and his own prejudices to overwhelm his better judgment, and has produced, therefore, a good book but not a great one.

Luckily, on the occasions when we find ourselves under fire for our own personal choices or the choices of our ancestors, which is what political correctness demands from anyone born male, blasphemers like myself can find sanctuary in Steven E. Rhoads's delightful new book, Taking Sex Differences Seriously. Upon finishing Rhoads's work, many readers will discover that they have renewed respect for the nature of women, and, perhaps, unexpected esteem for the nature of men.

I should warn that Taking Sex Differences Seriously is not a chatty, self-help book. It is a highly erudite work in which the author examines study after study and author after author, yet, at the same time, it is very accessible (just as was the case with Why Men Don't Iron). It was written with the average person in mind even though it voluminously surveys contemporary scholarship. There is less focus here on statistics and experimental procedure than there is in works like The New Science of Intimate Relationships, The Mating Mind, or The Red Queen.

The study of sex difference can be quite precarious for the academic, and it is with some relief that I noted that Rhoads already has put in thirty years of service at the University of Virginia. For those without tenure, such a book could spell unemployment. The author cites the opinions of heavyweights like Gloria Steinem and Gloria Allred on the topic of sex research. They believe that making inquiries into the discrepancies between men and women is downright dangerous to all women and anti-American in spirit [!]. Yet, one could make a strong case that unearthing what others purposefully ignore is intrinsic to what it means to be an American.

The real question that most people have is not that differences are present but for what purpose do these variations exist? Central to Rhoads's work, and central to evolutionary psychology in general, is the fact that the biological drives of humans were formed long ago in a time known as the "environment of evolutionary adaptation." This period embodied "99 percent of hominid existence." Back then there were no hotels, no indoor plumbing, no antibiotics, no birth control pills or abortions, and certainly no cushy jobs which involved clacking away at keyboards. Survival was precarious and most of our current preferences evolved from our ancestors adapting to life in a brutal and unsavory setting.

Only in today's world have we reached the levels of luxury and comfort where we can mistakenly assert that men and women want identical outcomes from love, sex, and life. This false assumption is a cause for considerable unhappiness in our interpersonal relations.

Where Rhoads succeeds is through his presentation of all views and his relentless attempts to explain human behavior. He ignores nothing and shares with the reader many a citation which does not support his case. One would be wise to remember that the goal of evolutionary psychology is to illuminate the basis for human behavior and not to excuse or condone such behaviors. To describe is not to advocate. We embrace fantasy over fact if we deny that gender exerts an influence on the way we act, but, unfortunately, that is exactly what many universities around the country have done through their creation of women's studies programs and their never-ending fetish for describing the world as they want it to be rather than how it actually is.