Kinsey Reports

The 1948 first edition of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, the first of the two Kinsey reports.

The Kinsey Reports are two books on human sexual behavior, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male^[1] (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female^[2] (1953), by Dr. Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others and published by Saunders. Kinsey was a zoologist at Indiana University and the founder of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction (more widely known as the Kinsey Institute).

The Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was based on personal interviews with nearly 6,000 women. The book analyzes data on the incidence and frequency with which women participate in various types of sexual activity; and looks at how factors such as age, decade of birth, social significance and religious adherence influence sexual behavior. Comparisons are made of female and male sexual activities.

The research astounded the general public and was immediately controversial and sensational. The findings caused shock and outrage, both because they challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and because they discussed subjects that had previously been taboo.

Critics have raised concerns about the methodology used to collect data, including that data in the reports could not have been obtained without collaborations with child molesters.^[3] The Kinsey Institute denies this charge, though it acknowledges that men who have had sexual experiences with children were interviewed, with Kinsey balancing what he saw as the need for their anonymity to solicit "honest answers on such taboo subjects" against the likelihood that their crimes would continue.^[4][5] Additionally, concerns over the sample populations used were later addressed by the Kinsey Institute, and the conclusion was that none of Kinsey's original estimates were significantly affected by these data sources.^[6]

Findings

Sexual orientation

Parts of the Kinsey Reports regarding diversity in sexual orientations are frequently used to support the common estimate of 10% for homosexuality in the general population. However, the findings are not as absolute, and Kinsey himself avoided and disapproved of using terms like homosexual or heterosexual to describe individuals, asserting that sexuality is prone to change over time, and that sexual behavior can be understood both as physical contact as well as purely psychological phenomena (desire, sexual attraction, fantasy). Instead of three categories (heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual), a seven-category Kinsey Scale system was used (an 8th category for asexuals was added by Kinsey's associates).

The reports also state that nearly 46% of the male subjects had "reacted" sexually to persons of both sexes in the course of their adult lives, and 37% had at least one homosexual experience.^[7] 11.6% of white males (ages 20–35) were given a rating of 3 (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) throughout their adult lives.^[8] The study also reported that 10% of American males surveyed were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55" (in the 5 to 6 range).^[9]

7% of single females (ages 20–35) and 4% of previously married females (ages 20–35) were given a rating of 3 (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) on Kinsey Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale for this period of their lives.^[10] 2 to 6% of females, aged 20–35, were more or less exclusively homosexual in experience/response,^[11] and 1 to 3% of unmarried females aged 20–35 were exclusively homosexual in experience/response.^[12]

Academic criticisms were made pertaining to sample selection and sample bias in the reports' methodology. Two main problems cited were that significant portions of the samples come from prison populations and male prostitutes, and that people who volunteer to be interviewed about taboo subject are likely to suffer from the problem of self-selection. Both undermine the usefulness of the sample in terms of determining the tendencies of the overall population. In 1948, the same year as the original publication, a committee of the American Statistical Association, including notable statisticians such as John Tukey, condemned the sampling procedure. Tukey was perhaps the most vocal critic, saying, "A random selection of three people would have been better than a group of 300 chosen by Mr. Kinsey."^[13][14] Criticism principally revolved around the over-representation of some groups in the sample: 25% were, or had been, prison inmates, and 5% were male prostitutes. Psychologist Abraham Maslow asserted that Kinsey did not consider "volunteer bias". The data represented only those volunteering to participate in discussion of taboo topics. Most Americans were reluctant to discuss the intimate details of their sex lives even with their spouses and close friends. Before the publication of Kinsey's reports, Maslow tested Kinsey's volunteers for bias. He concluded that Kinsey's sample was unrepresentative of the general population.^[15]

In response, Paul Gebhard, Kinsey's successor as director of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, cleaned the Kinsey data of purported contaminants, removing, for example, all material derived from prison populations in the basic sample. In 1979, Gebhard (with Alan B. Johnson) published The Kinsey Data: Marginal Tabulations of the 1938–1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for Sex Research. Their conclusion, to Gebhard's surprise he claimed, was that none of Kinsey's original estimates were significantly affected by this bias: that is, prison population, male prostitutes, and those who willingly participated in discussion of previously taboo sexual topics had the same statistical tendency as the general population. The results were summarized by historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist Martin Duberman, "Instead of Kinsey's 37% (men who had at least one homosexual experience), Gebhard and Johnson came up with 36.4%; the 10% figure (men who were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55"), with prison inmates excluded, came to 9.9% for white, college-educated males and 12.7% for those with less education.^[6]

Kinsey scale

The Kinsey scale attempts to describe a person's sexual history or episodes of their sexual activity at a given time. The scale ranked sexual behavior from 0 to 6, with 0 being completely heterosexual and 6 completely homosexual. An additional category, X, was mentioned to describe asexuals, those who experienced no sexual desire.^[16] It was first published in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others, and was also prominent in the complementary work Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). Introducing the scale, Kinsey wrote:

