Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn

by Lynn Saxon

Sex - just what is it all about? Don't other species just get on with it? What are the conflicts and jealousy, pain and disappointments, really all about? The 2010 book Sex at Dawn tells us that this modern misery is due to our belief in a false evolutionary story about human pair-bonding and nuclear family units. Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá claim that their evidence shows that before 10,000 years ago sexual constraints did not exist, paternity was not an issue, and men and women engaged in fairly free and casual bonobo-like sexual activity. Our ancestors, they argue, not only shared food, they shared sex. Are they right? Using predominantly the same sources, SEX AT DUSK takes another look at that evidence, fills in many gaps, makes many corrections, and reveals something far less candy-coated.

Bringing together evolutionary biology, primatology, anthropology, and human sexuality, SEX AT DUSK shows that, rather than revealing important facts about our sexual evolution, Ryan and Jethá shroud it in a fog of misinformation and faulty logic that can only lead us further into the dark.

"Nearly all biologists, including yours truly, haven’t bothered to waste their time on such tripe [Sex at Dawn], although a case can be made that we have a professional responsibility to respond when the public is being so egregiously misled. Fortunately, a rebuttal to the Sex at Dawn nonsense is now available via Amazon: Sex at Dusk. It’s not only a suitable slap-down of its woeful predecessor, but Ms. Saxon even got the science right! Moreover, she has a wide-ranging and delightful mind, worth spending time with." David Barash, author of The Myth of Monogamy: fidelity and infidelity in animals and people (Holt, 2002)

"Human sexuality has always been politicized, prettified, sanitized, romanticized and mythologized. For adults for whom truth is the ultimate turn-on, I recommend Lynn Saxon's insightful treatment of this eternally fascinating subject." Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and the author of How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate.

"Cleaning the Augean Stables was one of Hercules's more odious tasks, but also perhaps the most useful. Correcting the errors and misrepresentations of Sex at Dawn has been Lynn Saxon's self-imposed labor, and she does it with Herculean strength. Moreover, Sex at Dusk isn't only well-written and scientifically valid, it is great fun as well! This particular transition from Dawn to Dusk is not only natural, but much needed." David P. Barash, Professor of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle and author of Homo mysterious: evolutionary puzzles of human nature." (Oxford University Press)

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Science, Sexuality, Anthropology, Relationships, Evolution

374 pages, Paperback

First published July 14, 2012

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sex at Dawn is not without its problems. Any reader with a more-than-casual understanding of anthropology, evolutionary biology, and/or evolutionary psychology will readily acknowledge this. And some rebuttal/correction does seem to be in order. Unfortunately, Lynn Saxon's polemic seems to be an equally troublesome vehicle for doing so.

The first thing Saxon does in Sex at Dusk--as in, literally, the first thing--is to attack Chris Ryan and Cacilda Jetha's professional credentials. Yet, absolutely no information is available on who Lynn Saxon is and even if he/she/they is a real person writing under a real name. As someone who spent many years in scientific fields, I find this troublesome because--in the scientific arena, at least--one's qualifications to speak on a given topic are vastly important. All we have is Saxon's self-proclaimed expertise in the field of evolutionary biology to go by.

So, as far as I'm concerned, that sets the tone for the rest of the content. To me, Dusk reads as a personal vendetta masquerading as scientific rebuttal. Saxon's sneering, condescending language toward Ryan and Jetha far surpasses the mockery that Saxon accuses Ryan and Jetha of using in Dawn.

Dusk is poorly and haltingly written, and prone to tangents that really do nothing to address the points the author is trying to make. Much of the arguments Saxon uses in the first several chapters seem utterly irrelevant and beyond nitpicky. And, in fact, some of the things Saxon uses to rebut Dawn seem to be inadvertently supportive of Dawn.

Much of the supporting data Lynn Saxon presented was either information I had studied in the past and thus already knew, or information that was presented in a manner that made me feel like Saxon was twisting and torturing quite a few facts as well. There's a fair amount of oversimplification, and a lot of misrepresentation of Ryan & Jetha's original statements. (Funny that, in a book geared at proving how Sex at Dawn included so much out-of-context "proof," Sex at Dusk included quite a bit of stuff that was taken out of context as well.) I suppose it was to some degree necessary for Ryan & Jetha to speak with more than a tad of hyperbole in order to get their controversial points across, hence their many sweeping overstatements. But I do take issue with what seemed to be their blatant inaccuracies, which definitely hurt their case.

However, Saxon falls into some familiar traps, such as asserting that marriage exists in essentially every human culture (by applying that term uniformly across cultures, we make a lot of assumptions that may not be true). I also take issue with Saxon’s presentation of sexual jealousy as something that is absolutely intrinsic and ingrained in humans without ever offering any real substantiation to that claim. (Her arguments seem to present sexual jealousy as more of a resource jealousy, on account of what effort must be expended to obtain sex in the cultures she cites as proof. Certainly sexual jealousy is something that can be unlearned, especially when separated from the idea of resource distribution.) Saxon also repeatedly scolds Ryan & Jetha for failing to account for the several million years of evolution between when our ancestors diverged from the ancestors of the bonobos and chimpanzees; yet, Saxon seems quite happy to write all those years off as irrelevant when it convenient to her case.

Ultimately, it's clear that both Ryan & Jetha and Saxon are writing from very biased (and nearly equally smug & dismissive) positions. Someone I had discussed this book with elsewhere stated their preference that neither book had been written, and I find it hard to disagree. Honestly, I'm still convinced that I would need to go back and read the source materials if I wanted any sort of a clear answer as to the real information in any of those publications (noting, of course, that the authors of those original materials are not immune from their own biases as well). If all of Saxon's claims reflect real, genuine, bona fide facts, it was difficult to tell through all the snark.

In short, I don't feel like I gained all that much by reading Sex at Dusk. There's much in Sex at Dawn that needs correction/clarification, and regrettably, Lynn Saxon dropped the ball in delivering it.

[Scribble Orca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Several years ago (I suppose you could say it's a life-time away, really), I used to be on intimate (but not that intimate) terms with a group of people who individually I loved dearly (in the platonic sense) and who collectively were terribly destructive towards each other. I was introduced to them while they were in monogamous relationships, before they decided that rather than embark on illicit (and potentially damaging) affairs, they would instead engage in partner-swapping. It commenced with the very highest ideals, and over a number of years, many unhappy returns, reclamations, restorations and retributions later, ended with only one couple (who subsequently split up from each other and the group during that period) returning to a happily monogamous, childless relationship. The rest have disintegrated, in some cases permanently scarred, in others, maintaining an uneasy, suspicious cohabitation (with offspring), in others, serial monogamy with different partners for brief periods interspersing solitude, in still others, extra-marital affairs on both sides (with offspring). They never attained their goals and they succeeded in wreaking havoc on each other. Perhaps we were all too young at the time. As a spectator, it seemed to me that the green-eyed monster was not a social construct so much as something so ingrained that no amount of spiritual, emotional or even rational enlightenment could overcome or sway it. Jealousy is indeed jealous of its hold on our thought processes.

If you think you need a rational, science-based reason for copulation with multiple partners (serially, simultaneously, or any variant thereof) Sex at Dawn is, at best, an unfortunate example of pseudo-science, and at worst, wish-fulfillment and propaganda by proponents looking for justification of their own choices. In fact, it reads like male chauvinist fantasy, and something any self-respecting humanist (note I restrained myself from saying feminist) would find, if not ludicrous, then downright insulting in its attempts to pretend support for female emancipation. By all means make your sexual choices as you prefer, but Sex at Dawn is not the book on which to be basing any supposed ancestral inclinations as the means to validate that choice.

Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn is the kind of refutation I love. An accurate and detailed examination of the Sex at Dawn authors' arguments, including highlighting the deliberate misrepresentation of data, evidence and quotes in order to support their own (biased) viewpoint, as well as using the same material to tear down the argument and (inevitably distorted) conclusion these authors purport to have constructed and deduced, respectively.

This is (unlike most of my reviews) going to be rather long and detailed, using quotes from Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn to demonstrate exactly why this book is both superior in content, execution, and summary to the book which spawned it. Do feel free to stamp your digital foot at my updates as I continue to add quotes. Better yet, read it yourself.

If Darwinian natural selection is to be mocked with regard to humans then we should at least start with some understanding of it as it does apply to other species.

In sexual selection genes spread when an individual out-reproduces others of the same sex. Two different naturally selected outcomes – the two sexes – then result within the same species.

Darwin argued for a female role in evolution through active female mate choice. A passive female role, though, is a potential outcome of Ryan and Jethá’s argument for casual female promiscuity.

The sex which invests most in parenting any offspring is a limited reproductive resource competed for by the sex which invests the least.

Natural selection is a consequence of differential reproductive success.

Ryan and Jethá distort Darwin’s response to the ideas about group marriage, and they fail to explain the impact of the misinterpretation of classificatory kinship terms on Morgan’s ideas.

Ryan and Jethá, and Morgan, miss the movement of sexually mature individuals between groups; they erroneously imagine the group to be a bounded entity through time with members living together and mating together for life.

Many of us may prefer to only look at and think about humans but, like the evolutionary psychology that Ryan and Jethá present, looking just at humans can lead to a disconnection from evolutionary biology and to poor thinking. We need to tackle a bit more evolutionary biology next.

Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn end of Chapter One.

In Chapter Two, Saxon discusses the impetus for genes to survive and the various (unconscious) behaviours that succeed because of the "selfish" gene. Interestingly, it is infanticide as a male reproductive strategy that has likely led to pair-bonding. Discussing "sex drives" without acknowledging procreation is simply like saying we eat and ignoring the process of converting nutrition into body mass and waste. So while it is tempting to eliminate offspring in regarding sexual behaviour, it is misleading in terms of trying to evaluate the origin (and success) of sexual behaviours. Here the summary points from Chapter Two:

The natural world, along with its wonder and beauty, contains considerable natural pain. Individuals both suffer and inflict suffering doing what their genes ‘want’ them to do, including – or especially – with regard to sex and reproduction.

Everything about the two sexes follows from anisogamy.This is a critical point - fundamentally the evolutionary movement from asexual to sexual reproduction ie fusion of dissimilar gametes.]

Many examples of mating behaviours show that ‘natural’ sexual behaviours are not necessarily ‘enjoyed’ by the two sexes. There can often be sexual conflict over if, when, or how often to mate. [And it is not always the females who are investing energy in parenting - consider the reproduction strategies of seahorses - the female produces eggs which are held, fertilised and nourished in the sac of the male (with placenta-like processes) before the male undergoes contractions and gives birth.]

When Ryan and Jethá question whether there can be “a discrete genetic basis for something as amorphous as preoccupation with paternity” they would do well to remember infanticide by males and other male reproductive strategies shaped by a naturally selected and completely unconscious genetic “preoccupation with paternity”.

The exchange of sex for resources – direct benefits – is common across species, making ‘whoredom’ a beneficial reproductive strategy for females of most species.

The distinction between receptive and proceptive female sexual behaviour is an important one, distinguishing between a passive acceptance and a more active solicitation of sex.

Females of a number of species have evolved ‘fake’ proceptive sexual behaviours to feign fertility, confuse paternity, and thereby reduce the costs of infanticide by males.

In baboons and langurs in mixed-sex groups with multiple males the affiliations between males and females, and males and offspring, are in species where females stay in their birth group and males come and go. What about multimale/multifemale species such as our closest cousins the chimpanzee and the bonobo where it is the males who stay put?

Ryan and Jethá argue [that] these species show our own evolution to be without the sexual competition, conflicting sexual interests, and females trading sex for protection or other resources that we see in so many other species. But is this really the case?

In Chapter Three, Saxon covers an impressive and exhaustive array of literature on observed behaviours of bonobos and chimpanzees, both in captivity and in the wild (and in various locations). The significance of this is that Ryan and Jethá manipulate various pieces of research (including falsely playing up the signficance of oxytocin when in fact the relevant chemical is vasopressin) to produce a distorted view of bonobos that is not only farcical, but underpins their claim that humans ought to be polygamous through time. Ryan and Jethá misrepresent the significance of bonobo sexual behaviour in relationship to sex for the sake of scratching an itch, and sex as a means to secure either food or access to partners (in the case of higher ranking females securing ovulating females for their own male (low-ranking) off-spring. They are also aren't above claiming that bonobos did not develop this behaviour before the split with the human common ancestor occurred. But if that were the case, why then would these behaviours have withered thereafter in the human ancestor? The answer is that the so-called 'sex' behaviours of bonobos developed as a result of their own isolation, and not the other way around. Some closing chapter points:

Ryan and Jethá give no consideration to our common ancestor with the gorilla or to evolution along the different ape lineages over millions of years; they only have a single human ancestor model: the modern bonobo.

Though monogamy is not found in primate social groups, polygyny is. Ryan and Jethá [mid]present Rousseau ...[who] clearly feared that unleashing the female libido would lead to the collapse of society.

Ryan and Jethá distort Anne Pusey’s work to use as ‘evidence’ for general chimpanzee female promiscuity across community boundaries, and relaxed, possibly even friendly, relations between communities.

Genetic evidence supports the evolution of bonobos from a small founder population that became separated from other chimpanzees....[and] supports selection acting strongly in the chimpanzee lineage in connection to promiscuous mating after the Pan/Homo divergence. Ryan and Jethá use a vasopressin receptor gene to falsely create a “crucial” oxytocin link between humans and bonobos;...[it exists] in gorillas and Central African chimpanzees as well as humans and bonobos.

The clear distinction between sex and “sex” in bonobos is not made by the authors and a false sense of adult human-like sexual behaviour is presented. Bonobo sex is very much in the context of food and femalebonobos turn out to be strategic ‘whores’.

What is genuinely significant about both chimpanzees and bonobos is their contrast to humans:...we evolved some mechanism whereby males from different natal groups were able to interact more peaceably and move between groups as did the females...we also evolved in a way that meant that parenting from more than just the mother became essential. Enter the male-female pair bond?

...to be continued....

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is interesting but very frustrating. It's a response to Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha's Sex at Dawn (henceforth Dawn), and in fact is rather more a 330-page negative book review than a book.

