num_pages: 374
description: Sex - just what is it all about? Don't other species just get on with it? What are the conflicts and jealousy pain and disappointments really all about? The 2010 book Sex at Dawn tells us that this modern misery is due to our belief in a false evolutionary story about human pair-bonding and nuclear family units. Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jeth claim that their evidence shows that before 10000 years ago sexual constraints did not exist paternity was not an issue and men and women engaged in fairly free and casual bonobo-like sexual activity. Our ancestors they argue not only shared food they shared sex. Are they right? Using predominantly the same sources SEX AT DUSK takes another look at that evidence fills in many gaps makes many corrections and reveals something far less candy-coated. Bringing together evolutionary biology primatology anthropology and human sexuality SEX AT DUSK shows that rather than revealing important facts about our sexual evolution Ryan and Jeth shroud it in a fog of misinformation and faulty logic that can only lead us further into the dark.Nearly all biologists including yours truly havent bothered to waste their time on such tripe [Sex at Dawn] although a case can be made that we have a professional responsibility to respond when the public is being so egregiously misled. Fortunately a rebuttal to the Sex at Dawn nonsense is now available via Amazon: Sex at Dusk. Its not only a suitable slap-down of its woeful predecessor but Ms. Saxon even got the science right! Moreover she has a wide-ranging and delightful mind worth spending time with. David Barash author of The Myth of Monogamy: fidelity and infidelity in animals and people (Holt 2002)Human sexuality has always been politicized prettified sanitized romanticized and mythologized. For adults for whom truth is the ultimate turn-on I recommend Lynn Saxon's insightful treatment of this eternally fascinating subject. Steven Pinker Harvard College Professor of Psychology Harvard University and the author of How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate.Cleaning the Augean Stables was one of Hercules's more odious tasks but also perhaps the most useful. Correcting the errors and misrepresentations of Sex at Dawn has been Lynn Saxon's self-imposed labor and she does it with Herculean strength. Moreover Sex at Dusk isn't only well-written and scientifically valid it is great fun as well! This particular transition from Dawn to Dusk is not only natural but much needed. David P. Barash Professor of Psychology University of Washington Seattle and author of Homo mysterious: evolutionary puzzles of human nature. (Oxford University Press)
language: English
title: Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn
publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform