Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free
October 8, 2018
Martin (Primates of Park Avenue) brings an energetic and scientific curiosity to female infidelity in this chatty, thoughtful work. Combining first-person introspection, interviews with both experts and ordinary women, and research, Martin interrogates social assumptions about this taboo. She speaks with experts, including biophysicist Meredith Chivers, psychologist Marta Meana, and sociologist Alicia Walker, who have contributed to contemporary discourse challenging the preconception that women’s sex drives are biologically lower than men’s. Primatologists such as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy challenge the idea that female biology enforces monogamy in human as well as animal society. Martin reviews societal shaming of female sexual desire in multiple cultures and time periods; investigates how infidelity overlaps with and differs from polyamory and other types of consensual nonmonogamy; discusses how black women’s sexuality is influenced by racism; and illuminates how the male partners of unfaithful women react (often, not as one might expect). She concludes that financial independence seems to most directly predict whether women have, and exercise, autonomy over their sex lives. Martin’s thoroughly researched reconsideration of female sexual desire and infidelity will broaden readers’ understanding of women, sex, and monogamy.
Starred review from October 1, 2018
Martin (Primates of Park Avenue) sets out to collect, analyze, and distill academic research on female infidelity while, in true cultural anthropologist fashion, intertwining that data with personal observations and pop culture references. The author promotes a radical revisioning of how society views female sexuality and identifies a need to focus on women having more sexual choices. An accessible blend of science, history, and cultural critique provides a history of female self-determination through the years as women began to marry for love. Martin also charts how American culture has transformed into one of competitive motherhood compared to other countries. At times playful, the narrative teems with fascinating commentary about everything from bonobos and paleolithic gender roles to Craigslist ads, as Martin examines how female sexuality continues to be shaped and stigmatized by artificial social constructions, sociopolitical values, and economics, all under the guise of "natural" female biology and desire. VERDICT A timely take on femininity and sexuality.--Emily Bowles, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from September 1, 2018
A simultaneously frothy and substantive tour of female sexual desire.The title of this "work of cultural criticism" is a double-entendre; Martin (Primates of Park Avenue, 2015, etc.) investigates women who've been untrue--i.e., unfaithful--and she debunks popular untruths about female sexuality. As she shows, women are not inherently more monogamous than men, and although Americans talk about valuing monogamy, many of us, including a lot of women, cheat. Sometimes women cheat to keep their marriages together. Rather than go through messy, economically disastrous divorces, women find sexual fulfillment on the side so they can continue to tolerate an unsatisfying marriage. Vignettes drawn from interviews Martin conducted with 32 men and women leaven the book, but the strongest sections are Martin's accessible translations of academic research. For example, primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy studied langurs in India, noting how female langurs often mate "promiscuously," with as many males as possible. Hrdy theorized that this behavior is "assiduously maternal." Male langurs have the habit of killing infants in order to lure now-childless females to mate with them. By having sex with lots of males, a female decreases the number of males who might want to kill her baby because, after all, that baby just might be the would-be killer's offspring. The author's summaries of research are never dry. She notes that Hrdy's depiction of "sexually assertive" females was, initially, somewhat controversial; in what Hrdy describes as a "mortifying" moment, one colleague asked, "So, Sarah...you're saying you're horny, right?" Other scholars who make appearances are sociologist Alicia Walker, who argues that women don't just stumble into adultery after one too many drinks at the hotel bar on a work trip, they actively pursue infidelity; and primatologist Zanna Clay, who suggests that females' cries and groans during sex have the effect of advertising to nearby males, "Receptive and ready just as soon as this is over!"An indispensable work of popular psychology and sociology.
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