First, a word about the author. The work is self-published (Lynn Saxon actually appears as the bottom of the outer binding as if that's the publisher's name rather than the author). Christopher Ryan asserts that the name is "apparently" a pseudonym. She herself has a blog right here on Goodreads and claims that the name is legitimate, but without giving any details. We can tell a few things about the author. Not only does the occasionally aggrieved tone about male sexuality suggest a feamle author, but the author (henceforth LS) says "we are the descendants only of females who…" (322), so the author is female. She uses the "our" spelling of words like "favour", so she's not an American. She obviously has a wide familiarity with the academic bibliography of evolutionary biology in general and in terms of "monkey-ology" (primates and apes) as well as anthropological studies of "primitive" human cultures. Strikingly absent is much (if any?) mention of the study of paleological anthropology if that's the right term (i.e., the study of human ancestors like austrolopithecus). I would guess she's an academic in a field like primatology who, for whatever reason, is unwilling to engage with Ryan and Jetha (henceforth R&J) directly.

And boy, does she think their argument is specious and mendacious! I should say upfront that I haven't read Dawn and will simply indicate what LS's denunciation of it is. Their work is a "breezy" attempt to argue for more open sexual relations among contemporary humans on the basis of the supposed "natural" behavior for humans as indicated by their reconstruction of primitive human behavior in the period before the introduction of agriculture. Before getting into their specific argument, it should be stated that LS routinely accuses them of misrepresenting the evidence they cite through partial, reordered and cherry-picked quotation and through the mischaracterization of the results of previous scholars' conclusions and interpretations. She cites very numerous examples, and the case seems damning. So what is the overall argument that this misrepresentation is meant to demonstrate?

As far as I can tell from LS's account, R&J's argument is as follows. Primitive human "society" was very similar to that of the contemporary apes known as bonobos. Humans lived in collective groups of about 100 to 150 members. There was no organized warfare. Indeed, these early humans lived a fairly lackadaisical life of indolence. They didn't work much and so had little material surplus whose distribution they had to worry about. They took no concern about population increase and even engaged in infanticide to maintain population. They used a lot of their time off to fuck randomly. Neither sex engaged in much "mate selection," and instead the sole form of genetic competition took the form of various sperm that had been deposited by assorted males in the vagina of a given female "fighting it out" to determine which would achieve its "end" by fertilizing an egg. The upshot of this is that the institution of marriage (monogamous or otherwise) is considered "unnatural", and it's therefore unreasonable to expect the members of a marriage to maintain sexual exclusivity.

Basically, this is the idea of nirvana as conceived of by a lazy urban hipster, who doesn't care much about advancing himself and prefers to enter into meaningless "hook-ups".

Since LS's book is "organized" as a sequential denunciation of R&J's presentation, it's somewhat difficult to tease out what LS believes herself. Here is my summary of her opposing view.

1) It's wrong to view human evolutionary biology/psychology in isolation, and instead it must be evaluated in the context of a broader understanding of sexual relations among animals.

2) Sexual reproduction is governed by the bipolar manner of creating new life. With asexual reproduction, the old entity is reproduced in its entirely through splitting. With sexual reproduction, in which only half of the genetic material of the previous entity is passed on to be united with half from another entity of the same variety, it has proved optimal for entities to adopt two different but complementary procedures. Some versions of the entity emit large numbers of small genetic "conveyants" (sperm), with the result that there isn't much care about the fate of the individual sperm. The altenative is to have a much smaller number of larger conveyants (eggs), which are "husbanded" (as it were), much care being expended on joining them to suitable sperm and on raising them afterwards.

3) The interest of sexual reproduction concerns the perpetuation of the male's or female's genes. That is, the well-being of the individual that creates the conveyant is irrelevant (except to the extent that it contributes to the success of the genes), and the well-being of the species is likewise irrelavant, the success or failure of the species being a side effect of the collective success or failure of individual genes.

4) Bonobos are not in fact a good model for human ancestors.

5) The evidence for "promiscuity" among human "forager" societies in the Amazon, Africa and New Guinea is flawed.

6) Human ancestors did not live in large groupings of incestuously related siblings and cousins. Rather, humans lived in exogamous patrilocal groups. That is, upon reaching sexual maturity, males stayed in their birth group and females left to join other groups.

7) Human males are somewhat larger on average than females (something like 20%), but substantially stronger in physical strength (50% or more).

8) Human females used/use sex for the benefit of themselves and of both their reproductive prospects and their actual offspring. That is, females offer sex in return for benefits.

9) Males are interested in propagating as many children as possible, but don't necessarily care all that much about any given child. Males are also jealous of maintaing the "exclusivity" of sexual access to their mates and are interested in promoting the interests of their own children.

10) The upshot is that "marriage" of some sort is mutually beneficial to males and females. In such relationships, males gain access to sex, and also get other forms of material benefit from their spouses. They also can ensure the success of their genes by making sure that their mates produce only their own children and by providing food for their spouse and children. Females get food for themselves and their children, and other indirect forms of benefit like protection against the unwanted sexual advances of (certain) other males.

11) While theoretical exclusivity is a supposed given in this situation, in practice this is hardly maintained. Males will try to impregnate other females, and females will try to gain advantages from other males by offering sex.

12) R&J's argument is ultimately taken to be a specious justification for a male fantasy of ready access to promiscuous pussy. It's based on erroneous premises disingenuously argued for, and takes a male perspective. It turns sex into a merely "fun" activity and takes no account of the differing (biological) motives of females.

All of these points take a lot of mental effort on the part of the reader to figure out. There is no signposting whatsoever in the argument. There is no proper introduction to explain the author's motives and methods, and as the "argument" progresses, it's up to the reader to figure out what the point of any of it is. Each chapter does end with some bullet points, but these are merely recapitulations of the main points without any attempt to expand the sense or to tie it in to any broad argument. In fact, it took me a while to figure out that the various chapters of Dusk are simply refutations of a number of chapters in Dawn taken in the order in which they appear in Dawn. That is, the book takes the form "not A but R, not B but Q, not C but W, not D but P". It would have been far preferable for the author to have written as a response to Dawn a properly formed argument of her own for what she thinks did go on in the past and what the implications of this are for present-day human relations rather than spend so much time simply reacting to somebody else's argument. The lack of any positive argument is frequently very frustrating. In particular, while the book takes a rather sanctimonious tone towards male behavior determined by the dictates of producing large numbers of expendable sperm (i.e., the constant desire to bang large numbers of nubile females), there is no comparable discussion of what the implications are of females' "whorish" (her assessment) use of sex to gain material benefit from males.

The upshot is that in addition to taking a dim view of R&J's position (and their specious argumentation for it), the book also allows the reader to learn a lot of interesting bits and pieces of information about sexual reproduction in general, and the behavior of other primates and of primitive human societies in particular. But you'll be hard-pressed to get a clear sense of the overall meaning of all these facts unless you're willing to reconfigure them into the book that the author should have written but didn't.

