Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution (review)

When encountering a book concerning a subject like the anthropology of sexual attraction and social evolution published by a non-academic press and written by an author with no discernible training in the field, an educated reader knows to approach the ideas advanced in that book as interesting if fanciful. When the publisher in question is a large popular press with a vast marketing department and the author appears to be a charming and fascinating storyteller, then it is likely that some readers may allow themselves to be seduced by the flight of fancy and be taken on a wild goose chase—and end up the goose.

This is precisely the problem with Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution by Leonard Shlain. A cursory search on the Web reveals the extent of the damage such whimsy can wreak. Web sites ranging from "Why Your Wife Won't Have Sex With You" to a delineation of the brain power of Biblical characters in "Time, Menses, Left Brain," to "promoting intimacy and other-centered sexuality" among a group called "Liberated Christians" show evidence of the popularity of Shlain's topic. This book does not merely strike a chord with its readers; it verifies all of the preconceived notions of gender difference some readers could ever hope to come across for pushing their own political, social and religious agendas.

Let us be clear: Sex, Time and Power is not hard science. Nor is it anthropology. It is, instead, mythology. And because the narrative is highly engaging, it can be, on the surface, amusing mythology at that.

The book generated from a question the author pondered over when he was a young medical student—"Why do women menstruate?"—and has as its premise the idea that woman's need for iron, resulting in part from the blood loss of menstruation, drove many if not all "human cultural innovations" (p. xii), but particularly the knowledge of time, which ultimately resulted in the loss of her power. With this idea in mind, Shlain looks at such issues as incest, homosexuality, courting practices, marriage and death, to name a few. Along the way he gives us dialogues with Adam, Eve and members of their tribe; recountings of schemes made by campfires in 40,000 B.C.; and a world-view organized in a recognizable dualism (man, left-brained, sex-crazed; woman, right-brained, uses sex to get what she wants from man). He tells us in the preface that the book is meant for "both generalists and specialists" and that he avoids the "standard academic practice of citing the pedigree of a particular idea" (p. xiii). Lucky thing, too, since some of his logic would never pass the vetting process of a reputable science journal or the scientific review board of an academic press.

This reviewer counted no less than 39 instances where faulty logic and gross generalizations were used to make a point.

Some of the most pernicious include the idea that early Homo sapiens women "after a lifetime of lovemaking . . . would have spent hours discussing the sexual idiosyncrasies of their diverse male partners and comparing their experiences" (p. 93). He then comes to the conclusion that these women would have been responsible for promoting male circumcision as a way of delaying their lovers' orgasms (p. 93)—an interesting idea that flies in the face of circumcision rites performed by older men upon younger ones.

Another is his adopted view of the relations between genders, which reduces man's value to his ability to provide meat and woman's to her ability to give sex (p. 113). While some may look around at some of today's couples and agree with this assertion, this theory disregards the possibility that man's need to satisfy his own hunger and woman's interest in her own orgasm also could have shaped our social development.

But truly the most awful claims...