fausto-sterling described "the sexual brain" as well-written and "potentially appropriate for classroom use." however, she found that levay's accounts of reproductive physiology and the brain became weaker as he moved further away from neurobiology. she considered levay's account of "the embryonic development of gonads and genitalia" an example of this weakness, describing it as "extremely unsophisticated", and accusing levay of making inaccurate claims. she criticized levay's views on gender differences, including his belief "that female development is passive and preprogrammed ... and male development active", and for failing to cite critiques of that viewpoint. she gave levay credit for bringing "a wider range of evidence to bear in examining the interactions among hormones, the brain, and behavior" and citing less well-known work on this topic, and praised levay for "declaring his own gay identity", and called his treatment of the relevance of biology to homosexuality "appropriately cautious".