[Jens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considering that many arguments against Sex at Dawn The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá or likewise against its rebuttal Sex at Dusk Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn by Lynn Saxon are ad hominem and the supporters seem to either fall into those approving of consensual non-monogamy or those oppose to it, I will give
a bit of background information about myself. I believe that consensual non-monogamy is as valid a relationship choice as every other consensual relationship. I myself am exclusively in open-relationships for several years now and found it to be the type of relationship that best suits me. I am also working as scientist in academia with a PhD in Physics.
With this being said, I will sum up my opinion about the Sex at Dawn vs. Sex at Dusk debate with a little analogy: Quite a few of my friends are vegans - in an ethical sense of the term not just in the "I don't eat animal products" fashion - and while I am not, I very much agree with many of the ethical, sociological, and health reasons to be a vegan, but when some of my friends, in an effort to defend their views against (mostly ignorant fundamentalist meat-eaters), they sometimes/often drift into arguments along the lines "humans are not omnivores (but herbivores)". What they generally mean to say is that it is absolutely no problem for someone to get all nutrition the body needs on a vegan diet and that supporting the dairy and meet industry is both ecologically harmful as well as ethnically questionable (animal cruelty), where I couldn't agree more (at least for people living in the first world), but what they actually do is attacking a scientific consensus that humans have evolved as omnivores and still have as such all physical means to capture, kill, and digest animal products. I'd be thrilled to see someone go into the scientific arena and falsify the claim that human beings have evolved as omnivores but I do not see that happening.
Sex at Dawn, in a nutshell, makes two statements the trivial one that human beings are not naturally monogamous and the very questionably statement that open, consensual non-monogamous relationships are in effect a humans natural state. One of the many victims along Ryan's narrative is the importance of pair bonding in human evolution something that is, in my eyes, set straight in Saxon's rebuttal.
I make no secret of the fact that I believe Ryan's Sex at Dawn tale is not even appallingly bad science but no science at all but instead agenda driven pseudo science at best and I personally find the Sex at Dawn tales implication particularly harmful for people in open-relationships who seem to have embraced the book so kindheartedly but in the end everyone has to make up ones own mind. Since Ryan, much like the vegan friends in my analogy, made a scientific statement he should take it up against the scientific community but I doubt that he will have more success than a vegan trying to convince one that human beings did not evolve as omnivores. To defend your arguments before the scientific community should always come before trying to sell them as scientific facts to a greater public audience which neither has the means nor time to do so. This does of course NOT mean, that consensual non-monogamous relationships are unnatural or not feasible in our time and age. Much like the choice to live on a healthy vegan diet I can personally see many reasons to live a healthy open relationship in our time and age.

I could go on in great length about why I think this book is much better written, more honest, better understandable, more helpful, less male-biased, and much more than Sex at Dawn The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, but anyone interested can make up their own mind about that.
I do think that Saxon sometimes goes a little too far when it comes to mocking Sex at Dawn, but that is more than understandable if one follows, in particular Christopher Ryan's FB or twitter feeds, and how he and some of his fans and followers answer to questions about the validity and soundness of the arguments presented in Sex at Dawn.
In response to Ryan's FB feed that I read a while ago, "Is there anything in Sex at Dusk worth responding to", I can say that Saxon presents not only sound arguments and reveals gut wrenching distortions of scientific work 'cited' in Sex at Dawn, it also gives a nice compact point by point summary at the end of each chapter, which would make a reply and discussion particularly easy.
Time will tell if there is going to be a response by Ryan and Jethá but until that time I will keep Sex at Dawn in the fiction section and Sex at Dusk in the non-fiction isle.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Sex at Dusk" is a response, by the pseudononymous author Lynn Saxon, to the book "Sex at Dawn" by Cacilda Jethá and Christopher Ryan. "Sex at Dusk" argues that "Sex at Dawn" fails to give an accurate account of the scientific literature with regard to human sexuality, and attempts to remedy this failure by a detailed analysis of some relevant scholarly works. Who Lynn Saxon is, and whether she has any professional qualifications relevant to the topic, are unknown. The people who are best qualified to involve themselves in this debate--the members of relevant scholarly communities--seem not to have said much about either of these books publicly. That leaves the rest of us with limited means of assessing the validity of the arguments posed. Lacking a clear statement from the academic community, the reader's second-best option is to follow up on the cited references for his or herself. The reference lists are very long, however: accessing the scholarly articles and reading through them will require a significant investment of time and effort that most readers (including, so far, myself) are probably unwilling to make. Also, the non-specialist reader will have only limited ability to understand, evaluate, and contextualize the arguments made in the articles.

Unfortunately, most readers are left with indirect means of assessing the correctness of the two arguments. The reader is confronted with a debate between, on one hand, Ryan and Jetha--authors whose scholarly qualifications are weak, and who present their controversial argument in a manner that does not always generate confidence (and sometimes falls badly into New Age silliness, as in the last chapter); and, on the other, Saxon--an anonymous author who might have no professional qualifications at all and whose seemingly better-researched arguments are presented in a self-published format that invites questions about why it was not published through more standard avenues.

My suspicion is that none of these authors--being, as they probably all are, outsiders to the relevant scholarly fields--has fully understood the scientific literature upon which these books are based. I have a hunch that Saxon has understood it better than Ryan and Jetha. However, Saxon also argues, somewhat implausibly, that Ryan and Jetha wilfully misrepresent their sources. While she provides some compelling examples to that effect, most of the examples she presents look more like incompetence and overreaching by Ryan and Jetha than like wilful bad faith.

Aside from the crucial but difficult-to-assess question of scientific validity, I do actually find both books' treatments of gender to be interesting. Ryan and Jetha extensively treat the impact of misogynistic social and economic pressures on women's sexuality; Saxon disputes this and, in my view, dismisses Ryan and Jetha's arguments far too lightly. On the other hand, Saxon provides many valid critiques of Ryan and Jetha, particularly as regards the latters' claim (which Saxon sees as male-centric wish-fulfilment fantasy) that women are naturally suited to be indiscriminate in mate choice. But Saxon's suggestion that monogamy is a more liberal, feminist choice than polyamory feels extremely strained, and her argument that “monogamy…is about reducing the monopolization of all women by some men” (Chap. 6) is as male-centric as Ryan and Jetha's implication that non-monogamy will free men from the tyranny of mate-choice. I also noticed that the way in which Saxon refers to recreational sex (for example, sometimes putting quotes around the word “recreational” [e.g., p. 209], as if to imply that sex isn’t really...fun?) seems to carry reactionary moral freight that is never openly acknowledged. One does rather wonder who Saxon is, and what her agenda might be.

All in all, regardless of the degree to which non-monogamous mating in humans is natural ("Sex at Dawn") or unnatural ("Sex at Dusk"), neither of these books implies that there is any intrinsic ethical conflict with non-monogamy: on that one point, there is no disagreement between them.

Of course, knowing what sort of mating system is most natural to humans *would be* valuable. It might help us better understand our own emotional lives and the dynamics of our relationships. But, to get better information on this subject, we will need to wait for commentary from the biology and evolutionary psychology communities.

[Adam Leonas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was reluctant to read Sex at Dusk. I thought it would be a biased, traditionalist dismissal of Sex at Dawn, full of "happily ever after" love rhetoric, and idealization of marriage. I was pleasantly surprised to find out this was not the case.

Sex at Dawn posits that sex was a common in prehistoric human societies, and that this was largely due to the "voracious" female sex drive. It is an important book for popularizing the notion that sex was, more or less, free during the evolutionary period of humanity. Its theory, though, is based on the erroneous hypothesis of a great female sex drive. This is a proposition that cannot stand scientific scrutiny.

Lynn Saxxon, in Sex at Dusk, is all too happy to mercilessly attack the idea that women would give away sex for free - or cheap, for that matter - and she backs up her attack with a laborious research and solid scientific evidence. While Ryan and Jetha proudly assert that women are "sluts", i.e. happy to engage in sex just for the pleasure of it, Saxxon takes up the cudgels for women, to unashamedly contend that "Our female ancestors have not been sluts but they have been whores", i.e. they exchanged sex for resources.

