John Money is regarded by many of his contemporaries as the most original theoretical voice in sexology today. In part, this is due to the scope of his three decades' work as a theoretician, researcher, applied clinician, and academic and public educator.

The various chapters of Venuses Penuses bring the reader up to date on a wide range of topics of contemporary interest, including childhood sexuality, male/female erotosexual differences, premenstrual tension, sexuality and aging, treatment of sex offenders, and teenage pregnancy. Several chapters, such as "The Development of Sexuality and Eroticism in Humankind," are already used as texts by sex educators, therapists, and counselors across the country.

Gathered together in Venuses Penuses (pronounced Venoos'es Penoos'es) are early papers on the psychology of hermaphroditism, in which the concept of gender first entered modern psychology and social-science usage; the genesis of gender transposition as manifest in homosexuality, bisexuality, gynemimesis, and transexualism; the theory of paraphilic (unusual, often socially unacceptable) sex; and Money's original concepts of lovemaps, the mental templates of the love object and the love process.