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Jul
21
Book Review: Bonk by Mary Roach
2008 at 10am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
The unspoken assumption [about a sex researcher] was that he was somehow deriving an illict thrill from calculating the ion concentrations of vaginal fluids. That people study sex because they are perverts.
Or, at the very least, because they harbor unseemly interest in the matter. Which makes some people wary of sex researchers and other people extremely interested.
In Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, author Mary Roach sets out to dispel this and many other myths about sex research and the people who carry it out. She brings to light the fascinating, creative, and sometimes surprising experiments that are performed and the results they yield, and she does so using language and terminology that are straightforward, accessible to readers with a less-than-academic interest in the subject, and not the least bit pornographic. This is not a book about how to have better sex; it is a book about the people who devote their lives to studying sex and helping others understand it and make it a more satisfying, healthy experience. In the foreword to the book, cleverly titled “Foreplay,” Roach makes it clear that she is appreciate of and sympathetic to the lives of sex researchers, noting that “Their lives are not easy. But their cocktail parties are the best.”
I know this to be true because in my pre-bookselling life, I was a sex researcher…or, at least, a sex researcher in training. As a psychology major, I took a course on the psychology of human sexuality, and the combination of fascinating subject matter and amazingly inspiring professor led me to pursue graduate education in the topic. I have a master’s in clinical psychology–my thesis research focused on social construction of sexual orientation and sexual dysfunction–but after two years of grad school and clinical work, I concluded that I wanted to be neither a researcher (long hours, too quiet) nor a therapist (invades your personal life, too quiet, took too much of it home with me), so I became a bookseller who never blushes when someone asks for a book in the “relationship” section, and the parents love me when it comes time to have “the talk” with their kids. For several years now, I’ve been telling people, “it might sound like a weird thing to do, but it makes me really fun at dinner parties,” so I recognized myself and several of my friends and former colleagues in the pages of this wonderfully weird book.
Roach begins by laying out a history of sex research and highlighting some of the major accomplishments (and major disappointments) and setting the record straight in regard to several misunderstandings and myths about sexuality and sex research. Each chapter focuses on a theme or area of research as Roach summarizes the accumulated knowledge in the area and illustrates certain questions or experiments by paying visits to sex research labs and conferences, sex-themed parties, and even a Dutch farm that specializes in artifically inseminating sows. This is truly research by immersion because Roach is not only a passive bystander but, occasionally, an active participant.
When researchers using MRI to capture images of the genitalia during intercourse run short on participants, she convinces her husband to fly to London and have sex with her inside an MRI machine so she can see the images and understand what the researchers are doing. When a participant she was supposed to observe in a study of arousal responses to erotic videos drops out at the last minute, Roach again steps in and volunteers to take the participant’s place, meaning she will sit in a leather recliner outfitted with electrodes, insert an instrument called a photo plethysmograph (which uses light refraction to measure blood flow to the genitals) into her vagina, and watch erotic videos while rating her level of arousal. This participation may sound strange, but it gives her an added appreciation for the men and women who volunteer to contribute to and participate in the scientific study of sexuality.
Roach presents her findings with insight and her trademark sense of humor. Case in point:
We learned that the penis–root and stalk together–’has the shape of a boomerange’ during intercourse…But not its precise dynamics. If you hurl an uprooted penis into the air, it will not come back to you. It will most likely, and who can blame it, want nothing to do with you.
Of course, this makes much more sense in context, but my point is that Roach’s writing is conversational yet academic, informative without being pedantic (this holds true for her previous books, Stiff and Spook, as well). She combines academic research with contemporary popular experience and anecdotes and provides a thorough, if not comprehensive, portrayal and critique of modern sex research and the men and women who make it happen. Bonk is interesting and accessible, and with chapters like “What’s Going On in There?” “Re-Member Me,” and “Mind Over Vagina,” it is also very entertaining…if you’re into that sort of thing. I give Bonk a solid 4 out of 5.
If you’re interested in learning more about modern sex research, I’d also recommend Leonore Tiefer’s immensely wonderful Sex Is Not a Natural Act and a visit to www.sexscience.org, the official website of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. If you were hoping this would be a review of a how-to sex guide, check out The Guide to Getting It On.
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I had thought about requesting this one from the LT ER program, but this seems like the kind of book that’s all about tone. I had never read Mary Roach’s other books so it was kind of like…this could be good, or just painful. I’m glad to hear it was the former!
The one thing that always makes me question sex research though are the methods necessary for it—I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine that sex in an fMRI would produce quite the same responses as it does in the privacy of my home. Still interesting, definitely, and better than nothing. Is this discussed, or do you know anything from your studies about the relaxation level of participants in things like this?
Nicole: You’re right–it’s definitely all about tone, and I think she does a good job with it. She does address issues of external validity and participant relaxation, and the researchers acknowledge those as well…the study she described with MRI was kind of the first step in a line of research to understand exactly what is going on inside as two people have sex…but it’s definitely an artificial representation in some ways because, for instance, they have to pause for periods of 12-25 seconds to let the machine get a clear picture…not exactly realistic, or conducive to, erm, success.
[...] the history of sex research and just how far Mary Roach will go for a good story in Bonk (read my review), and I took a musical trip down memory lane with Rob Sheffield, whose book Love Is a Mix Tape [...]
[...] the history of sex research and just how far Mary Roach will go for a good story in Bonk (read my review), and I took a musical trip down memory lane with Rob Sheffield, whose book Love Is a Mix Tape [...]