IU’s own helps redefine sexuality

Housed in a nondescript section of Morrison Hall, The Kinsey Institute might not be what you would expect to find at a public university in the heart of the Midwest.

This institute studies sex, gender and reproduction. For the past decade, the focus has been on the psychology of sexual behavior, said Jennifer Bass, the institute’s director of communications.

Alfred Kinsey, a former IU science professor, founded the institute in 1947 before he published “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.”

Kinsey and his team interviewed thousands of people during the 1940s and ’50s, a time of sexual conservatism in the United States, and invited them to talk about their sexual tendencies and preferences.

“It enabled people to feel that they weren’t so abnormal,” Bass said.

During his research, Kinsey created the Kinsey Scale. The scale ranges from 0 to 6, describing sexual preferences. A 0 is exclusively heterosexual, a 3 bisexual and a 6 exclusively homosexual.

Kinsey wrote that each person’s number changes throughout his or her life.

Bass said Kinsey changed the lives of many people because he was the first to publicly talk about sexual tolerance and behavior.

Today, the institute continues to inquire into behavior, and it focuses more on the psychology of sexuality rather than Kinsey.

“It almost always involves what they think, what they feel,” Bass said.

The institute also serves as an archive of literature, history and artwork related to human sexuality that goes back hundreds of years.

Bass said despite the institute’s scientific nature, it is still attacked by some individuals.
She said people who are against sexual education often accuse Kinsey himself of
deplorable actions with no factual basis, especially during political seasons. They use these claims as grounds to dismiss the entire institute.

But Bass said she believes most people are reasonable about the institute’s goals and sexuality in general.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re conservative, liberal, Christian or atheist,” Bass said. “You have to deal with sex in your life.”