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A review by domskeac
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon
3.0
Could have been half the length. I would love this book with less of her (limited) social commentary and more sticking to her very cool thesis, which is that certain bodies that are usually dismissed by scientists, the medical industry, anthropologists, and sociologists have had an important influence on our evolutionary lineage.
Likes:
-All the Eves. I was in it for the Eves! Stay on target with the Eves!
-Abortion chapter was really cool—taught me a lot about abortion in the other-than-human world.
-I really did like so much of the evolutionary history of animals before us, and when this book stayed on target. When she was focused on the point of the book: history and anthropology I was in.
Dislikes:
-Trans-inclusive-ish: kept using zombie fact phrase “male sex hormone" - she was clearly trying to be trans inclusive in various parts of the book, but then she would say something like “both genders” and would lose me again.
-“Legs” chapter - weird; occasionally took some weird Islamophobic turns whenever trying to describe violence; (the nod to the Islamic world inventing a bunch of stuff at the end of the book did not counteract this.)
-The multiple mentions of the Clintons - I don’t need Bill Clinton or his vocal cords as an analogy in my life.
-When she tried to politically explain things happening right now—she was so westernized and so whitewashed it made all the other really cool stuff harder to take in without wondering if I should critique those too based on her surface level analysis of politics.
Likes:
-All the Eves. I was in it for the Eves! Stay on target with the Eves!
-Abortion chapter was really cool—taught me a lot about abortion in the other-than-human world.
-I really did like so much of the evolutionary history of animals before us, and when this book stayed on target. When she was focused on the point of the book: history and anthropology I was in.
Dislikes:
-Trans-inclusive-ish: kept using zombie fact phrase “male sex hormone" - she was clearly trying to be trans inclusive in various parts of the book, but then she would say something like “both genders” and would lose me again.
-“Legs” chapter - weird; occasionally took some weird Islamophobic turns whenever trying to describe violence; (the nod to the Islamic world inventing a bunch of stuff at the end of the book did not counteract this.)
-The multiple mentions of the Clintons - I don’t need Bill Clinton or his vocal cords as an analogy in my life.
-When she tried to politically explain things happening right now—she was so westernized and so whitewashed it made all the other really cool stuff harder to take in without wondering if I should critique those too based on her surface level analysis of politics.