Book Review: Bonk

TW sexual assault

I recently read Mary Roach's Bonk. I enjoyed parts of it tremendously; the deadpan footnotes, in particular, had a tendency to make me laugh helplessly. The subject matter is treated maturely, though, and it's an informative read. Rather than a history of sex, it's a history of sex research, and details what scientists thought about sex in the past, as well as the… experiments… by which they derived those theories. It also talks about modern-day sex research, sexual dysfunction, and attempts to remedy said dysfunctions.

While I wouldn't call it an explicitly feminist read, nothing much about it twinged my "this is messed up" radar-- with two major exceptions. At two points, the author interacts with patients or study members without, as far as I can tell, their permission. Once, she touches the anesthetized penis of a man who's had surgery to reduce erectile dysfunction. The second time is less clear about what's going on; she peers through one-way glass to get a look at an experimental setup, while it is in use by a woman who is masturbating. Given that the experimental setup uses one-way glass, of course the study participants know they may be watched by researchers, but I'm not sure where visiting journalists fall out in all that. It's particularly odd because at one point the author undergoes a vaginal photoplesmythography study on the grounds that "Observing someone else who said yes was not an option, because of human subjects review board rules."

Those two inexplicable and disconcerting parts aside for the moment, I was particularly interested in the bits about female sexual responses. One thing that was a particular lightbulb moment for me was the described difference between "reflex arousal" and "psychogenic arousal"-- broadly speaking, arousal from physical stimulation in the absence of erotic input, or arousal from erotic input-- sights, sounds, thoughts-- in the absence of physical stimulation.

I also found it interesting that she described HSDD (hypoactive sexual desire disorder) as "low libido." This is a topic, of course, that is of interest to many aces, since it's not hard for someone to take the definition of HSDD as it stands and use it to pathologize asexuality; there's not much difference between what HSDD describes and between asexuality. Yet most asexuals make a distinction between having a libido and being asexual; you can have a sex drive and be asexual, and you can not have a sex drive and be not on the ace spectrum. If most people think of HSDD as low libido, that indicates that they think of sex drive and sexual attraction as the same thing, which in turn is probably a reason it's so hard to explain asexuality. (I did some quick Googling. The Mayo Clinic has a page that conflates having low sexual desires with having a low sex drive with having HSDD. It seems to be a common conflation.)

Obviously this is not the book to read if talking about sex or genitals squicks you out. But if you have an interest in science, or in learning more about the science behind sex, and you can get past the two moments of apparent non-consent (and while I don't want to say "she would never do that," I'm boggled by the idea that an author would sexually assault someone and then write about it?) it's a pretty good read.