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Tearing Off the Veil: Women and Girls Respond to the Kinsey Reports

Amanda H. Littauer

in Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, and Rebellion before the Sixties

This chapter analyzes the responses of young women towards Alfred Kinsey's reports published in his Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). This publication is packed with statistics about issues ... More

This chapter analyzes the responses of young women towards Alfred Kinsey's reports published in his Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). This publication is packed with statistics about issues that most Americans were not accustomed to speaking of candidly, including masturbation, premarital petting and intercourse, extramarital sex, homosexuality, and bestiality. Kinsey demonstrated that much of Americans' sexual activity took place outside of marriage, and that the majority of the nation's citizens had violated accepted moral standards as well as state and federal laws in their pursuit of sexual pleasure. His discussion about sex made visible potential ruptures in systems of power relations. The published and private letters to Kinsey examined here reveal potential for average people to engage in public discussions about sex as part of attempts to contest authoritative knowledge.Less

Kinsey’s Bibliographer

Susan G. Davis

in Dirty Jokes and Bawdy Songs: The Uncensored Life of Gershon Legman

In the early 1940s, Legman’s work with Robert L. Dickinson led to a job with University of Indiana biology professor Alfred C. Kinsey. This chapter shows Legman working as a bibliographer and rare ... More

In the early 1940s, Legman’s work with Robert L. Dickinson led to a job with University of Indiana biology professor Alfred C. Kinsey. This chapter shows Legman working as a bibliographer and rare book buyer for Kinsey’s fledgling sex research institute. During these years, Legman not only developed a deep knowledge of erotic bibliography and the literature of sexology, but also gained insight into the quantitative empirical approach to sexual behavior Kinsey applied in his landmark study, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Legman’s correspondence with Kinsey shows him developing a critique of Kinsey’s theories and methods and arguing for a humanistic and interpretative investigation of human sexuality. Legman mixed this humane position with fierce antagonism to Kinsey’s tolerant stance toward homosexuality and bisexuality. The two men ended their relationship angrily when Kinsey accused Legman of dishonesty, and Legman’s relationship with the Institute for Sex Research remained strained after Kinsey’s death in 1956. However, Legman helped form Kinsey’s unparalleled research library, and he would later deposit parts of his folklore collections in the Kinsey Institute archive.Less

Surveying Sexual Attitudes and Behaviour

Adrian Bingham

in Family Newspapers?: Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918-1978

This chapter examines how the press discussed ‘normal’ sexual attitudes and behaviour. Before the Second World War, reliable evidence about sexual activity was very scarce, and most journalists ... More

This chapter examines how the press discussed ‘normal’ sexual attitudes and behaviour. Before the Second World War, reliable evidence about sexual activity was very scarce, and most journalists shared the belief that Britons generally exercised a high degree of sexual restraint and adhered to strict moral standards. After 1945, these assumptions were placed under increasing scrutiny by new methods of social investigation. The British press gave considerable publicity to the sex surveys of Professor Alfred Kinsey and encouraged related research in Britain. Most notably, the Sunday Pictorial provided the funds for Mass-Observation to conduct its ‘Little Kinsey’ survey in 1949. Popular newspapers developed an ongoing interest in sex surveys, and helped to establish new expectations of ‘normal’ sexuality. The discussion of the ‘sex lives’ of ordinary men and women eroded the old reticence surrounding sex. By the end of the 1960s, the press consolidated the belief that British society had entered a new era of ‘permissiveness’.Less

Frontier Living, by Figures Alone

Peter Hegarty

in Gentlemen’s Disagreement: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men

This chapter examines the statistical representation in Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (SBHM), presents a history of statistics in the United States that ends with postwar sampling ... More

This chapter examines the statistical representation in Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (SBHM), presents a history of statistics in the United States that ends with postwar sampling theory, and analyzes Kinsey’s interaction with the statisticians. It suggests that while Kinsey’s study prompted the imagination of new normative ideals for a national survey of sex, he also articulated resistance to the statisticians’ ideas concerning the use of a sample of the national population.Less

