2004, American Scientist. Robert Dorit provides the most thorough, comprehensive and balanced review to date of Evolution's Rainbow in a scientific publication. He opens with, "Evolution's Rainbow is... an extraordinary book that entwines a radical attack on the Darwinian concept of sexual selection with a personal narrative... The book is thought–provoking, even at times profound." Dorit concludes with, "I hope this book will be widely read. It combines the combustible power of a keen intellect with powerful conviction and ethical courage... I don't agree with all of her conclusions, but she has written an important and honest book about a subject that matters."
2004, The Guardian. Steven Rose offers a review of Evolution's Rainbow finding that my suggested alternative theory to replace sexual-selection theory, social selection, is "no less - but no more - compelling a theory than sexual selection." The review also discusses whether the concept of "gender" can be extended to non-human animals.
2004, The Advocate. Christopher Lisotta contributes an interview raising the issue of whether nature studies is welcoming to lesbian, gay and transgendered people.
2004, The New York Times Magazine. Deborah Solomon contributes a brief interview in Q&A format, covering a range of issues from the underreporting of homosexuality in nature, through the locker-room character of scientific research, to my interaction with Condoleezza Rice when I transitioned many years ago.
2004, Times Higher Education Supplement. I contributed an essay about scientific objectivity, making reference to sexual-selection theory, the politics of environmental restoration, and the conduct of the US National Academies. I conclude politics is now irreversibly infused into science, like it or not, and the remedy is to formulate an explicit political process for illuminating political positions and allowing the public to judge.
2004, NARTH. In a similar vein to Conrad's review below, NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) distributed a report pertaining to Evolution's Rainbow. It is apparently based on the previously published SF Chronicle profile and Science review, not on a reading of the book itself. Note the misspellings of my surname, and the insistent use of male pronouns.
2004, Observer, Guardian Unlimited. Peter Conrad issues a transphobic screed, declaring Evolution's Rainbow a "practical joke", referring to San Francisco as "frisky", disparaging my "strange allegorical surname", and claiming my life consists of "tending her mutated physique as if it were a rough garden that has now been weeded and manicured into femininity."
2004, Metapsychology Online. George Williamson, a philosopher from Thunder Bay, Ontario, contributes an articulate and succinct review of Evolution's Rainbow that refutes the criticisms of Ruse below. Williamson writes, "Her personal interest and insight are pervasive, but polemics are strictly kept to a minimum. Evolution's Rainbow offers a serious critical perspective."
2004, Toronto Globe and Mail. Michael Ruse, a philosopher from Tallahassee, Florida, attacks Evolution's Rainbow as a "polemic", a "cryptic autobiography", that plays to campus audiences in "areas like cultural studies that are big into... the hegemony of heterosexism and all of that sort of thing". Ruse equates "human male homosexuals" with "bathhouse culture". Ruse is a true believer, thinking that scientists really are capable of "disinterested scholarship", that natural selection really is a "struggle for existence", that evolutionary "success" really consists of "the characteristics possessed by (and only by) the winners, the fit." Ruse is threatened by Evolution's Rainbow, and he should be.
2004, TGForum. Jamie Faye Fenton contributes a lengthy, detailed review of Evolution's Rainbow for a major transgender e-magazine, and concludes that: "Evolutions Rainbow is a superb introduction to the biology of gender diversity and a call to action. Like its subject, it is a diverse collection of fascinating facts, presenting a compelling case for restructuring scientific attitudes and for a more tolerant and careful society. It is required reading for any transgender studies curriculum."
2004, Times Literary Supplement. Jerry Coyne reviews Evolution's Rainbow, but I do not recognize the book he portrays. Coyne claims I have committed the "naturalistic fallacy". I haven't. As evidence, Coyne quotes my statement, "The value and naturalness of homosexuality must be as scientifically clear as the earth is round." I don't mean ethical value of course, but adaptive value---the kind of value biologists speak of when they try to understand why a trait evolves through natural selection. Coyne confidently enunciates the sexual-selection narrative: "we now understand why males compete for the affection of choosy females... Males, who can produce many offspring with only minimal investment, spread their genes most effectively by mating promiscuously. In contrast, female reproductive output is far more constrained by the metabolic costs of producing eggs or offspring, and thus a female's interests are served more by mate quality than by mate quantity." To illustrate, Coyne cites a Guinness-Book-of-Records report of a Moroccan emperor who sired more than 900 offspring. Yet later, his principal objection to my theory of social-inclusionary traits is that, "Most alarmingly, it's disturbingly anthropocentric," clearly the pot calling the kettle black. Although "Roughgarden devotes nearly 200 pages to cataloguing sexual behaviours that supposedly violate Darwin's theory... She ignores the much larger number of species that do conform to sexual selection theory." Well, how many exceptions does it take? Coyne writes, "even many of Roughgarden's 'counterexamples' fit comfortably into the neo-Darwinian paradigm." Sure, the sexual-selection narrative has spawned an industry that conjures clever excuses for the many animal species who haven't read Darwin. Coyne concludes with, "Rather than wringing her hands about the theories embraced by her biological colleagues, Joan Roughgarden might consider visiting a school board meeting deep in the American Bible Belt. There... she would find where opposition to a sexually diverse society really thrives." The deep-South school board meeting would refer to two sources of authority: science and religion. They would use a thinly disguised sexual-selection narrative, albeit without mentioning Darwin, to privilege a binarist and heterosexist template of "family values." Sexual-selection theory is not innocent, and Jerry Coyne might consider accepting responsibility for the social implications of his work.
