Ronald Plasterk never promotes a book.

'When I was growing up in the seventies, the message we kept hearing was that people should love their own bodies, even if they did not meet the ideal. A geneticist by profession and a researcher of chromosomes, I became Minister of Education, Culture and Science in 2007, with gay emancipation also part of my portfolio. It was a completely new world to me, and one to which I devoted a great deal of attention with great pleasure. You meet powerful people who have all gone through a phase of choosing their own feelings, their freedom, their sexuality. Inspiring encounters. I was the first minister to sail on a boat during Gay Pride. Against that background, I have watched the trans issue with growing astonishment. As a geneticist, you know that — barring very rare chromosomal abnormalities, which come with serious disorders — there are exactly two sexes: with two X chromosomes you are a woman (with vagina, ovaries, uterus and breasts), and with an X and a Y chromosome you are a man (with penis, testes and, after puberty, a beard). Most people are sexually attracted to the opposite sex; some to the same sex: lesbians and gays. There are also bisexual people. Hence the acronym LGB. But then what?'