Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary

Princeton anthropology professor and science communicator Fuentes (Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths About Human Nature) flexes his considerable powers of communication to lay out the argument that human gender cannot be understood as a binary. The author of previous titles on human nature, imagination, and evolution, he explains in persuasive and clear terms that gender is the result of an interplay of biology and culture, not a biological concrete. The supporting science is conveyed in language that’s easy for interested laypeople to understand and is enjoyable to read. Fuentes offers many fascinating tidbits contextualizing his position that the cultural understanding of male and female is overly simplistic and, in some cases, downright wrong. He anchors his explication of the evolution of the cultural understanding of sex and gender with scientifically proven fact, including examples of the fluidity of reproductive sex/gender in nature and the results of a large meta-analysis revealing huge variation within human genders.