Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society

The Royal Society Prize 2017 (“the scientific Booker”).

In her book, the well-known Australian neuropsychologist Cordelia Fine offers a witty analysis of all established ideas about differences between the sexes. This dynamic book is at once entertaining and appealing to true scholars, built on the newest scientific understanding of evolution, psychology, neurobiology, endocrinology, and philosophy. With stories from everyday life, scientific data, and common sense, the author pushes through the clutter of stereotypes and absurd myths that have grown over this sharp topic.

Cordelia Fine was born in Canada, grew up in the United States and Scotland. After graduating from Oxford, where she studied experimental psychology, Fine defended her dissertation in Cambridge on criminology, and also earned a PhD in psychology at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

She is the author of three books in the fields of neuroscience and psychology that became programmatic.

Press on the book

An interesting, convincing, incredibly informative book debunks the myth that a single molecule determines differences between the sexes. The book made me reconsider many of my own assumptions. Cordelia Fine clearly shows how similar, in reality, men and women are.
Claudia Hammond. Psychologist, science journalist

An incredibly engaging book about what sex and gender are, where “real” men and women come from, and whether they truly exist. What makes us masculine or feminine—genes, hormones, or society? What determines people’s views that women are monogamous and men are polygamous? The book takes us along the path of the evolution of human ideas about sexual behavior—full of surprises and unexpected discoveries.
Evgeny Osin. Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology at the Higher School of Economics (HSE)

Do you still think that all men come from Mars and women from Venus? Cordelia Fine will, before your very eyes, systematically destroy the monster called “Testosterone Rex.” Behind this metaphor lie our prejudices and speculations about how behavior of men and women is evolutionarily pre-programmed. It’s all far more complicated and interesting than we thought before!
Aleksey Khavylo. Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Associate Professor at IATÉ MEPhI’s