Sex Is a Spectrum

This week's review explores the biology of sex, revealing the limits and harm of a binary view of sex and gender.

Posted on December 8, 2025 in Reviews of the Month

Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary

Fuentes, Agustín. Princeton, 2025
216p bibl index, 9780691249414 $24.95, 9780691249421 $24.95

This is a beautifully understandable book that should be on the reading list of every individual interested in the current discourse regarding gender and sex biology. Fuentes (Princeton Univ.), an accomplished primatologist and biological anthropologist, takes readers on a crisp journey through the most current research on sex biology and what is actually known about it, its patterns, and its diversity. The author effectively dispels numerous misconceptions regarding sex and gender in humans as he weaves a new narrative that combines “our knowledge of biology, sex, and human experience” (p. 3). Ultimately, the research shows that the “binary is wrong” (p. 149). Fuentes asserts that “the biological, behavioral, and social variation exhibited by humans is almost always substantively broader, and more dynamic, than culturally created binary descriptions and boundaries for gender and sex” (p. 149). Sex Is a Spectrum is both concise and direct, and Fuentes provides ample documentation for the research he quotes and relies on. His accessible text serves as a valuable resource for navigating the frequently confusing and confounding public conversations surrounding gender issues.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through graduate students.
Reviewer: L. De Danaan, emeritus, Evergreen State College
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Women’s & Gender Studies
Subject: Science & Technology – Biology
Choice Issue: Jan 2026

Enjoy this week’s review? Check out more reviews of related titles:

• The Good Robot: Why Technology Needs Feminism
• Dysphoric Modernism: Undoing Gender in French Literature
• Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias
• Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries

Related Posts