The main point of contention between the two books is marriage and the pair bond. Although Saxxon, as is the standard case in mainstream evolutionary psychology, does not make a good job distinguishing between the two, she highlights their ubiquity in human societies, and focuses on the psychological adaptations to accommodate the pair bond in humans - particularly in women. On the other hand, Ryan and Jetha insist on the psychological adaptations for sexual variety - which are also ubiquitous.

So was it marriage, "mild polygyny", plus sexual infidelity, the human model, or was it "free for all" sex?

In a sense, Saxxon's, and generally the conservative evolutionary psychologists' task is more difficult: while Ryan and Jetha only need to prove that a "free sex" society is a possibility, the standard narrative needs to prove that it is impossible. The latter does have evidence from societies in the last 10000 years in its arsenal. However it is still not sound to extrapolate to pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers and draw results about "marriage" in general.

Saxxon, although adamant that women are in the business of exchanging sex for resources, seems to have a very difficult time grasping the notion that this exchange can take a collective form, which is what Ryan and Jetha support. Her difficulty is not her personal thing. It is a revealing element in our attempt to sort things out. The denial of a collective form of socio-sexual exchange is a loud echo of the female sexual strategy. If examined in isolation from the male sexual strategy, the maximization of the female reproductive strategy is indeed what Saxxon identifies: polygyny. Why would women mate with an "inferior" man, if they could share a genetically and socially superior one? The problem is that this arrangement, polygyny, is a disaster for men: most are left without a sexual outlet. The ideal system for them would be free sex, without even the obligation to provide.

So, if we are to suppose a state of relative balance between the sexes, a situation which would have come about if the external conditions were stable for a long period in prehistory, it is highly unlikely that it would be so overwhelmingly in favor of one sex. A collective management of resources, both material and sexual, turns out to be the most efficient, for the circumstances prehistoric hunter-gatherers found themselves in.

If the collective management of the (female) sexual resource was indeed the case, as Sex at Dawn supports, and this was done despite the female sexual preference for polygyny, it must have been accomplished against the liking of females. Therefore, instead of an nonexistent "voracious" female sex drive being the reason for such a system, the catalyst towards it, as is unwittingly identified in Sex at Dusk, would be compulsion. Males would have had to exercise the advantages nature bestowed on them, both intellectual and physical, in order to get females to comply to what was ultimately to the species benefit, the aforementioned collective management of sex.

Evolutionary psychology is a highly controversial field. There is still much speculation, and since its subject is so complicated, arguments can be found for either side. Ryan and Jetha, reluctant to acknowledge women's dark side, summoned a politically correct but scientifically wrong case about the female sex drive to their aid. It is not by chance that Sex at Dawn is currently the #1 book in Popular Psychology of Sexuality. Ironically, it is the dominant narrative, that it purposes to oppose, if in politics and not in evolutionary psychology. It sells the mainstream political idea "give more power to women, and sex will flow down to men". There are scores of women that are enjoying a privileged life selling a variation of that lie in their personal life. It is therefore revitalizing to see a book like Sex at Dusk, which makes it clear that the War of the Sexes is unpacifiable. It trashes the argument that women can be counted on to help solve the male sexual problem. In her last chapter, Saxxon fully unleashes her (and generally, the female's) enmity against men's sexual strategy. It is made quite clear that misandry is the standard female disposition against the average male (in stark contrast with men's general deference to women.)

An example of Saxxon's disposition against male sexuality is revealing. One can imagine her, gray hair bound in a tight bun, and her heavy, dark dress meticulously ironed, explaining to a sexless, enraged, sexually frustrated 17 year old boy, that "A sexless period for adolescent and young adult males is far from unnatural and is also found in other species, including chimpanzees and bonobos." Isn't that a relief? That's what science is about, finding solutions to human problems. Now, does her welcoming of a "sexless period" for young men on the grounds of its naturalness mean that she also welcomes the hitting of females by males? It is a very natural way to respond to sexual frustration, in fact it is the second biggest predictor of aggression in nature. If she is anything close to objective, why acknowledge the first but condemn the second?

The problem about misandry is not that it creates bad feelings. It is a problem of scientific validity. Considering males to be naturally inferior to females raises the issue "why not all be female"? If females can be granted their unalloyed sexual strategy, they are clearly in a better position over males. And if being female was the better way to be, evolution would have made us all be that.

Contrary to Saxxon's assertions, there was equality between men and women during the evolutionary era - though its dimensions are vastly different from the current politically correct feminist perception of it, as "interchangeability". Considering the female sex to be the absolute arbitrator of sexual matters, of the most crucial biological resource, doesn't add up to a plausible natural equilibrium for our species.

Saxxon is sincere in that, if ever a free sex society was, or is to be, this would be a result of men asserting their own sexual strategy over that of women. "Free sex?", say women. "Only over our bodies." Literally. Her book is useful, not as an objective account of human sexuality, but as a subjective one, from the point of view of women - and of the conservative manifestation of the system. It does refute quite some inaccuracies and overstated propositions in Sex at Dawn, but in its relentless hate against masculinity, ultimately makes one re-appreciate Sex at Dawn's unrealistic but good-willed attempt at a conciliation, its "giving men a break".

[S · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think if anyone has ever read or is thinking about reading Sex at Dawn, then this book is a must-read as well.

Sex at Dawn attempts to make the claim that our species originated using a multimale/multifemale mating style. They make this claim using examples of modern-day hunter-gatherer tribes, our closest species (chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos), and our biology. They make some pretty interesting claims and all would be well, if they had presented the full story instead of only a part of it.

Lynn Saxon disproves almost all of their data. She does it by citing the claims they've made and then presents the full story either using their own data sources or supplementing it with her own sources. She goes step by step through the entire book of Sex at Dawn and one-by-one disproves their claims.

If this is just a he said/she said case, then why should we believe either one of them? In reality, you shouldn't. You should do your own research and come to our own conclusions. If you're lazy like me, then I suggest reading both of these books (as well as any others on the topic that you can) and comparing the data to see whose claims hold up the best.

My vote, Lynn Saxon's claims hands down. Not only does she thoroughly explain why Ryan & Jetha's hypotheses don't hold up, but she expands on all the examples they use to help present a much more full picture. Chances are she's not 100% right either, and that's the great thing about science. When her claims are no longer supported by the data, someone will come along and disprove her. That's what's great about the scientific method and that's why it works so well. Read this book - you will not be disappointed.

[Jake · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did it refute the conclusions in Sex at Dawn? Absolutely. Did it go about this in the driest, most excruciating way possible? Basically.

You can argue against the science of Sex at Dawn all day long but at least it was a fascinating read.

[Isabella Chen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book, and a detailed introduction into sexual selection, especially with respect to our closest cousins, the great apes, and the ancestor we share. It is also a tour of some of the most important anthropological studies of modern hunter-gatherer and agricultural/pre-industrial societies and their socio-sexual arrangements. The science seems solid (unlike Sex at Dawn), and the author writes with no other agenda apart from clearing up the misconceptions in Sex at Dawn.

The book, and the scientific facts, taken at face value can be depressing. She outlines how constrained we are by our biology and ultimately, our genes. Because Sex at Dawn uses (mostly) chimpanzees, bonobos and modern hunter-gatherer societies to push its point across that human beings in our 'natural state' are promiscuous, most of Saxon's arguments illuminate how, on closer look, these patriarchal societies are deeply misogynistic. By using these examples as a shining way forward, Sex at Dawn is not providing new answers to deal with the eternal battle of the sexes through new forms of socio-sexual arrangements that take into account the increasing equality of the sexes, but instead purporting a return to more misogynistic times via bad science.

