Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free by Wednesday Martin

Read by the author

I’ll state right at the outset that this book is not for everyone. If you’re not interested in frank, open, sex-positive discussions of female sexuality—or if you’re so triggered by the thought of women who cheat on their partners that reading an account of them that doesn’t condemn them will make you fly into a rage—or if you aren’t interested in the distinction between consensual and non-consensual nonmonogamy, you probably shouldn’t read this book.

Or maybe you should.

Wednesday Martin is standing on the shoulders of the authors of Sex at Dawn, What Do Women Want?, and What Love Is and What It Could Be. From that vantage point, she can see quite a lot that our society and past sex researchers (almost exclusively male) not only couldn’t see, but actively pooh-poohed. Because she doesn’t assume, as they did, that women are more naturally monogamous than men, but is open to other possibilities, she’s able to look at existing research without discounting evidence that doesn’t fit into that box.

And what does she see? That taken as a whole, women, not men, are the ones who have a harder time maintaining monogamy. That it’s at least just as natural for women as for men to cheat on their spouses or have multiple sexual partners. That it was the rise of agrarian societies, not biology, that put a premium on controlling women’s sexuality. That in societies where women are free to have more than one sexual partner at a time without social sanction, they often do.

These ideas aren’t entirely new, of course. What Ms. Martin brings to them is the backing of scientific research. She then goes on to conduct interviews and research of her own, all of which are fascinating. She talks to women in long-term monogamous relationships, women who have cheated on their spouses, and women who practice consensual nonmonogamy. She visits a women-only sex club aimed at women who identify as basically straight, to see what women’s sexuality might be like absent the male gaze. And she draws some interesting conclusions.

This is a very wide-ranging book; topics include social anthropology/ethnography (of both familiar and less-familiar cultures, past and present), primatology, and evolutionary psychology. The numerous interviews she conducts put a human face on the scientific studies she cites. The book does occasionally seem to wander a bit aimlessly, but never for long; another fault in her writing is the focus on female vs. male as if they were immutable categories. However, overall it's a well-researched and informative book, written in a conversational tone that keeps it highly readable. Strongly recommended for anybody who is interested in female sexuality.