Thami Choudhry

Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956)

Throughout history, and even more so today, sexuality has become prevalent topic of discussion. A lot of questions arise such as why people prefer one gender over the other, why some people take pleasure in some activities than others, and why people display certain sexual tendencies. During the 1960 s the sexual revolution emerged when young people dominated public life and when a new freedom about sexuality prevailed. One of the main contributors to the study of sexuality is Alfred Kinsey. Alfred Kinsey was born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1894. He graduated from Harvard University receiving his doctorate in 1920. He studied botany and zoology at Harvard and became a zoology professor in Indiana University. He provided a lot of research to the knowledge of genetics and evolution and was one of the few professors giving a marriage course in the 1930 s. It was a time where sex was an unspeakable subject. Kinsey started by studying gull wasps. His interest was in the division of plants and animals into species. He looked for variations within species, which led him to his vast collection of gull wasps. He stressed that no two wasps were ever exactly the same and that the amount of variation between species is greater than previously realized. When he turned his interest to people soon after, he became irritated by the lack of knowledge concerning human sexuality. He looked to find a variety of human sexual acts and tried to learn about new differences. He published a series of books called Sexual behavior in the Human male in 1947, and the second, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female based on interviews of thousands of people. The title sells 200,000 copies in the first few months and hit the top of the best seller lists. The purpose of his

books was to show that the average person engaged in sexual behavior such as adultery, homosexuality, masturbation, and pornography. Kinsey received his first financial assistance from the National Research Council in 1941 and by 1942, the Medical Division of the Rockefeller Foundation. His interests in sexual behavior were mainly caused by the restrictions imposed by his father, Alfred Seguine Kinsey who was an extremist conservative. He prohibited social relationships with girls and any knowledge about sex which led him to pursue a bigger interest in the subject. Kinsey s mother, Sarah Kinsey was beaten down emotionally by her husband as well but Kinsey represented her for never standing up to her husband. His father was a domineering man, who was a preacher and their relationship played the greatest role in shaping who he became. His books and research in the field of sex led to more open and honest investigations of sexual practices. His book reported that extramarital and premarital sex was more prevalent, than believed. He stated that nearly all males, especially teenagers masturbated and that masturbation did not cause mental illness and that one in three men reported having at least one homosexual encounter in their lifetimes (Times, 2005) He also supported the idea that humans are sexual from birth and that masturbation was a popular practice. He believed that approximately 87% of men had at least one homosexual encounter, as stated before, and of those one third would choose homosexuality, a third would remain in the middle, and another third moved onto heterosexuality. Although many people agreed with his findings and he sold about 300,000 copies, he experienced criticism from the conservative and religious organizations. Despite the divided public attitudes on premarital sex, the behavior is widely accepted among young people. His main purpose was to discover the sexual practices of human beings and to classify this behavior. Before Kinsey, there was a clear difference between what people claimed about their sexual

practices and the activities in which they engage in. Kinsey s counting of real sexual activities stripped away the 1940 s remnants of Victorian respectability exposing the facts of human behavior . (Pastoetter, 2006 ) . After Kinsey s studies in sexology, it was no longer restricted by legal definitions, medically unfound facts, or religious hypocrisy. Some of the facts that Kinsey wanted to disprove was that masturbation caused blindness, hairy palms, infertility and insanity. His research stated that about 86.4% older generations of American males masturbated and about 93.1% younger males. Older ancestors believed that masturbation caused diseases but this was not backed up by scientific evidence. Another misinformed example is the belief that oral sex would reduce a woman s infertility and all these misleading ideas caused a lot of pain and suffering. The second book published by Kinsey, caused greater commotion due to the findings concerned with high rates of premarital and extramarital sex, the rapidness of erotic resoinse, and the detailed discussion of clitoral versus vaginal orgasm. His motives were once again criticized causing the Rockefeller Foundation to announce their decision to cease funding for his Institute. He was accused of undermining American morals but this didn t hold him back from working more intensely. He continued his study but soon it cost him. He wrote a scathing letter to Rusk, excerpted in American Heritage, pointing out that, to have fifteen years of accumulated data in this area fail to reach publication would constitute an indictment of the Institute, its sponsors, and all others who have contributed time and material resources to this work (Times, 2005). Soon after he had trouble finding new sources of funding, he became disturbed with lack of sleep and began taking medications. He traveled to England and Europe to lecture on various topics he studied and upon his return he was hospitalized several times due to his heart trouble. Despite his health conditions, he operated on his final interviews in Chicago.

