Publishers Weekly
03/14/2022
“The truth is that males and females are more alike than they are different,” writes journalist Cooke (The Truth About Animals) in this zippy survey on females of the animal kingdom and the scientists who study them. Cooke emphasizes how research on female animals was woefully inadequate until the past few decades, when scientists began to challenge the “standard paradigm” of female passivity and male agency. In vivid detail, Cooke highlights animals that defy stereotypes: there’s female spotted hyenas, who dominate males with their “masculinized body and behaviour”; the “matriarchal and peaceful” society of the bonobos, where females avoid conflict by trading food for sex; and orcas, who have seen menopausal matriarchs spend their post-reproductive years leading their pods. Cooke emphasizes the importance of female choice in evolution, and bite-size profiles of scientists appear throughout, including ones spotlighting Patricia Gowaty, who studied adulterous female songbirds, and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an anthropologist who’s spent her life “weeding out sexist dogma.” The author has a charmingly irreverent style that, among other things, pokes holes in the sexist scientific research of old that used cherry-picked data to conclude females weren’t worth studying. This hits the right balance between informative and entertaining; popular science fans will want to check it out. (June)
From the Publisher
Lucy Cooke is brilliant, pedigreed, fearless, and flat-out hilarious . . . Bitch is astonishing, wildly entertaining, and massively important.” —Mary Roach
“Cooke charts the rising influence of feminism on the ‘phallocracy’ of evolutionary biology over the past several decades, arguing for the power of more recent female-led science to, for example, reframe core beliefs about sexual selection, maternal instinct and self-sacrifice, and proclivities for monogamy or nymphomania. In doing so, she introduces us to a marvelous zoetrope of animals—not just primates, but venomous intersex moles, hyenas that give birth through their clitoris, filicidal mother meerkats, and postmenopausal orcas.” —The Atlantic
“An important corrective to the ‘accidental sexism’ baked into so many biological studies… [and] a clarion call that the remaining terra incognita of female biology merits far more comprehensive mapping.”
—Financial Times
“I devoured zoologist Lucy Cooke’s latest book the way a female golden orb weaver spider devours the male: voraciously… [Cooke’s] prose is cinematic, energetic, and hilarious.”
—Bust Magazine
“[An] effervescent exposé… [A] playful, enlightening tour of the vanguard of evolutionary biology.”
—Scientific American
“When did we decide that female animals (including humans) are the noncompetitive gender? Cooke, a British science journalist, argues persuasively against that assessment in an informative and often cheeky investigation that details mating and more. She also shows what a difference women make to scientific inquiry, asking questions and proposing studies their male colleagues didn’t think of — or didn’t bother with.”—Bethanne Patrick, LA Times
“By analysing numerous animals, this sparkling attack on scientific sexism draws on many scientists — of multiple genders — to correct stereotypes of the active male versus passive female.”
—Nature
“In compelling and often hilarious prose, Cooke combines the humor and clarity of science writer Mary Roach with the scientific authority she has earned as a trained biologist as she confronts the long history of androcentric assumptions baked into evolutionary biology and begins to set the record straight.”—Jessie Rack, Science
“A book that is tearing down the stereotypes and the biases. Absolutely fascinating.”—Woman’s Hour
“Cooke dives into sex and gender across the animal kingdom, dispelling all the misogynist notions of females being the weaker sex…This book elevates not just the science itself but the scientists that have been marginalized for too long.” —Lucy Roehrig, Booklist
“Bitch is an impressive contribution to what has become a highly polarized debate over sex and gender. It succeeds not just because Cooke is a witty and entertaining writer, but because she has done her homework well…her message is…that sex, rather than being one thing and its opposite, is in fact a spectrum of limitless possibilities.”—Natural History
“Documentarian, zoologist, and author Lucy Cooke dives deep on the fascinating females of the animal kingdom in Bitch: On The Female Of The Species. In this delightful, revelatory survey of cross-species sexism (already on shelves in the UK), Cooke treats readers to an information-dense reframing of the many misunderstandings around sex and sexuality that burden ‘girls’ of all kinds. Come for the promise of some really neat nature facts. Stay for Cooke picking apart the misogynistic underpinnings of Charles Darwin’s fundamentally flawed theory of evolution.”—AV Club
“Rollicking.”—Susannah Cahalan, New York Post
"Cooke demolishes much of what you probably learned about the sexes in biology class. This may be disconcerting, even confronting for those who feel comfortable in the warm embrace of Darwinian order. But it’s also exciting, and fascinating, and very well might change the way you see the world." —Science News
“A 300 page romp through the animal kingdom and 150 years of sexist science that demonstrates that 'female animals are just as promiscuous, competitive, aggressive, dominant and dynamic as males'. We meet a staggering array of females taking their reproductive destinies into their own paws.” —Rachel Cunliffe, The New Statesman