2004, San Francisco Chronicle. Katherine Seligman contributes a front-page profile in the "Living" section of San Francisco's major newspaper, timed to coincide with the gay pride parade in 2004.
2004, Stanford Magazine. Bob Moser contributes an extended profile in the Stanford Alumni Association's magazine, timed to coincide with the release of Evolution's Rainbow.
2004, Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Robin Dunbar reviews Evolution's Rainbow, and writes, "I remain to be convinced that... 'social selection' is really all that different from what we most of us already do in behavioral ecology." She claims I have run afoul of the "naturalistic fallacy." I haven't. Dunbar admonishes scientists to maintain "dispassionate objectivity." Lenin is said to have advised his comrades never to believe their own propaganda. Rather than believe in the impossible---dispassionate objectivity, I feel it's best to state one's perspective up front.
2004, Nature. Sarah Hrdy reviews Evolution's Rainbow, and writes, "As a compendium of information on sex and gender diversity in the natural world, Roughgarden's is the richest and most authoritative book available, fulfilling a desperate need of readers both within and outside the scientific community... this book is going to have a huge impact." Hrdy agrees that "hopelessly unreflective scientists continue to 'sneak gender stereotypes into the primary scientific literature and corrupt its objectivity', aided and abetted by sloppy popularizers." Yet she remains upbeat about sexual selection theory, writing "these are not reasons to reject sexual-selection theory; they are merely reasons to encourage diversity among those applying it." If these acknowledged criticisms are not enough to reject sexual-selection theory, what would be? Hrdy asserts that "competition between those of one sex for reproductive access to the other remains a robust explanatory framework," whereas I claim this framework is not robust.
2004, Science. Alison Jolly reviews Evolution's Rainbow, and agrees that "far too much of sexual selection theory has concentrated on... showy, competitive males and coy females..., from Darwin down to present-day popularizers". She concludes that "what Darwinian theory needs is not so much radical revision as a simple expansion to take sexual diversity much more seriously." My view is that taking sexual diversity much more seriously can only be achieved if we abandon the sexual-selection narrative.
2004, Financial Times. Simon London wrote a profile in advance of the UK publication of Evolution's Rainbow on June 1, raising the issue of a Kuhnian paradigm shift in the making.
2004, Publishers Weekly. A starred review, "best of the month" selection, from the leading magazine representing the publishing industry.
2004, Evolution's Rainbow. Published May 1 in the US. I include here the introductory chapter that provides an overview of the book's organization and main claims. The book begins with a review of diversity in gender expression and sexuality among vertebrates. I conclude that Darwin's theory of sexual selection, a theory that privileges the passionate male and coy female as universal templates for gender roles, is inadequate to account for this diversity, and is too far on the wrong track to be fixed up. Instead, I introduce the theory of "social selection" as an alternative approach that does not privilege any special narrative of male and female gender and sexual expressions. The book also discusses the developmental biology of gender expression and sexuality, as well as the comparative anthropology of gender expression and sexuality across cultures and historical epochs. The chapter clearly states that I am not challenging evolutionary theory as a whole, but solely the picture of animal social dynamics implied by Darwin's sexual-selection theory, together with his rationale for how secondary-sexual characters like the peacock's tail have evolved. The chapter also clearly states that I do not equate nature with value---whether traits occur in nature is irrelevant to their ethical worth for humans. I do not commit the so-called "naturalistic fallacy," as some reviewers have subsequently claimed. Also, the chapter points out that the negative human social implications of sexual-selection theory are not in themselves reasons for accepting or rejecting the theory, but are grounds for holding the theory to the highest standard of rigor. Upon examination, I find sexual-selection theory is merely a belief held by many scientists, not established scientific fact.
2004, LA Weekly. Steven Kotler wrote up an interview for a Los Angeles newspaper that has a large gay readership, drawing on the New Scientist essay. He points out that the two authoritative sources underwriting discrimination against homosexuality are the Bible and evolutionary theory.
2004, New Scientist. I contributed an essay in advance of the publication of Evolution's Rainbow presenting the inadequacies of sexual-selection theory and my suggestions for a new theory to take its place, intended for a general-science audience.
2003, The Guardian. Laura Spinney reports on my presentation at the 2003 meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Savannah entitled, "Darwin's Theory of Sexual Selection: False and Inadequate".
2003, Nature. Virginia Gewin writes a profile anticipating release of Evolution's Rainbow, concentrating on my possible bias.
2003, Women's eNews. Kathleen Nelson also contributes a report of the AAAS symposium on evolutionary aspects of gender and sexuality.
2003, The Economist. Natasha Loder contributes a report of the symposium on evolutionary aspects of gender and sexuality that I organized in February at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
2002, Stanford Pride: Speak Out. I wrote a brief popular account of the multigendered bluegill sunfish for the Stanford LGBT alumni magazine.
2000, The New York Times. Carol Yoon writes the first profile I agreed to be interviewed for, two years after my transition, focusing on reaction of colleagues.
1991, The American Naturalist. I presented a mathematical model for the evolution of sexual reproduction, intended for an academic audience.