Dr Julia Shaw

White heterosexual male here. I thought I should start with that. And Julia Shaw is easily young enough to be my daughter. Add that to the lead. I am familiar with some of her writing and research through my subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine, to which she is an occasional contributor. Now that that is out of the way, I picked this up because I wanted to understand all of the issues and various designations that have popped up in recent history concerning human sexuality and the challenges that people have when it comes to being accepted and understood. There were quite a few surprises and revelations, things that I had not even considered. I found her writing to be very helpful in this quest, although I suspect that as time goes on, there will be other writers on this subject and new insights. I have always felt that we (meaning the human race) would be so much better off if we would just stay out of each other's bedrooms, and let people just be people. So, thanks Julia, for the help in understanding it all, and for stepping up to explain things to those of us on the outside looking in.… (more)

Both the title and the summary made promises which were unfortunately not kept throughout the book. Although most of the arguments posed are certainly agreeable (the evil is in the eyes of the beholder, to summarize quite brutally), the science part of it is very weak and only limited to anecdotal references or poorly cited studies (except for a few authors - whose shiny comments appear on the cover - the writer cites extensively). It's a nice read for a young non-scientist audience (a more mature reader would find nothing really new in this book), but definitely not for someone who wants to dig deeper in the issue without searching for tons of scientific articles.… (more)