Steve Jones: Y: The Descent of Men

Reviewed by DAVID LARSEN

Gentlemen, it's time to panic. Women own the government. They're taking over the law schools. Testosterone just doesn't get the press it used to, and it gets worse. In only 3 million years, the Y chromosome is likely to be extinct.

I don't know why I bother trying to make light of this. Steve Jones does it so much better. His once-over-lightly guide to the genetics of masculinity is confused and confusing, but it's also so much fun that it's tempting to turn this review into a selected highlights edition. From his outrageous first sentence ("Ejaculate, if you are so minded and equipped, into a glass of chilled Perrier"), this is the work of someone who knows how to entertain by informing.

Or at least, he knows how to entertain by throwing intriguing facts around. What he doesn't do well is string them into sequence. If you read this cover to cover - it's worth doing - you'll come out knowing more about sex chromosomes, sex hormones, sexual development and cultural attitudes to gender than you ever thought you wanted to. But most of the information is buried in anecdotes, and Jones bounces from one to the next more or less at random. This is not a well-structured book.

Jones devotes a lot of space to wryly humorous accounts of the many less-than-pleasant tendencies displayed by owners of the Y chromosome throughout history - so much so that the book comes with a blurb from Germaine Greer, commenting, "Steve Jones is much harder on men than I am".

All this hilarious negativity seems to imply a form of genetic determinism: boys will be boys, and man just can't help raping. Scientifically semi-literate commentators of all persuasions love to seize on this idea, whether to decry it or to justify some personal ideal of stone-age masculinity. So it's a flaw in the book that Jones never actually spells his position out.

Here's mine: genetic predispositions towards bad behaviour do not in fact compel anyone to behave badly. Sorry, lads, but this book will not supply you with an excuse next time you leave the toilet seat up. For all that, it's an amusing read.

Abacus, $27.95