CompleteMartialArts.com - Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People
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Manufacturer: University of California Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.3
EAN: 9780520246799
ISBN: 0520246799
Label: University of California Press
Manufacturer: University of California Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 474
Publication Date: 2005-12-06
Publisher: University of California Press
Studio: University of California Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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In this innovative celebration of diversity and affirmation of individuality in animals and humans, Joan Roughgarden challenges accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation. A distinguished evolutionary biologist, Roughgarden takes on the medical establishment, the Bible, social science--and even Darwin himself. She leads the reader through a fascinating discussion of diversity in gender and sexuality among fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals, including primates. Evolution's Rainbow explains how this diversity develops from the action of genes and hormones and how people come to differ from each other in all aspects of body and behavior. Roughgarden reconstructs primary science in light of feminist, gay, and transgender criticism and redefines our understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality. Witty, playful, and daring, this book will revolutionize our understanding of sexuality.
Roughgarden argues that principal elements of Darwinian sexual selection theory are false and suggests a new theory that emphasizes social inclusion and control of access to resources and mating opportunity. She disputes a range of scientific and medical concepts, including Wilson's genetic determinism of behavior, evolutionary psychology, the existence of a gay gene, the role of parenting in determining gender identity, and Dawkins's "selfish gene" as the driver of natural selection. She dares social science to respect the agency and rationality of diverse people; shows that many cultures across the world and throughout history accommodate people we label today as lesbian, gay, and transgendered; and calls on the Christian religion to acknowledge the Bible's many passages endorsing diversity in gender and sexuality. Evolution's Rainbow concludes with bold recommendations for improving education in biology, psychology, and medicine; for democratizing genetic engineering and medical practice; and for building a public monument to affirm diversity as one of our nation's defining principles.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: A serious research, though not so supportive of same-sex attraction.
Comment: When I found this book while I was surfing the web, I thought I found a really objective research without trying to bolster the binary straight/gay. Unfortunately, Joan Roughgarden sometimes considers gays and straights as two distinct categories. She does not escape from the biological theories which place homosexual people into a different biological class. On page 248, Roughgarden claims: 'Substantial evidence points to both genetic and environmental components in the development of same-sex sexuality. No one who pushes one factor to the exclusion of the other can be correct.'
So, Joan Roughgarden supports genetic theories of homosexuality. Wouldn't this lead to discrimination against homosexual people and make common people consider homosexuality as an inferior biology?
On page 155, Roughgarden says:' Homosexuality in animals is obviously inherited in some way, but no single gay gene exists.'
Trying to convince people that homosexuality is inherited, means that you consider it as a stable and fixed condition(or a fate). How could we believe that something is biologically determined without any scientific proof?
Claiming that there is a genetic predisposition towards homosexuality, means that people with this predisposition should be considered biologically inferior if they are a minority. (at least by some Greeks...)
Customer Rating:
Summary: 4.5 Stars for Progressing Science
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a biological reason for tolerance
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A celebration of diversity
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great start
Comment: 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.
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