Come As You Are Revised Science

I ended up writing to the author of this book to hopefully get a response before writing a review here so I could comment appropriately. Apparently, she must be too busy (or unwilling) to reply to her readers, so I’m going to post the email I sent her so that anyone buying this book can have this in mind while reading it. Before doing so though, I would stress that the book is a good book on its topic. The author has fallen victim to some modern non-sense that she mentions a few times in the book. You be the judge though! Here’s the email I sent:

Good afternoon! First let me say that I read your “Come as you are book” and I would highly recommend this to any reader, male or female. It is really well researched and written.

I am a man and read a fairly large amount of books, a lot dealing with sexual themes. I have also observed after these last several years that the media, educators, and others (whom you point out in your book) have been working on pointing the figure at men (patriarchy) as a scapegoat for many things nowadays. This is absolutely untrue in modern times.

Looking in your book on page 201, you state:

“So what gives? Why does it feel so new, when every other year a book comes out that talk about it?
When I asked this question in my class, a student raised her hand and said with comic sourness: ‘Patriarchy.’
Totally.
For centuries, men’s sexuality has been the ‘default’ sexuality, so that where women differ from men, women get labeled ‘broken’.”

Ironically, if you skip to page 213, you actually nail who is currently actually responsible for all this mis-, and disinformation:

“Tell them calmly, joyfully, and confidently. No need to be defensive or aggressive – it’s not their fault they don’t know about nonconcordance. Actually, it’s more my fault and the fault of all the other sex educators and researchers. We have failed to communicate this idea clearly to the world, and now you’re stuck with the job of fixing our mistake. Sorry about that.”

You also nail “patriarchy” again on 259. Again, this reference is as false as the one listed above. If this was not modern times, then I may agree with you that men would be responsible for disseminating false or misleading information since that was the patriarchy and women weren’t allowed in these types of roles. However, as long as women have been able to write books, teach in schools, be journalists, etc, you can no longer point the finger at men for the wrong information getting out to our youth (both boys and girls) and thus getting propagated in a way that hurts women. Women are AT LEAST equal to this problem since they too are spreading the same information – per your own words (and anyone who can clearly think).

At this point, and although I still say it is a good book, your “Come as you are” is also passing misinformation along to its readers by pointing the finger at 50% of the population that is, at best, only 50% responsible! I would argue less than that because that would mean 100% of the male population would have to agree with your assessment that men “want it this way” because it “makes them superior” in some way or some other rationale. I would counter that most men actually love women and want to do what’s best and most pleasurable for them. Do some men fit the profile your presenting? Yup! Do some women also fit that against men? Yup! You can’t point the finger at one without it pointing back at you.

I hate to call for an update to your book to address this issue, but you really should consider it so that you aren’t another source of more false information being propagate to others that I and other men will have to “clean up” – as you apologized for in your quote above. There are other places in it too (e.g. 312), so a thorough review might be in order…

I learned a lot from this book and would recommend it to any woman and even men!

It saddens me that this book is mainly targeted to women. The way it is written it could have easily been a book for all genders. As a cis-male, I have gotten so much out of reading this, and I’m only half way through it so far. I would normally wait until I was finished with the book before writing a review, but I felt the content was incredibly helpful and valuable enough to post this now. I highly recommend that anyone and everyone read it.

The only qualm I have with it is when Dr. Emily mentions ignoring thoughts. For example, at the top of page 180 she says, “Practice ignoring the self-critical”. I wholly disagree with this. I would rather have heard her advise to NOT ignore it, and try to weave your way to the source of these thoughts and directly deal with that. From my own personal experience this has been the only way for me to truly absolve myself of them. Otherwise, ignoring just keeps them in the background, looking for a way back to the forefront. But, that’s me.

This book is truly life changing. On top of that, it’s very well written in a kind, funny, approachable style. Highly recommended!

Me cambió la visión sobre la sexualidad. Emily Nagoski es como la amiga experta que todos necesitamos, explicando la ciencia del placer de forma clara y accesible, sea cual sea tu educación sexual y creencias culturales. Es un libro que te abraza y te dice: “eres perfecta tal como eres”. Una lectura que empodera y educa, y que debería haber leído de adolescente.

Versión en inglés, pasta suave. Venía nuevo dentro de su plástico. Gran libro que cualquier
Mujer en busca de su autoconocimiento sexual debería leer.