Ancient Ascetics and Modern Non-Americans

Peter Hegarty

in Gentlemen’s Disagreement: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men

This chapter examines the last of the four of Lewis Terman’s criticisms of Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (SBHM), which centered on Kinsey’s views about the differences between ... More

This chapter examines the last of the four of Lewis Terman’s criticisms of Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (SBHM), which centered on Kinsey’s views about the differences between secular and religious men. It explains that Kinsey’s account of sexual nature was in tension not only with Terman’s but also with psychoanalysis, and considers the differences between Kinsey’s and Sigmund Freud’s narratives about religion.Less

Beauvoir, Kinsey, and Midcentury Sex

Judith G. Coffin

in Sex, Love, and Letters: Writing Simone de Beauvoir

This chapter mentions Alfred C. Kinsey's 1948 report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which was one of the most prominent research on sexuality that François Mauriac associated with Simone de ... More

This chapter mentions Alfred C. Kinsey's 1948 report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which was one of the most prominent research on sexuality that François Mauriac associated with Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. It analyses Kinsey and his team of American scientists' investigation of sexual acts, practices, inclinations, and tastes they had discovered among their fellow citizens. It also talks about critics who were deeply invested in the role of literature, and the responsibility of the writer who warned that The Second Sex and the Kinsey report debased the public. The chapter likens The Second Sex and the Kinsey report to the “erotic jungle” of American popular culture and fashion magazines, and to a world of commerce, sensationalism, and prurience. It explores the scholarly study of sexuality and the public's fixation on the subject that situates The Second Sex in the larger history of contemporary culture.Less

A Gentlemen’s Disagreement?

Peter Hegarty

in Gentlemen’s Disagreement: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men

This chapter examines the history of the explicit disagreement between American sexologist Alfred Kinsey and psychologist Lewis Terman on the issue of the relation between sex and intelligence. It ... More

This chapter examines the history of the explicit disagreement between American sexologist Alfred Kinsey and psychologist Lewis Terman on the issue of the relation between sex and intelligence. It suggests that the conflict may have started with Terman’s review of Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (SBHM), which was published in January 1948. The chapter discusses the similarities between Kinsey and Terman in terms of their interest in eugenics and highlights the differences in biographical writing about them.Less

Queer Individuals: Their Nature and Nurture

Peter Hegarty

in Gentlemen’s Disagreement: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men

This chapter examines Lewis Terman’s silence on Alfred Kinsey’s findings about the frequency with which adult men reported homosexual sex in his review of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (SBHM). It ... More

This chapter examines Lewis Terman’s silence on Alfred Kinsey’s findings about the frequency with which adult men reported homosexual sex in his review of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (SBHM). It discusses Kinsey’s opinion that Terman’s review of his book was motivated by moral prudery and cites a biographical account which considered Terman’s review as one of the most moralistic responses to SBHM. The analysis indicates that Terman was not troubled by the evidence of widespread homosexual conduct in the population which Kinsey’s work had already begun to reveal and that his defense of the gifted had come to depend upon that projection of homosexuality onto the national population.Less

Sex and Statistics: The End of Normality

Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens

in Normality: A Critical Genealogy

The publication of the two Kinsey reports on human sexuality in the middle of the twentieth century was widely hailed as the first study of “normal” sexuality. His approach to the study of sexual ... More

The publication of the two Kinsey reports on human sexuality in the middle of the twentieth century was widely hailed as the first study of “normal” sexuality. His approach to the study of sexual behaviour marked a shift from that found in sexology and psychoanalysis. These had made very little use of statistics. Their approach was narrative, not quantitative; the concept of the normal that underlined their work was medical rather than mathematical. Kinsey’s work applied to the study of sexuality the statistical methods developed as part of the anthropometric projects examined in the previous chapters. Yet Kinsey himself was highly critical of the concept of the normal. The history of the normal in the 1950s is not, as is often assumed, simply the history of its increasing cultural dominance and ubiquity. Rather, the cultural processes by which the term normal became so ubiquitous and powerful in the mid-century need to be understood as intricately connected with those by which it became a subject of debate, resistance, and even outright rejection.Less

