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A review by percys_panda_pillow_pet
This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: The Surprising Science of Women, Hormones, and the Law of Unintended Consequences by Sarah Hill
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
2.0
I am just going to dive right into it.
The first half of the book is a slog. I really only made it through because I was determined to give the book a chance and I do have to admit the author has a good conversational tone that feels easy to follow and relate to. However, the actual contents did not match this. Quite a lot of the information Dr. Hill was trying to impart either got lost in too much scientific jargon (despite her attempts to explain it, the language was a huge barrier for me) or got lost in her wild leaps of logic.
I felt like I couldn't trust a single word on the page because in one paragraph she would make a believable statement that could be backed by science, and then in the next, she would make several suppositions about how that might affect your body on birth control (or other people, or the entire world GASP!) For example, on page 196 Dr. Hill brings up the achievement gap between genders. Women are achieving more in higher education than men, and rightfully so a lot of this can be attributed to the after-effects of the pill. People no longer have to worry about an unintended pregnancy forcing them to quit their school. But Dr. Hill also posits that the effects of the pill on the achievement gap go further into changing the psychology of men because "sex is easier to get" therefore there is no motivation for men to better themselves in an attempt to get sex from women.
. . .What?
That was my reaction too, and the reaction of people around me as I told them about this book as I was reading it. Listen, I can get behind the fact that there is a lot of stuff we don't know about human physiology and how it affects human psychology. I acknowledge the fact that, yes, as humans are animals, we still are held to evolutionary standards, such as the way our gametes develop and sex as a resource is utilized (or not utilized). But to focus solely on the physicality of humans, and touch on our psychology without even considering the way sociological, anthropological, and cultural differences affect our thought processes, rationale, and understanding of the world...well that's just deeply misguided. Throughout this book, I was disconcerted by how Dr. Hill shaved humans down to the barest bones. As an evolutionary psychologist, she seems to think that humans are just what our bodies and brains make us out to be. Nothing more, nothing less.
In one section, Dr. Hill makes the point that evolutionarily, women are made for monogamous relationships, while men are made for polygamous relationships (though she contradicts this later on as she says women are somewhat psychologically primed to cheat due to conflicting desires for good genes and child-rearing abilities from partners. . .okay). Often throughout the book, men are made out to be mindless beings whose only purpose is for sex and reproduction, whether they realize it or not. And while Dr. Hill asserts that she's not trying to stereotype and she doesn't believe these things to be true, she states them in a manner that you are supposed to take as theoretical facts.
And none of this goes into the lack of consideration for anyone who is not cisgender, heterosexual, heteroromantic, abled, etc., etc. I could go on. The minuscule mentions of inclusivity are overrun by the gender-essentialist, over-sexualized language assigned to humans in this book. Dr. Hill claims she wanted to be unbiased in writing this, and I can see where she tried to show both sides of "to take the pill or to not take the pill", but considering that A) this book was republished under a new title that spoofs an infamous anti-drug ad campaign B) many conservatives and anti-pill people recommend this book to each other and quote it often for their campaigns against the pill, and C) she in no way tried to be as inclusive about her language and research as she could've. This all leads me to believe that Dr. Hill is as biased as it gets.
TLDR; Really not worth your time, I promise. The best part of this book was the introduction to the idea that the pill has more going on than most people know about, and how biased the scientific community is when it comes to studying the way half the population's bodies work.
The first half of the book is a slog. I really only made it through because I was determined to give the book a chance and I do have to admit the author has a good conversational tone that feels easy to follow and relate to. However, the actual contents did not match this. Quite a lot of the information Dr. Hill was trying to impart either got lost in too much scientific jargon (despite her attempts to explain it, the language was a huge barrier for me) or got lost in her wild leaps of logic.
I felt like I couldn't trust a single word on the page because in one paragraph she would make a believable statement that could be backed by science, and then in the next, she would make several suppositions about how that might affect your body on birth control (or other people, or the entire world GASP!) For example, on page 196 Dr. Hill brings up the achievement gap between genders. Women are achieving more in higher education than men, and rightfully so a lot of this can be attributed to the after-effects of the pill. People no longer have to worry about an unintended pregnancy forcing them to quit their school. But Dr. Hill also posits that the effects of the pill on the achievement gap go further into changing the psychology of men because "sex is easier to get" therefore there is no motivation for men to better themselves in an attempt to get sex from women.
. . .What?
That was my reaction too, and the reaction of people around me as I told them about this book as I was reading it. Listen, I can get behind the fact that there is a lot of stuff we don't know about human physiology and how it affects human psychology. I acknowledge the fact that, yes, as humans are animals, we still are held to evolutionary standards, such as the way our gametes develop and sex as a resource is utilized (or not utilized). But to focus solely on the physicality of humans, and touch on our psychology without even considering the way sociological, anthropological, and cultural differences affect our thought processes, rationale, and understanding of the world...well that's just deeply misguided. Throughout this book, I was disconcerted by how Dr. Hill shaved humans down to the barest bones. As an evolutionary psychologist, she seems to think that humans are just what our bodies and brains make us out to be. Nothing more, nothing less.
In one section, Dr. Hill makes the point that evolutionarily, women are made for monogamous relationships, while men are made for polygamous relationships (though she contradicts this later on as she says women are somewhat psychologically primed to cheat due to conflicting desires for good genes and child-rearing abilities from partners. . .okay). Often throughout the book, men are made out to be mindless beings whose only purpose is for sex and reproduction, whether they realize it or not. And while Dr. Hill asserts that she's not trying to stereotype and she doesn't believe these things to be true, she states them in a manner that you are supposed to take as theoretical facts.
And none of this goes into the lack of consideration for anyone who is not cisgender, heterosexual, heteroromantic, abled, etc., etc. I could go on. The minuscule mentions of inclusivity are overrun by the gender-essentialist, over-sexualized language assigned to humans in this book. Dr. Hill claims she wanted to be unbiased in writing this, and I can see where she tried to show both sides of "to take the pill or to not take the pill", but considering that A) this book was republished under a new title that spoofs an infamous anti-drug ad campaign B) many conservatives and anti-pill people recommend this book to each other and quote it often for their campaigns against the pill, and C) she in no way tried to be as inclusive about her language and research as she could've. This all leads me to believe that Dr. Hill is as biased as it gets.
TLDR; Really not worth your time, I promise. The best part of this book was the introduction to the idea that the pill has more going on than most people know about, and how biased the scientific community is when it comes to studying the way half the population's bodies work.