“A bold and gripping takedown of the sexist mythology baked into biology ... Full of marvellous surprises.”—Guardian (UK)
“From bondage-loving spiders to “Scrooge-like” lobsters who save their sperm for a female who's “worth it”, Bitch lifts the lid on kinky creatures.”—Daily Mail (UK)
“A dazzling, funny and elegantly angry demolition of our preconceptions about female behaviour and sex in the animal kingdom… Bitch is a blast. I read it, my jaw sagging in astonishment, jotting down favourite parts to send to friends and reading out snippets gleefully.”—The Observer
“A colourful, committed, and deeply informed book.”—Sunday Times
“Marvellous. Cooke merrily demolishes myth after myth about our wild sisters.” —Telegraph
“Humorous, absorbing, sometimes shocking, and bound to be a conversation starter.” —BBC Wildlife Magazine
“Brilliant… readers will never see the world the same way again… [Bitch inspires] awe in the breathtaking diversity of nature and the evolutionary roots of our behaviour.” —Times Literary Supplement
“As we search to define our gender, combat prejudice and misogyny, and celebrate the myriad of femininity, Lucy Cooke looks to the animal kingdom to see what it can teach us about femininity’s true nature.”—Reaction
“A charming mix of wit and scientific analysis… Aside from knocking males off their evolutionary perch and empowering women, this book can inspire the LGBTQ community, as it’s clear that their identities and lives are reflected across the natural world.” —Irish Times
“In vivid detail, Cooke highlights animals that defy stereotypes. . .The author has a charmingly irreverent style that, among other things, pokes holes in the sexist scientific research of old that used cherry-picked data to conclude females weren’t worth studying.”—Publishers Weekly
“A top-notch book of natural science that busts myths as it entertains.” —Kirkus
“[A] fabulous and fun book about badass females.”—BookRiot
"[Bitch] upends received wisdom about female passivity and monogamy in the animal kingdom... Cooke's sprightly style features puns and cheeky turns of phrase." —Shelf Awareness
Library Journal
04/01/2022
Cooke (The Truth About Animals) freshly analyzes a hot-button topic—the use of "sex" and/or "gender" to describe human sexuality, identity, and social roles—in terms of the zoological kingdom. She makes a clear argument that notions of binary sex or gender are even more ambiguous in animals than in humans. Today, assumptions about evolution and the female role linger from Darwin's Victorian-era writings, clashing with current zoological research that seeks to "fight the scientific phallocracy with data and logic." Cooke's case studies analyzing the five types of sex (chromosomal, gonadal, hormonal, morphological, and behavioral) prove that each category has fluidity and instances of non-fixed sex; as examples, she offers spiders, the common mole, and the female spotted hyena, whose physiology and behavior defy categorization. Cooke expertly explains current scientific research with engaging humor, interspersed with first-person accounts and an impressive number of interviews with scientists who are rewriting the binary narrative. Her book encourages reflection but never overwhelms with information, even when, for instance, debunking accepted wisdom about XX and XY chromosomes. VERDICT Zoological notions of gender will challenge general readers to appreciate sexual diversity in animals and reassess human notions of "female."—Jessica A. Bushore
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2022-04-27
A cheerful and knowledgeable popular science review of female animals.
For decades, writes British science writer Cooke, “studies of intrasexual competition focused on male competition for mates, and the combative potential of females was largely ignored by science. The resulting data gap on females then masqueraded as knowledge. It’s assumed females aren’t competitive, and theories are based upon that understanding—when the truth is we just haven’t been paying attention.” The author emphasizes that it was only at the end of the 20th century that women began to enter biology in large numbers. Many turned their attention to female animals, heretofore considered too boring to bother to study, and discovered that “true till-death-do-us-part sexual monogamy…proved to be extremely rare, found in less than 7 percent of known species.” A skilled journalist, Cooke has traveled the world to interview experts, most of them women, who have performed groundbreaking research and are unafraid to confront skeptical male colleagues. Despite deploring his Victorian sensibilities, Cooke remains a Darwin enthusiast, but she maintains that his later (and lesser known) theory of sexual selection deserves equal status with natural selection. Readers will receive a superb education in the evolution and mechanics of animal sex as well as countless colorful anecdotes describing bizarre reproductive behavior. Readers will find the familiar account of female spiders eating males as they try to mate, but there is much more to discover in Cooke’s fascinating pages: Almost all birds are monogamous, but it’s a social monogamy; 90% of female birds sneak away from the nest to copulate with multiple males, so a single clutch of eggs can have many fathers. Permanently attached to a rock, a barnacle possesses the longest penis for its size in the animal kingdom, but this is purely functional, enabling it to search for neighboring females. If there are no females within reach, as a last resort, the hermaphroditic creature fertilizes itself.
A top-notch book of natural science that busts myths as it entertains.
