Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis

Abstract

We thought the opening chapters of Emily Willingham’s Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis were superb. Willingham demonstrates how to critique a scientific paper for underlying bias: What questions are being asked, and in what ways do a study’s design sway the likelihood of reaching different conclusions? These critical thinking skills are invaluable for students first learning to read research literature. Sometimes data are more ambiguous than students would expect from the way science is covered in the popular press; sometimes authors’ conclusions aren’t really supported by the data. (Willingham draws on a traditional boogeyman—low-sample-size evolutionary psychology studies—for examples of the latter.)Then Willingham provides a lucid portrait of evolution in action. Readers are likely to gain a great understanding of convergent and divergent evolution, as well as the sorts of environments that are most likely to give rise to each.These are essential concepts for biology students to master. The opening chapters would make for an excellent teaching tool. For older readers students, mind you. Kirstin most certainly won’t recommend Phallacy to her high schoolers, because—as you’d predict from a book titled Phallacy that sports a delightfully suggestive pink squid on its cover—Willingham works through all this material from the attention-grabbing standpoint of sexual behavior, discussing in detail the genitalia and reproductive habits of both human and nonhuman animals. All of it seems like a great way to keep the attention of learners who are ready for the material, but not everyone will be.The latter chapters are also interesting, but in a different way: Willingham presents a whole smorgasbord of fun animal facts. On every page, readers will encounter unexpected trivia: our world is a fascinating place, and evolution has produced an incredible array of different body morphs and behaviors.But, unlike in the opening chapters, there’s not a decisive intellectual framework scaffolding all these facts together. The central argument is that we shouldn’t base our ethical decisions on the behaviors of other animals (a fallacy Willingham terms “the Lobster Trap”), because each species has confronted very different evolutionary pressures. Even if physical bulk and aggression has led to greater mate access among lobsters—or even if this held true among our own ancestors—that doesn’t have much bearing on the ways that we humans ought to structure our interpersonal relationships today. Quite true, but readers should be aware that some hundred pages of trivia will be provided in support of this message. It’s excellent fodder for conversation, but not so necessary from an educational standpoint.All of this is to say the first half of Phallacy seems great for more mature learners, and the second half seems great for people who like to interject remarks like “Did you know that the orange mud crab copulates for six hours after days of devoted courtship?” into their dinner party conversations.There’s some risqué wordplay here, but nothing likely to shock someone who has chosen to read a book entirely about penis evolution. More alarming might be the puns. Kirstin is a card-carrying member of team “Most Puns Are Good Puns,” but others (e.g., Frank) might find themselves groaning. It’s also worth noting that the author has a pronounced political bent that’s readily apparent from the very beginning of the book. We don’t think anyone is likely to distrust an author for invoking Jeffrey Epstein as a villain, but there are also brief negative references to Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump that, unfortunately, might make some readers less likely to absorb Willingham’s excellent analyses. Kirstin has definitely seen students shut down when they feel stereotype threat, including over their political beliefs.All in all, we had great fun reading Phallacy—just don’t let yourself be tricked by the book’s subtitle (Life Lessons from the Animal Penis), since the main message here is that all the odd quirks of evolution can’t tell us how to live our lives.