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6 reviews for:
Performance All the Way Down: Genes, Development, and Sexual Difference
Richard O. Prum
4.2 AVERAGE
6 reviews for:
Performance All the Way Down: Genes, Development, and Sexual Difference
Richard O. Prum
4.2 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
slow-paced
I was very excited to read this book after my science book club chose it. I am super interested in learning more about biological sex, determinism, differences in presentation for sex, and how this affects gender and our society. I will say that Prum references many interesting and thought-provoking studies and this was hands down my favorite part of the book. Prum dances around a lot of ideas but I am not sure he ever comes to any actual points. I was super bothered by the word performative and its use in this book. I know it is likely that it is some extra meaning that I am putting on the word but I struggled to get past that. I also struggled with Prum’s use of the words gender and sex interchangeably. Prum states at the beginning of the book that he wants to make science accessible to social science types and the social science accessible to science types and honestly, I don’t think that he accomplished either of these things. There were so many times I had to go look things up to try to understand the social science. As someone comfortable with developmental and evolutionary biology I found myself backing up to reread sections and feeling like he didn’t explain things well. He didn’t even spend the time to define basic terms. In the last chapter of the book, Prum goes completely off the rails talking about how science shouldn’t bother to do any research based on sex because it is useless after he just spent an entire book talking about how sex is a spectrum and we need to change how we think about it. Mostly I left the book feeling extremely confused by the point he was trying to make and frustrated by his inability to make anything clear.
informative
medium-paced
challenging
informative
slow-paced
challenging
informative
slow-paced
This book is a FASCINATING read for anyone out there who is interested in both evolutionary biology and queer/gender theory. I loved it. Be warned that it is dense, and will require a good grasp of developmental biology to fully comprehend. However, even without that background, I think you could skim over some parts and get a lot out of it. It’s an academic book, so some of it is redundant. Chapter 7 “how evolution generates sexual variability” was the most interesting to me. I think all science teachers & biologists should read this! Fascinating read. I really enjoyed it.
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
slow-paced