Kinsey And Sex

Kinsey and the Sexual Revolution: Are We Better Off? A half century ago, Alfred C. Kinsey turned conventional mores on their heads by shining a spotlight on male and female sexual behaviors, deviant and otherwise. Now Kinsey is back-this time in the movie Kinsey, where actor Liam Neeson affectionately portrays the sexologist.

Kinsey, a professor at Indiana University, published his landmark 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (funded mainly by the Rockefeller Foundation), after ten years of research and some 9,000 interviews. “Not since the Darwinian theory split the world wide open,” wrote Newsweek, “has there been such a scientific shocker.”

Kinsey’s name quickly became a household word. Within ten days of the book’s release, the publisher ordered a sixth printing, making a phenomenal 185,000 copies in print. The strong interest in the book was especially significant since it was an 804-page factual tome. The book became a bestseller, with generally positive reviews. Polls taken of ordinary Americans showed that not only did they agree with his evidence, they also believed such studies were accurate and useful.

The August 1953 planned date of publication for Kinsey’s next book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, was so anticipated that journalists dubbed it “K-Day.” In the female volume, Kinsey addressed the subject of religion, noting that religious women tended to have less sexual experience and to achieve orgasm less often than nonreligious women. He used this data to suggest that inhibitions about premarital sex caused unhealthy sexual relations in marriage. Although the initial reception to the book was positive, however, many also criticized it. “It is impossible to estimate the damage this book will do to the already deteriorating morals of America,” Billy Graham pronounced.

To a culture that has become so frank about sexuality that our television programming now revolves around sensuous dating reality shows, America’s wide-eyed reaction to Kinsey’s work might seem overdone. But as the past 56-plus years have shown, Kinsey’s studies on human sexuality have influenced American attitudes more fundamentally than the work of other great sexual theorists, including Sigmund Freud. And Hugh Hefner, who later founded the Playboy empire, regarded Kinsey as a hero, a man who more than anyone else had pointed out what he saw as the hypocrisy of daily American life.

The shock value in Kinsey’s work was to be found in the variety of sexual experiences he reported, as well as the explicit nature of the research itself. In compiling an inventory of garden-variety sexual code breakers, Kinsey eagerly sought out groups whose members operated in the shadowlands of America. Here he found homosexuals, sadomasochists, voyeurs, exhibitionists, pedophiles, transsexuals, transvestites and fetishists of various stripes. However, Kinsey’s later critics have often pointed out that his methodology and data were flawed and that the people he interviewed may have lied, exaggerated or remembered inaccurately.

Cloaked in the cultural authority of science, Kinsey was always quick to note that he “never suggested what should or should not be done in human behavior.” But, unbeknownst to the general public, Kinsey was not simply a compiler of data who reported facts with scientific disinterest. He was also a man of secrets. “Beginning with his childhood,” writes biographer James H. Jones, “Kinsey had lived with two shameful secrets: he was both a homosexual and a masochist.” As such, Kinsey approached his work with a missionary zeal. “Kinsey loathed Victorian morality,” notes Jones. “He wanted to undermine traditional morality, to soften the rules of restraint, and to help people develop positive attitudes toward their sexual needs and desire. Kinsey was a crypto-reformer who spent his every waking hour attempting to change the sexual mores and sex offender laws of the United States.”

His “everybody’s doing it” conclusion proved to be a behavior-affecting argument.

A nation addicted to polls and public opinion allowed Kinsey’s research to dictate its morals. Kinsey, however, was not alone in affecting the moral landscape. Numerous factors contributed to changing sexual mores in American society. Activists such as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and cultural movements laid the groundwork for the change in sexual behavior. World War I also impacted sexual behavior. Even more dramatic cultural change occurred with World War II and its devastating effects on sexual mores. Added to these factors was Kinsey’s clinical approach, which would remove the mystery of sexual behavior and its connection to the institution of marriage.

Ideas have consequences in the way we live and act, both in our personal lives and in the culture as a whole. And half a century later, we see the consequences of the work of Kinsey and others. Besides the escalation in divorce and the unsettling residue of broken families, we continue to deal with the AIDS epidemic, a surge in sexual openness and a catastrophic confusion regarding sex and gender roles.

These are issues that should be treated lightly, and the consequences are often tragic. The rate of suicide among adolescents and young adults has nearly tripled since the 1950s.

So, are we better off post-Kinsey? You be the judge.

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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute.