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A review by jkanownik
Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski
5.0
I try to follow a diverse group of people on Twitter and that often leads me to books I would not have sought out on my own. This is one of those books that kept showing up on my timeline with recommendations and I bought it back in September of 2019 (I tend to buy more books than I can possibly read). After the pandemic struck I prioritized this book because I thought it would provide insight into current condition could be impacting my wife in different ways in addition to the original thought of I probably should have read a book on female sexuality 20 years ago. That thought was correct and I'm glad I chose this book.
One of the important insights in this book is that stress and anxiety impact people in many ways and there is no one normal reaction. Some people have increased sexual desire under stress. Some have decreased sexual desire. Some find it easier to enjoy sex because the changes put them in better alignment with themselves or their partner. Some find it harder to enjoy sex even if they have heightened desire and arousal. The frameworks laid out in the book are very useful for thinking about this.
Three other key parts of the book I really liked were the discussion of sex as an incentive motivation system versus a drive. I agree with Nagoski that sex as a drive is a deeply flawed and we should think of it as an incentive motivation system. Another was on arousal nonconcordance. It is interesting to think about how the default assumption of concordance is something else that is flawed. It has severe consequences if it were always true (if you get an erection watching animals mate or witnessing a sexual assault, does that mean you want those things?). And lastly thinking about differences within sexes versus difference across sexes is another helpful mental model to use.
I'm sure there are negative reviews based on the research as there are with many books on social sciences. I don't think we should dismiss all books on social sciences due to small, biased samples and lack of reproducibility. You can completely ignore the outcome of these studies and come away with the answers two critical questions on any topic. The first set is what are the questions researchers are asking? And where is the science unresolved and the potential impact large? Those are really important questions to have answers to. The other set of questions are where did the current hypothesis come from and what happens if you flip the null hypothesis? By this point I should not be surprised where many of those hypothesis came from and how little we understood when they were developed, but it happened once again with this book. It's a lot easier to have someone else do the research for you on that history and find those answers in a book.
One of the important insights in this book is that stress and anxiety impact people in many ways and there is no one normal reaction. Some people have increased sexual desire under stress. Some have decreased sexual desire. Some find it easier to enjoy sex because the changes put them in better alignment with themselves or their partner. Some find it harder to enjoy sex even if they have heightened desire and arousal. The frameworks laid out in the book are very useful for thinking about this.
Three other key parts of the book I really liked were the discussion of sex as an incentive motivation system versus a drive. I agree with Nagoski that sex as a drive is a deeply flawed and we should think of it as an incentive motivation system. Another was on arousal nonconcordance. It is interesting to think about how the default assumption of concordance is something else that is flawed. It has severe consequences if it were always true (if you get an erection watching animals mate or witnessing a sexual assault, does that mean you want those things?). And lastly thinking about differences within sexes versus difference across sexes is another helpful mental model to use.
I'm sure there are negative reviews based on the research as there are with many books on social sciences. I don't think we should dismiss all books on social sciences due to small, biased samples and lack of reproducibility. You can completely ignore the outcome of these studies and come away with the answers two critical questions on any topic. The first set is what are the questions researchers are asking? And where is the science unresolved and the potential impact large? Those are really important questions to have answers to. The other set of questions are where did the current hypothesis come from and what happens if you flip the null hypothesis? By this point I should not be surprised where many of those hypothesis came from and how little we understood when they were developed, but it happened once again with this book. It's a lot easier to have someone else do the research for you on that history and find those answers in a book.