In Saxon's book, she stresses that the arrangements in the West are unique because of gender equality, and an abundance and fairly equal distribution of resources between the sexes and also between classes. Socio-sexual arrangements are not set in stone, not for chimpanzees or bonobos, and certainly not for human beings. Depending on resource distribution and the social unit, these arrangements change. By and large though, they fall somewhere between polygamy and monogamy. But the key is this: They can, and do, change.

Saxon stresses throughout the book that no one is saying monogamy, or the 'standard narrative' is a natural state. On closer observation of most human societies, we would find the primary arrangement is one of serial monogamy and/or monogamy with extra-pair sex. However, what is certain is pair-bonding, which is deeply ingrained in our biologies and clearly observable in all human societies.

It is only by coming to a greater understanding of our biologies that we can formulate a response to the frustrations that plague us in the war of the sexes.

Where Sex at Dawn ends with a prescription based on bad science, Saxon ends with this: "... the search for a naturally selected answer to our sexual and relationship frustrations is only ever going to be a fruitless quest, as a look at the naturally selected sexual traits of other species so clearly shows. The best we can hope to do is gain an understanding of the evolution of sex and reproduction on which to base our choices."

[Melissa Lemke · Rating 2 out of 5]

The authors of Sex at Dusk and Sex at Dawn could all have benefited from each other's expertise, if they could stand being in the same room. Lynn brings up a lot of valid misrepresentations in the evidence provided by Sex at Dawn, but it reads as a repetitive 300 page rant where she throws in quite a bit of her own conjecture. She condecendingly corrects the mistakes in evolutionary biology (her expertise) seen in Sex at Dawn in a manner that seems more interested in making the reader angry with the Sex at Dawn authors than actually teaching them about it. Along the way she throws in uncited arguments/opinions on the psychological front (Sex at Dawn authors expertise) often attacking views it seems she is projecting onto the Sex at Dawn authors. The last chapter or two finally begins to acknowledge that perhaps all of this arguing about the evolutionary history of sex might not correlate exactly with suggestions of how we as modern homo sapiens in our current environment should be behaving sexually (more of this along the way could have made for a less aggravating read). Overall, these two books were thought provoking but both should be read critically as I don't believe either alone gives a fair modern feminist (or male) perspective allowing for variety in sexual motivations and desires.

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sex at Dusk is a book that is written pseudonymously by someone who is knowledgable about evolutionary biology and its implications for human sexuality but who nonetheless seemed a bit embarrassed to attach his or her real name to it. The book is essentially an extended essay rebuttal to the popular book Sex at Dawn, which was apparently written with the intention to promote alternative sexual lifestyles. For the record, I have not read Sex at Dawn, even though I think to fairly assess this rebuttal, it might be good to do so. All I can do is basically restate here what the pseudonymous author Saxon makes of the evo-bio research used in that book.

Most of the book is boring, frankly, because it's about as concrete as the science can get with regard human sexuality. The author makes frequent use not only of evolutionary biology but anthropological research in order to supplement what look to be core features of human sexuality, core in the sense that they might just be parts of human nature. And some of those core parts are kind of ugly. For instance, it might just be the case, if the author is correct, that human beings are 'monogamish': more or less monogamous, that is, more or less prone to marriage with one partner in what is primarily an economic relationship--'economic' in the primitive sense of being about gaining access to resources--but with some cheating on the side, cheating that is more or less tabu but which is nevertheless part of how human beings tend to operate. These are tendencies, mind, not fate, but they do look to be common aspects of our sexuality.

This book is strongest in its conclusion, and if the quotations and information from Sex at Dawn have been used correctly, quite devastating against that book. The author here seems to want to support alternative lifestyles to the extent that we can and at the same time make sure that we use our support for alternative lifestyles not to reinforce traditional patriarchy, which author Saxon thinks the book Sex at Dawn does. For example, check out this long passage from this book.

It is significant that in the book's conclusions the authors' earlier arguments for an insatiable female libido disappeared and become one of women wanting emotional sexual attachments and wives not seeking sex with other men if they were happily married. There was no explanation of where the husband's partners for their 'meaningless' and casual sexual encounters would come from. The supposed compatability of the two sexes suddently was gone and we were left with husband keeping their maritabl benefits while the wives were admonished for not allowing their their extra-marital sex too. Hunter-gatherer women would not accept a deal like that, though our Victorian foremothers, and perhaps all our foremothers of the past ten thousand years, have not had that choice.

The fundamental problem we have with sex is that we imagine that it is meant to be fun and easy--'naturally' about all things good. Whent it feels bad we imagine that this must be due to some 'unnatural' influences and constraints, and if we could only rid ourselves of these, everything would be great. But the search for a naturally selected answer to our sexual and relationship frustrations is only ever going to be a fruitless quest, as a look at the naturally sexual traits of other species so clearly shows.

This is a really dense passage above, but it comes in the heels of going at the book Sex at Dawn, time and time again, on its central claims and what the available evidence shows. The first paragraph is about how the claims of Sex at Dawn are on the one hand quite conventional and on the other hand, in other respects, far too conservative and narrow. The conventional claims is that it turns out that women do not seek sex outside of marriage or outside of their partner if they are quite happy with their partner, particularly the emotional connection. This is almost a truism. The narrow claim is a normative claim from the authors of Sex at Dawn, where they say that women ought to be more excusing of their men's sexual exploits or desire to sleep with other women, and maybe even their actual sleeping with other women. Author Saxon thinks this is a very conservative, kind of backward position actually, because this has unfortunately been the condition for women for years, and there is no place in the evolutionary biological history to justify that we ought to accept it. This was the condition of our Victorian ancestors, where the men could cheat and the women had to be chaste, and really has nothing to do with human nature per se.

The second paragraph above is about how as much as we personally may want to think of sexual activity as primarily about having fun, that is, sex in terms of recreation, Mother Nature hasn't designed us for it to be this way. That is why there is an innate tendency for jealousy if, say, men are making too many outside emotional and physical connections, and the same goes for men who feel jealousy for women whom they love. So it's been since time immemorial, and so the autor here claims must be the case for as far as we can see.

By the way, I'm not endorsing any of the claims here, pro or con, and the main reason is that it is extremely difficult to parse out which features of human beings are merely historically contingent and which are innate. Since this must be the case, I don't think we all have to be very careful, in our daily life as well as when we do the tough scinece, regarding how quick we are to assume one thing or another. And it certainly doesn't mean that we shouldn't push for change, to the extent that we can, in order to make a more decent society.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

4 stars for content, 2-3 for writing. A friend of mine recently picked up "Sex at Dawn," which I'd read a few years ago when it was released and hyped. While I was more than ready to agree with its premise and was looking forward to some good old-fashioned scientific evidence, I was incredibly disappointed not only by the condescendingly smug tone, but the pseudo scientific, poorly-defended arguments from cherry-picked (often intentionally misrepresented)sources. I was further put off by Christopher Ryan's puerile and defensive online attacks on those people who expressed doubt about the book; if you think people are misunderstanding your work, back it up with evidence and refute the claim - don't get into silly arguments in the comments sections of online reviews.

