BOOKS: Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to all Creation

Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation
Olivia Judson
[Henry Holt, 2002]

Written as a novel-length sex advice column, Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation is a clever response to the gender-bashing biologist A.J. Bateman, who claimed that the ‘virtuous’ sexual behavior of the female fruitfly Dropsophila melanogaster could be generalized to females of all species, particularly humans. “Men are promiscuous, girls are chaste,” or so that particular theory goes. 

Olivia Judson, writing as Dr. Tatiana, proceeds to methodically and humorously disprove that bit of gender generalization (and bad science). According to Judson’s hilarious yet scientifically rigorous accounts of animal sexual behavior, females of many species from “slutty shriner perches” to “promiscuous chimpanzees” have rampant, hedonistic relations with their male counterparts. 

The corollary of the ‘girls are chaste’ theory, which is that females only play the field for evolutionarily practical reasons, gets the same debunking treatment. To Bateman and other proponents within the scientific community of feminine chastity, she says “Folks, it’s time to bury forever the notion that female promiscuity is an unfortunate accident…” Another gender based myth that occupies Judson (ala Dr. Tatiana) is “girls are pretty, boys are tough.” From the aesthetic splendor of male peacocks to the apparent sex appeal of stalk-eyed flies, Judson claims that in most of the animal kingdom it is the males who have evolved to be sexy in order to win the favor of the females and therefore perpetuate their very own sexy genes.

Like fellow sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, Dr. Tatiana covers numerous taboo subjects from cross-dressing sponge lice, to hermaphroditic comb jellies. She points out that necrophilia, homosexuality and masturbation (among many other naughty no-nos) all fit within in the natural order of things—even for the supposedly virtuous female half of the kingdom.  Judson’s rampant anthropomorphization of animal behavior, for instance describing their sexual acts as ‘virtuous’ or ‘whorish,’ illustrates just how ridiculous the notion is that ‘evidence’ for gender traits, whether sexual or psychological,  exists within the animal kingdom. Judson’s work goes a long way in exposing the bait and switch of a scientific basis for gender normalization for a religious based code of morals. Ultimately, if we use animal behavior as evidentiary data, the idea that women evolved to be sexually virtuous and that men evolved to be philanderers has is as fanciful a myth as Eve being created out of Adam’s extra rib.
 

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

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[オテモヤン]

http://oppao.net/n-ona/
http://oppao.net/navi/
http://oppao.net/new-d2/
http://oppao.net/fd3/
http://oppao.net/soap2/
http://oppao.net/bg2/
http://oppao.net/host2/
http://oppao.net/lesson2/
http://oppao.net/op2/
http://oppao.net/fl3/
http://oppao.net/bb2/
http://oppao.net/s-este/
http://oppao.net/rd2/
http://oppao.net/kawa/
http://oppao.net/n-club2/
http://s-auc.net/