Gentlemen and Horse Traders

Peter Hegarty

in Gentlemen’s Disagreement: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men

This chapter examines the relationship between attributions about a scientist’s character and the trustworthiness of scientific knowledge resulting from that scientist’s efforts. It analyzes the ... More

This chapter examines the relationship between attributions about a scientist’s character and the trustworthiness of scientific knowledge resulting from that scientist’s efforts. It analyzes the issue of intelligence and education in Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (SBHM) and the influence of Raymond Pearl on Kinsey’s works. The chapter also considers the hypothesis that cognitive dissonance is relieved by the knowledge that one’s deviant desires are shared by others and suggests that Kinsey’s work helped to relieve people from a sense of individual gift about their sexual practices.Less

Crossing the Catholic Divide: Gender, Sexuality, and Historiography

R. Marie Griffith

in Catholics in the American Century: Recasting Narratives of U.S. History

This chapter looks at another area of assimilation and distinctiveness: gender and sexuality. It explores how Catholics made up roughly a quarter of the nation's population during the twentieth ... More

This chapter looks at another area of assimilation and distinctiveness: gender and sexuality. It explores how Catholics made up roughly a quarter of the nation's population during the twentieth century; how their leaders held to a particular, well-developed view of sexuality and gender; and how contemporary historians of sexuality and gender have neglected to integrate Catholicism into their accounts. Drawing on Leslie Woodcock Tentler's study of Catholics and birth control, the chapter surveys the ways in which disparate reformers, including Margaret Sanger, Alfred Kinsey, and Mary Steichen Calderone, managed their interactions with Catholic leaders and ideas. The chapter also grants specific attention to sources of the Protestant–Catholic divide, as well as to some possibilities for remedying it in new scholarly work.Less

The “Impotence Boom”: From Kinsey to Masters and Johnson

in Impotence: A Cultural History

In its October 1972 issue, Esquire carried a story by Philip Nobile which played off claims by alarmists such as Dr. George L. Ginsberg that in recent years there had been a marked rise in impotence, ... More

In its October 1972 issue, Esquire carried a story by Philip Nobile which played off claims by alarmists such as Dr. George L. Ginsberg that in recent years there had been a marked rise in impotence, against the reassurances of Dr. Albert Ellis that only reports of such sexual dysfunctions had risen. In the decades between World War II and the 1980s, the media portrayed incapacitated males as casualties of the war, of the social pressures of the consumerist, conformist culture of the 1950s, and finally of the sexual revolution and the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These were the decades in which preeminent sex surveyor Alfred Kinsey and the therapists William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson became household names. In rewriting the sexual script, they popularized notions of new models of the sexual body, and in their very different ways advocated a shift in treatment of male dysfunctions away from psychotherapy and toward sex therapy.Less

Less Than Ideal Husbands

Peter Hegarty

in Gentlemen’s Disagreement: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men

This chapter examines Lewis Terman’s response to Alfred Kinsey’s claim that rates of premarital intercourse were stable across the generations and on the issue of the less-than-ideal husbands that ... More

This chapter examines Lewis Terman’s response to Alfred Kinsey’s claim that rates of premarital intercourse were stable across the generations and on the issue of the less-than-ideal husbands that gifted boys might grow up to be. It considers Kinsey’s review of Terman’s 1938 book Psychological Factors in Marital Happiness and analyzes the condition under which Terman’s book was written, the detail of its account of marital happiness, and the effects of its conclusions on the interpretations of Terman’s own marriage.Less

Jacob’s Pillar

Paul A. Scolieri

in Ted Shawn: His Life, Writings, and Dances

This chapter focuses on Ted Shawn’s role in the development of Jacob’s Pillow from a summer dance training camp into an internationally renowned dance school and festival. Through Shawn’s wartime ... More