The scale is as follows:

• Men: 11.6% of white males aged 20–35 were given a rating of 3 for this period of their lives.^[18]
• Women: 7% of single females aged 20–35 and 4% of previously married females aged 20–35 were given a rating of 3 for this period of their lives.^[19] 2 to 6% of females, aged 20–35, were given a rating of 5^[20] and 1 to 3% of unmarried females aged 20–35 were rated as 6.^[21]

Marital coitus

The average frequency of marital sex reported by women was 2.8 times a week in the late teens, 2.2 times a week by age 30, and 1.0 times a week by age 50.^[22] Kinsey estimated that approximately 50% of all married males had some extramarital experience at some time during their married lives.^[23] Among the sample, 26% of females had extramarital sex by their forties. Between 1 in 6 and 1 in 10 females from age 26 to 50 were engaged in extramarital sex.^[24] However, Kinsey classified couples who have lived together for at least a year as "married", inflating the statistics for extra-marital sex.^[25][26] James H. Jones wrote that Kinsey's appetite for unconventional sex and his disdain for conventional sexual morality, drove Kinsey's agenda to strip sexuality of guilt and to undermine traditional sexual morality. He pointed to Kinsey's classification of couples who have lived together for at least a year as "married".^[25][26]

Sadomasochism

12% of females and 22% of males reported having an erotic response to a sadomasochistic story.^[27] Jones's biography, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, describes Kinsey as bisexual and experimenting in masochism. He encouraged group sex involving his graduate students, wife and staff. Kinsey filmed sexual acts in the attic of his home as part of his research.^[28] Biographer Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy explained that using Kinsey's home for the filming of sexual acts was done to ensure the films' secrecy, which would certainly have caused a scandal had the public become aware of them.^[29][30]　

Methodology

Data was gathered primarily by means of subjective report interviews, conducted according to a structured questionnaire memorised by the experimenters (but not marked on the response sheet in any way).^[31] The response sheets were encoded in this way to maintain the confidentiality of the respondents, being entered on a blank grid using response symbols defined in advance.^[31] The data were later computerized for processing. All of this material, including the original researchers' notes, remains available from the Kinsey Institute to qualified researchers who demonstrate a need to view such materials. The institute also allows researchers to use statistical software (such as PSPP or SPSS) in order to analyze the data.

The subject matter of the report lent itself to sensationalism. Based on his data and findings, others claimed that 10% of the population is gay, and that women enhance their prospects of satisfaction in marriage by masturbating previously. Neither claim was made by Kinsey.

Data concerning pre-adolescent orgasms including tables 30 through 34 of the male volume, which report observations of orgasms in over three-hundred children between the ages of five months and fourteen years, led to further scrutiny.^[32] The Kinsey Institute states on its website, "[Kinsey] did not carry out experiments on children; he did not hire, collaborate, or persuade people to carry out experiments on children." and that

The bulk of this information was obtained from adults recalling their own childhoods. Some was from parents who had observed their children, some from teachers who had observed children interacting or behaving sexually, and Kinsey stated that there were nine men who he had interviewed who had sexual experiences with children who had told him about how the children had responded and reacted.^[4]

He balanced what he saw as the need for their anonymity to solicit "honest answers on such taboo subjects" against the likelihood that their crimes would continue.^[5] Bancroft later revealed that the data on children in tables 31–34 came from one man's journal that was started in 1917, long before the Kinsey Reports. Kinsey explicitly pointed out the illegality of the man's actions, but granted him anonymity.^[33][34] The man was later revealed to be Rex King, whose sexual history included bestiality.^[35][36]

Context and significance

The Kinsey Reports, which together sold three-quarters of a million copies and were translated in thirteen languages, may be considered as part of the most successful and influential scientific books of the 20th century. The Kinsey Reports are associated with a change in public perception of sexuality. In the 1960s, following the introduction of the first oral contraceptive, this change was to be expressed in the sexual revolution. Also in the 1960s, Masters and Johnson published their investigations into the physiology of sex, breaking taboos and misapprehensions similar to those Kinsey had broken more than a decade earlier in a closely related field.

To what extent the Reports produced or promoted this change and to what extent they merely expressed it and reflected the conditions that were producing it is a matter of much debate and speculation.

The reports have been criticized by social conservatives as promoting degeneracy. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male has been on two conservative lists of the worst books of modern times. It was third on the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute's 50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century and fourth on a conservative website Human Events' Ten Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

See also

• Kinsey, the movie based on the life of Alfred Kinsey
• Klein Sexual Orientation Grid

External links

• Kinsey Institute home page
• Kinsey's Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale

References

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