Alfred C. Kinsey:
Contributions to American Sexuality
By Discovery Health.Com
Original
article: http://health.howstuffworks.com/sexual-health/sexuality/alfred-kinsey-sexuality-dictionary.htm
Alfred
Kinsey is regarded by many to be the foremost pioneer in the quantitative study
of human sexuality. From his roots studying marriage and sex to his quantitative
studies on women's sexuality, Dr. Alfred Kinsey is a research pioneer in human
sexuality.
His interest
in human sexuality fortuitously began when in 1938 the Indiana Association of
Women Students petitioned the university to offer a noncredit course on
marriage. Kinsey coordinated the course and presented lectures on the
biological dimensions of sex and marriage. In preparing for his lectures in
what quickly became a very popular course, he discovered that little survey
research was available on human sexuality.
Initially,
Kinsey gathered data from students in his classes, then from other students and
faculty, and later from people whom he could persuade to be interviewed. At his
own expense, he interviewed people in other Midwestern
cities, thereby adding people from other social classes to his sample.
In 1941,
Kinsey obtained a grant from the National Council's Committee for Research in
the Problems of Sex, which was at the time funded by the Rockefeller
Foundation. He assembled a multidisciplinary research team that included Clyde
Martin, a student assistant who became a research associate; Wardwell Pomeroy,
a clinical psychologist; and Paul Gebhard, an
anthropologist. Kinsey and his colleagues established the Institute for Sex
Research in 1947 as a separate, nonprofit organization.
Kinsey
published "Sexual Behavior In The Human Male" in 1948, which came to
be known as the "Kinsey Report." The report
immediately created controversy for its revelations of the sexuality of white
American males. It sold more than 250,000 copies and was translated into
a dozen languages.
In 1953 the
Institute published Sexual Behavior In The Human Female, which also sold more
than 250,000 copies and was translated into several languages. These two
reports sharply challenged many myths about sexual behavior in American society
and revealed findings on various previously taboo topics, such as extramarital
sexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, oral sex, masturbation, and
prostitution.
Kinsey's
research focused on six different outlets to sexual orgasm, namely
masturbation, petting, nocturnal dreams, heterosexual coitus, homosexual
behaviors, and bestiality. He related these forms of sexuality to various
socioeconomic variables, namely age, education, marital status, occupation, and
religious identification.
Many
Americans in particular were shocked to learn that females are as capable of
sexual response as men. Previously, the prevailing cultural myth was that women
merely engaged in sex for procreative purposes or to please their male partners.
Half of the females interviewed stated that they had engaged in premarital
coitus and one-quarter stated that they had engaged in extramarital sex.
Kinsey's
findings on homosexuality also shocked the American public. He reported that a
third of American males and 13 percent of American females claimed to have had
at least one same-sex orgasmic experience by age 45.
Furthermore,
approximately 10 percent of the males admitted to having been predominantly homosexual
for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55, and four percent of
white males described themselves as exclusively homosexual. Kinsey's research
refuted the widely held notion that heterosexuality and homosexuality are
exclusive forms of behavior.
Additionally,
Kinsey found that a person's sexual orientation could change over the course of
his or her lifetime. The two Kinsey reports also revealed a widespread
prevalence of masturbation. His study found that more than 90 percent of white males
and 62 percent of females admitted having engaged in this behavior..
A major
weakness of the two Kinsey reports was their failure to examine the sexual
behavior of people of color in the United States. Furthermore, the samples
relied heavily upon middle-class, college-educated Americans under age 35.
Despite
these limitations, the Kinsey reports served as significant benchmarks in the
quantitative study of sexuality in U.S. society and their findings contributed
to an era of more relaxed attitudes concerning sexual behavior. In this sense,
the Kinsey reports contributed to what has been termed the Sexual Revolution,
or reconfiguration of sexual mores after the Second World War. Kinsey's
research and other studies by the Institute for Sex Research created and
continue to create controversy in the larger society, particularly among
conservative social forces. A Congressional committee accused the Institute of
contributing to an alleged Communist takeover of the United States and accused
the Rockefeller Foundation of "un-American" behavior, resulting in
the latter's decision to withdraw funding for the Institute.
Attacks upon
Kinsey's research appear to have contributed to his untimely death at age 62 in
1956. Nevertheless, the Institute has continued to produce a long list of
studies of American sexual behavior including: "Pregnancy, Birth, and
Abortion" (1958); "Sexual Offenders: An Analysis of Types"
(1965); "Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity
Among Men and Women" (1978); and "Sexuality and Morality in the
U.S." (1989). Despite the wide-spread acceptance of the scientific study
of sexuality in U.S. society, conservative forces continue to attack the work
pioneered by Kinsey as well as on-going studies by the Institute for Sexual
Research.
Copyright Sinclair Intimacy Institute