Discussing the book with my friend really brought back my irritation, so I did a little more research and discovered that quite a bit of material has been published in the meantime refuting Ryan's arguments in SAD. "Sex at Dusk" was perhaps the most thorough, and it presents what I was hoping for from the first work: clear arguments (from multiple angles), thorough research, less male bias, not pushing an agenda when it contradicts scientific evidence, and a willingness to acknowledge what is still unknown. It's not perfect, by any means; there ARE many unknowns, and the writing itself is often not that strong (at times it's downright poor), but I think she was probably compelled to write the book to get a significant counter-argument out there. I'd encourage anyone who read Sex at Dawn to take a look at this book, too.

[Chanii · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ryan and Jetha in their book Sex at Dawn want us to believe that our fore-mothers were Sluts.
Comes Lynn Saxon in Sex at Dusk and makes a much better case for the assertion that early females weren’t sluts; they were Whores.

Aside from this very significant takeaway, I learned a much more relevant and valuable lesson. You can come in the name of science, spew and skew the data and the studies, and sell to the uninitiated and the laymen the most dubious and species positions as doctrine.

[Plaxico Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sex at Dusk was a comprehensive rebuttal of everything Sex at Dawn supposed to offer, and I would more than recommend it to any reader of Sex at Dawn. Furthermore, Sex at Dusk was mostly well written, engaging, and informative in it's own right. I came into Sex at Dawn/Sex at Dusk with very limited experience and knowledge regarding human sexual evolution or evolutionary biology generally, and came away with much greater understanding - and interest!

[Jochem · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent rebuttal to sex at dawn. Clear arguments, plenty of sources. Made me doubt whenever I read a good controversial book, better check some sources next time...

[Jeffrey Robert Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

My opinion:


I wish this book was more well known. There are many interviews/podcasts featuring Dawn authors (even a Ted Talks and Joe Rogan interview), but nothing about Lynne Saxon. Someone ought to invite her onto their podcast for an interview goddamnit.

When I first came across Sex at Dawn about 3 years ago, I thought - "if these are the rules of the game... I don't know if I want to play this game". It made me feel disillusioned about my own monogamous relationship. And now I'm single. Yay promiscuity... Not.

Fast forward to this summer. I came across the Sex at Dusk book by Lynn. I read it, and it soothed my soul.

It covered topics like Sexually antagonistic co-evolution and selfish gene theory. It goes all the way back as far as we know - to the theory on how the two types of gametes (eggs and sperm) evolved in single cell organisms. It's been a battle from day one... or a balancing act depending on how you look at it.

Love hurts. Love scars. It ain't pretty for boys or girls, but consider yourself lucky for not being a damn venom-semen fruit fly, face-eating spider, grasshopper with carapace puncturing weiners, or male-absorbing anglerfish. Or one of the couples that the Dusk book talks about - a scene where a young guy with a machete is defending his fiance from getting ritually gang-banged at some annual festival. Shits heavy. Sexual selection is no joke, its not a no-strings-attached-free-for-all let-the-best-sperm-in-the-hole-win type of game.

I'd rather not duke it out with top dog alpha dicks either in the Polygynous world. Can you imagine being a dishwasher for a sultan with 100 of the hottest virgin wives, and you can't get any of that because the guards will chop your weiner off with a scimitar. No thanks! I'll take my romance with one of the chambermaids, and we can watch each other's backs in this cruel world... And when some sultan tries to take her, I'll chop off his weiner with a frying pan! Good old mate-guarding.

Anyway. I'm probably not doing the book any favours by sounding like a lunatic.
Great book though. Highly recomend. Although maybe a little harsh on the Dawn authors. I think their heart is in the right place, and they probably have some great wisdoms to impart.

Sex at dawn = Cloaking hedonism in a mask of virtue. Although I'm sure there's good relationship advice about how to deal with our promiscuous nature. Times have changed, plus there is contraception now - thats a game changer (not sure if they discussed that)

Sex at dusk = Sexual selection is insanely complicated. And brutal. The human pair bond, while not the only mating strategy for humans, is useful for the longterm well-being of the partners and for rearing offspring.

Listen to your hearts, guts, brains, and loins....

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book left me totally convinced that the arguments in Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality were deeply flawed. This was after reading Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality a couple years ago and becoming totally convinced that those arguments were true. I've always known that I was an impressionable person, but this whole experience has left me reeling. I definitely need to read with more skepticism.

I encountered this blog post from a totally unrelated source while reading this book: http://squid314.livejournal.com/35009... In it, the author describes this same experience of becoming totally convinced of two separate viewpoints. He names his reaction epistemic learned helplessness but it could just as easily be described as a healthy skepticism to new ideas. I'd say I've learned a new appreciation for this skepticism over the last two months.

But that also distresses me. I've been a big believer in Sam Harris and Keynes' argument that one must be willing to change one's mind in the face of new evidence. That is, after all, the nature of the scientific method that has brought our species so much knowledge, technology, and wealth. But I'm not generating all this new evidence myself. I'm trusting scientists, journalists, and authors to present it to me so that I can know what to believe.

The answer is clearly to keep track of the reliability of all your sources of information. If an author gives you an argument that is later convincingly debunked, then be more skeptical of that author in the future. Continually update your priors based on the success of each source in giving enduringly true arguments.

Another answer is increase your skepticism when you're presented with an argument that you want to be true. Being hyper aware of your own biases and incentives can greatly help you judge arguments but this is obviously really really difficult. So many people fail here, including me when reading Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality.

The truth is pretty elusive these days. Maybe it's always been that way.

[Bastian Greshake Tzovaras · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the here criticised Sex at Dawn back in April and now came around to read this point-by-point critique.

My Sex at Dawn review stated that I liked how the book tears apart the classical claims that Evolutionary Psychology makes though I didn't feel confident enough to say whether the alternative story proposed by Ryan & Jetha is any better or if they also only cherry-picked 'evidence'. My doubts on their story grew after reading Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa, so Sex at Dusk was kind of an obvious next step.

Saxon's book is based around the gene eye's view of evolution (that's evolutionary biology, not evolutionary psychology…) as proposed by Richard Dawkins (the good 70ies-Dawkins, not the 21st century 'all Muslims are evil'-Dawkins) and shows a pretty good understanding of sperm competition, making frequent use of the work of Tim Birkhead.

Besides this pretty firm theoretical ground Saxon also goes through a lot of the works cited in Sex at Dawn and does not only show that the 'evidence' was cherry-picked by Ryan & Jetha. She also shows that they frequently take quotes completely out of their original context, basically inverting the original meaning. After checking a small sample of quotes given in Dusk I can only say: Yup, Saxon is right. These citations are imho even worse than using cherry-picked literature because it looks like a pretty deliberate act to make their story sound more convincing.

