A review by lizshayne
Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis by Emily Willingham

hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

4.0

Shoutout to whoever decided, in the description, to call this book penetrating. A+. 
I read this because it felt like a useful part of teaching hilkhot niddah and it was, albeit not entirely as I expected. It was a book that left me occasionally incandescently angry at the relative paucity of research on female genitalia and that left me wildly enamored of just how weird animals are and how many ways there are to create new beings. The…non-obviousness of the way we do things and the degree to which phallic power is fundamentally culturally constructed - given how wide a range the biology entails - is super interesting. 
Genuinely appreciated the sense of humor as well. Especially around the names. It was very well done and gives me also a sense of where the world is right now.