This chapter focuses on Ted Shawn’s role in the development of Jacob’s Pillow from a summer dance training camp into an internationally renowned dance school and festival. Through Shawn’s wartime letters to his lover Barton Mumaw, the chapter relays an insider’s view into the early years of the festival, including the building of the first theater dedicated to presenting dance in 1942. It then focuses on Shawn’s later choreographic output as well as his many programmatic achievements at the Pillow. And finally, it looks at Shawn’s twilight years, especially his attempts to document the story of his life in relation to the emerging gay rights movement he saw intensify around him, including the publication of the Kinsey Reports, the influential study of American sexual culture, in which Shawn participated with profound liberating results.Less

Awakenings: Voices from the Ivory Towers of Academia

Ellen Cheshire

in Bio-pics: A Life in Pictures

From the 1930s to the 1950s, scientists, academics, and technologists were portrayed as “heroes” working to make the world a safer, better place. In most recent years, such films have tended to offer ... More

From the 1930s to the 1950s, scientists, academics, and technologists were portrayed as “heroes” working to make the world a safer, better place. In most recent years, such films have tended to offer a warts-and-all depiction, interweaving the academic prowess of their subjects with complex emotional stories. This chapter examines two films that feature men working in academia during the same period: Alfred Kinsey in Kinsey (2004) and John Nash in A Beautiful Mind (2001). Kinsey focuses on the period leading up to the publication of Kinsey's 1948 study Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, through to his death in 1956. The film covered the darker sides of Kinsey's character, including his bisexuality, masochistic and voyeuristic practices. A Beautiful Mind depicted how Nash dealt with and overcame his schizophrenia.Less

Why the Gifted Boy Didn’t Masturbate

Peter Hegarty

in Gentlemen’s Disagreement: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men

This chapter examines Lewis Terman’s response to Alfred Kinsey’s ideas about masturbation and sexual precocity, the first of his four distinctive criticisms of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male ... More

This chapter examines Lewis Terman’s response to Alfred Kinsey’s ideas about masturbation and sexual precocity, the first of his four distinctive criticisms of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (SBHM). It describes the exchange between Kinsey and Terman wherein the former identified psychologist G. Stanley Hall as an important resource of anti-masturbation influence in early twentieth-century American culture, and analyzes Hall’s influence on Terman and Terman’s view on the masturbation of gifted children.Less

Sexual Behavior

Allan V. Horwitz

in What's Normal?: Reconciling Biology and Culture

This chapter turns to the question of what may be considered natural or unnatural sexual behaviors. The biological and cultural approaches sharply diverge in their answers to this question. Although ... More

This chapter turns to the question of what may be considered natural or unnatural sexual behaviors. The biological and cultural approaches sharply diverge in their answers to this question. Although biological approaches regard heterosexuality as the driving force of evolution, desirable and undesirable sexual behaviors show extraordinary variability across cultures and over time. This chapter focuses on the views of Alfred Kinsey, who believed that virtually all forms of sexuality were natural so that unnatural sexual proclivities, except perhaps celibacy, do not exist. Moreover, Kinsey held that people were naturally pansexual and in the absence of repressive cultural norms would enjoy all forms of sexuality. The chapter surveys sexual behavior subsequent to Kinsey to determine what sorts of sexual activities actually emerge when cultural norms permit individuals to choose a wide variety of sexual orientations.Less

Normalization Now

Peter Hegarty

in Gentlemen’s Disagreement: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men

This chapter focuses on the normalization of sexuality and intelligence. It explains Lewis Terman’s view on the sustained Queteletian normalization of children and sexuality, and discusses theories ... More

This chapter focuses on the normalization of sexuality and intelligence. It explains Lewis Terman’s view on the sustained Queteletian normalization of children and sexuality, and discusses theories about reproductive strategies which show that high intelligence is a necessary prerequisite for the enactment of sexual morality. The chapter also considers the legacy of Alfred Kinsey’s sexology and highlights the fact that the surveying of sexual behavior remained a heterogeneous low science after Kinsey.Less