[7][3] The book was also reviewed by Alexandra A. Brewis in American Anthropologist,[8] Andrew P. Lyons in Anthropologica,[9] and Paul Sillitoe in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,[10] and discussed by Nathaniel McConaghy in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

[11] Petersen credited Herdt with providing "a good deal of theoretical discussion of sexual identity in a cross-cultural framework", and with taking "great care to relativize the homosexual aspects" of the Simbari's ritual practices.

However, he criticized Herdt for providing little "commentary on the matter of elders taking sexual advantage of children", noting that the issue was "a topic of considerable immediacy in contemporary America.

Though she complimented his discussions of topics such as the use of secret flutes in "Simbari man-making practices", the practice of nose-bleeding, "male fears of semen depletion", and "Simbari semen transactions", she found other parts of his work flawed, writing that while they contained interesting information, they were "limited by a naive mechanistic-functionalist conceptual framework dependent on uncritically accepted differentiations between 'biological', 'psychological', 'symbolic', 'cultural' and 'social' levels of human existence and ... such pseudo-Aristotelian notions as 'ultimate' and 'proximate' causes".

"[7] Giles argued that Herdt's view that Simbari boys give up their homosexual desires and acquire heterosexual desires when they become young men conflicts with the conclusion, supported by Alan P. Bell, Martin S. Weinberg, and Sue Kiefer Hammersmith in Sexual Preference (1981) and John C. Gonsiorek and James D. Weinrich in Homosexuality: Research implications for public health policy (1991), that sexual orientation is set in early childhood.