Kinsey ,alone made sex a science and his findings regarding homosexuality led to the removal of homosexuality from the list of diseases in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973. The definition was replaced 17 years after his death in 1956, paying off after his fidelity to his study. He died at the age of 62 due to heart complications and pneumonia, but his scientific methods followed on. Some of his followers included William Masters and Virginia Johnson who published Human Sexual Response (1976), and Shere Hite The Hite Report:A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality (1976) and The Hite Report on Male Sexuality (1981). Their work flawed due to the lack of random sampling in their research, they lacked a statistical viewpoint. Careful attention was given to Kinsey s opinions against other scientists who would attempt to suppress the knowledge that didn t meet with their personal behavior and moral views. The Society for Scientific Study of Sex, the Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S., and the American Association of Sex Educators and Counselors carefully took into consideration of Kinsey s opinions and removed the word Sex from their names to make it less offensive. In today s society, modern researchers ignore Kinsey s report. The Kinsey Report unveiled seven-point heterosexual-homosexual rating scale, as a tool to indicate a person s sexual orientation with both sexes. According to the Center for Sexual Health Promotion, the rating system and his findings regarding male bisexuality, and cultural influences on men in general, have been overlooked. Kinsey believed that culture plated a key role in ones sexual behavior. They (Kinsey and his research team) sought to capture photos of human sexual experience, with individual sexual preferences. Many people looked for genetic causes of homosexuality, conducting researches in an attempt to define whats normal. It is not necessarily a bad thing that research is evolving. Biology and genetics, of course are a part of the picture, but we seem to be swinging in the direction where some scientists are using these as

universal explanatory constructs and trying to minimize, or negate, the role of an individual s culture and environment, aspects that Kinsey thought were most important (Magazine, 2009 ) Kinsey s contribution to his scientific research about sex still continues, but wouldn t be possible if it weren t for him. Without his contributions sex would still be considered a loathsome disease, morally offensive, or just plain dirty (Granzig, 2006). Even after he was emotionally beaten down from criticism, he made a significant difference in people s lives. Today, society has come very far in understanding that people are not alone in their sexual feelings and preferences and they could be free from shame and guilt because of the ignorance of society about sex. Some of the important changes over the years influenced by Kinsey include in 1955, the American Law Institute publishes its Model penal Code, with no ban against consensual, adult homosexual and anal sed. Many states adopted this code and effectively legalized homosexual and anal sex. In 1956, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first birth control pill. Less than a decade after the pills approval , over 12.5 million women worldwide are taking the medication for contraceptive purposes. In 1972, the U.S. supreme court ruled that the state cannot stand in the distribution of birth control to a single person, prohibiting sale of contraceptives to unmarried women. In 1973, the Supreme Court legalized abortion in the Roe v. Wade court. The women had a right to privacy to their reproductive matters. In the 1990 s, the rising sexual conservatism began to take over the social policy when the U.S. congress declined fund for research. The food and Drug Administration approved Pfizer s Viagra as a first prescription drug treating the impotence of males.

Works Cited
Granzig, W. (2006). The Legacy of Alfred Kinset. 1-102. Magazine, U. T. (2009 ). Modern Researchers Ignoring Kinsey Report . 11. Pastoetter, J. (2006 ). Alfred Kinsey: A much Discussed Scientist of Our Time . In Sexuality and Culture (pp. 5-14). Times, N. (2005, February 14). Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956).