As I started to write, an OUP editor told me that my book would be ‘an important one’. I was drawing on anthropology, sociology, psychology, sexology and biology, as well as philosophy. But one connecting thread ran through every chapter: the fact that humans, like many animals, come in significantly different male and female forms.
This is crucial to dispelling the modern swirl of confusion around gender.
Perhaps naively, I thought that all this could prove an important subject for lively philosophical study. Most book-buyers are inquisitive people who want to be provoked and challenged, and are willing to change their views if the evidence is strong.
Yet when I delivered the text exactly as promised, OUP changed its tune entirely. To my shock and dismay, the publisher rejected my manuscript, alleging that the book did not treat the subject ‘in a sufficiently serious and respectful way’.