So what I've learned from this book: It's totally okay to make fun of Evolutionary Psychologists, no matter what their story line may be. Lynn Saxon has a pretty dry, academic writing style, which - depending on your preference - may make the reading itself a bit less fun compared to Sex at Dawn, but then again it's facts over a nice story line…

[Sjervey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written as a critique of Sex at Dawn, a book which consistently misrepresented findings and took quotes out of context, Sex at Dusk reviews piece by piece all of the material and gives its full context and meaning. Through this systematic correction of Sex at Dusk, Lynn Saxon outlines what was known (at the time of publication) about the evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology of human sexuality. It is a very thorough presentation highlighting the true battle of the sexes (the conflicting reproductive goals and needs of sperm and egg) as well as an introduction to the wonder of how human evolution has enabled and required human development to move toward pair-bonding of males and females for the protection and nurturing of human children which require more than a decade to reach puberty and, increasingly, still longer to function effectively in the society humans have been able to develop. A thoughtful reading also sheds insight on the place provided by evolution for individuals who bond with same sex partners or do not bond with any partners, but the focus is, of course, on the partners who reproduce and keep the species alive. Some readers will find it too detailed but that was necessitated if a full rebuttal of Sex at Dawn was to be achieved. But there is no need, no need at all, to read Sex at Dawn. Saxon's work will acquaint you fully with the scientific license taken in Sex at Dawn while making some very important concepts clear for the reader. I recommend this for any reader interested in the genetic developmental of human sexuality and for anyone seeking to better understand the challenges and opportunities to truly improve intersexual relations.

[Aaron Dietz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fabulous information and worth the read, despite the prose's lack of engagement. This book's purpose is an information download for those who read Sex at Dawn and wanted to know more. Ultimately while there are parts of Sex at Dawn that are fun to think about, the book is filled with incomplete research, misunderstood research, and other snafus to the extent that much of what it is trying to hold up scientifically is just not supported by the evidence. This book provides you a better summary of the evidence and grinds an axe toward the previous book, for better or worse. If it's the information you crave, it is here. Short version: the whole sex thing and how it evolved is far more complex than Sex at Dawn made it out to be, and not at all likely to have evolved in the way that Sex at Dawn suggested. It may be silly to write a review about this book that ends up being mostly about the other book, but it's inevitable, as this book is simply about the other book. While I like Sex at Dawn's tearing down of the standard narrative of sexual living, the story they choose to replace it with isn't accurate, and Sex at Dusk does a good job of summing up the larger, more complicated, and sometimes horrific story.

[Xavier Shay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Early on reading "Sex at Dawn" I started hearing alarm bells. Something didn't feel right, but I wasn't familiar enough with the material to articulate it particularly well.

Enter this book, written in response and directly addressing the scientific claims made in "Sex at Dawn". Its primary criticisms, supported by large bodies of evidence, are:

* That's not how natural selection works.
* Bonobos aren't really like that.
* Those hunter-gatherer tribes aren't really like that.

It was a much more complex treatment of the material (real life is messy), but didn't pull any punches when they had to be thrown.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you thought that "Sex at Dawn" was honest scholarship then be prepared to learn otherwise. "Sex at Dusk" shows just how manipulative that book is. There is no religious - or other - agenda here, just lots more information, and largely from the same sources referenced in "Sex at Dawn", i.e., it is essential further information. "Sex at Dusk" also stands alone as a very informative science book. It is relatively sober but then, surely the average man and woman in the street deserves access to serious, quality, scientific information on sex.

[Alexej Gerstmaier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent rebuttal to Sex at Dawn.

-imperfect, serial monogamy and polygyny are the classic structures of all human societies. They make sense from a kind of game theory evolutionary perspective. They allow kinship networks and linking of communities through mutually beneficial relationship with in-laws, absent in Bonobos/Chimps.

-Dusk concedes that having lots of affairs as a male increases testosterone; however, it argues that T is actually not good for the long term well being of the *person* doing this and that this is more of a "selfish-gene" type situation: good for genes, bad for you. Am super conflicted about this.

Reading both Dawn and Dusk was super worth it.

[David Randall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Including here my review of Sex at Dawn after reading both books:

After reading Sex at Dusk, it's difficult to express how betrayed I feel by this book, and how foolish I feel for so easily incorporating it's ideas into my philosophy and ideas about relationships. (I've included my original, now somewhat cringy, review below.) As I heard about Sex at Dawn being "debunked" my first thought was that it wasn't a single idea, but a wide collection of anecdotes, and that debunking it would be a huge task, and I was right about the second piece. As it turns out Sex at Dawn is about a single idea, that our ancestors were harmoniously non-monogamous, which is bolstered by Ryan using a slew of cherry picked pieces of evidence from studies that often contradict his premise.

In Sex and Dusk (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/sho...), we get what feels like a much more science-first view on sexuality as it has evolved through various species and played out in humans. The big conclusion is that while humans certainly aren't designed specifically for the fairytale monogamous pair bonding that western culture sometimes promotes, we also don't come from open hippy dippy polyamorous tribes. Humans were largely a combination of monogamous and polygynous (one man, many women), where high power, dominating men could support that.

Two big debunking themes that stand out are 1) evolution happens not just through competition between species, but also between sexes as they attempt to attract desirable mates and put off less attractive ones. When you frame sex around it's evolutionary purpose, procreation, you get wildly different incentives between the sexes that naturally lead to different postures toward sex in all species. 2) There is very little evidence that internal sperm competition, part of what Ryan puts forward as a reason why women were probably having way more sex than they do now, actually works in humans in any meaningful way, or that men benefit from having way more sex with various partners.

This portrait of our sexual history isn't very pretty, and it isn't very "fair" to either gender, especially now that sex now means very different things for us than it did for our ancestors. I guess my takeway from both books is a play on the main statement I wrote below. "Old ideas of sexuality and pairing were a big part of our history, but they don't have to define our destiny."

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Most important book in terms of my perception of life and relationships that I've read in years. Monogamy may be our destiny, but it certainly wasn't our history, and this book does a beautiful job of stepping through the evidence without advocating or preaching. I don't know that it's changed what I want in a relationship, but I think it's given me a new sense of empathy for myself and those around me as sexual beings dealing with a world we weren't necessarily built for.

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Sex at Dusk" is an unusual and worthy book: Lynn Saxon shoulders the thankless Sisyphean work of taking to task another book that popularlizes a legion of inaccuracies and false conclusions about the evolution of primate and human mate partnering. If Lynn's exasperation leaks through here and there, it does so only with ample justification. Her effort is convincing, educational, and rewarding, and uses established evidence from an evolutionary biology perspective to dismantle Ryan and Jetha's glib and superficial paean to promiscuity masquerading as cutting-edge scientific thought. "Sex at Dusk" should be required reading for anyone unfortunate enough to have been influenced by reading "Sex at Dawn." It sets the reader straight in all the right ways.

[Петър Стойков · Rating 4 out of 5]

Настоящата книга е навременен отговор на тази:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
Става дума за човешката еволюция и основно за еволюцията на сексуалното поведение.

Книгата дава по-реална, научно базирана идея за това как нашите предци са се развили от приматите, какво е било тяхното сексуално поведение и всъщност каква е човешката природа що се отнася до секса и отношенията между половете. Изводите може да не харесат на всички, но са съобразени с реалния свят.

[nina (thelibraryofnina) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saxon really brought to my attention all the things Ryan and Jetha got wrong in their book "Sex at Dawn". Really thankful for my sociology professor for using this book as one of our readings for the course.

[Jorge DeFlon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este libro para refutar Sex at Dawn es tan fascinante como aquel, y presenta varios argumentos válidos contra su teoría del sexo libre e indiscriminado.

A final de cuentas, lo único cierto es que sabemos muy poco de nuestro pasado sexual y afectivo.

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much better written and more engaging than earlier written Sex at Dawn.

[Dawn Petersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

not quite as entertaining as sex at dawn, but very good counter arguments to that book.
Reading both books is an excellent exercise