Transcription: Kinsey… researched the unspeakable
By Rick Musser
Kinsey.
That’s a six letter word for sex.
Kinsey.
That’s the name of a dell on I.U.’s campus where the grass sprouts blanket-wrapped couples on warm, spring nights.
Kinsey.
That’s the name of an I.U. zoologist who became the most famous university professor of the century with two books which shocked the U.S. with facts like; Three-quarters of the men in America have intercourse before they are married; one out of three men has at least some overt homosexual experience; about half of all married men end up in bed with women who aren’t their wives.
Before his death in 1956 Alfred C. Kinsey upset a lot of people. As the 1950’s began, some ministers, social hygienists and a vocal portion of the academic community had a hard time believing Kinsey’s findings. That half of America’s women weren’t virgins at marriage was too much for many to take.
Kinsey’s two books, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and ‘”Sexual Behavior in the Human Female” (1953), were the result of thousands of individual sex histories, histories Kinsey started collecting when he was roped into teaching an I.U. interdisciplinary course in marriage.
It was 1938, a time when a lot of people still believed masturbation could drive a person insane. A devoted scientist and conscientious teacher, Kinsey found almost no factual data on human sexual behavior. Since he could not find answers to his classes’ questions on sex, Kinsey set out to gather case histories from his own students.
It is not to hard to guess what happened. As late as 1932 hygiene was a required undergraduate course with enrollment segregated by sex. Seven years later the frank and open discussion of sex in a college classroom, in the Midwest, in Indiana, in Bloomington was bound to lead to problems. Moreover, Kinsey was taking his students aside, asking them things like:
When did you first pet until you had an orgasm? And, for the women, how long is your, clitoris?
The University gave Kinsey the choice of quitting the course or ceasing the interviews. He quit the course and, within the next 15 years, complied more information on sexual behavior than the world had ever seen.
But, when the interviews were tabulated and the findings published, I.U. and Kinsey were faced with the hugest hassle in Bloomington’s history.
The male volume whetted the public’s curiosity and drew some sharp criticism. But in, 1953 it seemed that every magazine and three-quarters of the newspapers in America were eagerly waiting to publish a summary of the sex lives of women. By that time, scientists were split over the validity and the ethics of Kinsey’s research. If Kinsey was right, a lot of women and most men weren’t saving themselves for marriage.
Editors, ministers, U.S. congressmen, Indianapolis judges, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, Billy Graham and a list of other critics grabbed headlines by denouncing the study of sex. The U.S. Army banned the book from its libraries.
That didn’t stop “Sexual Behavior of the Human Female” (a sociology text filled with graphs, charts and technical language) from surpassing the male volume to become one of the best-selling books of 1953. At the same time, the national publicity made Kinsey’s name synonymous with sex.
Time has proved Kinsey right in many of his findings. More importantly, Kinsey was the first to begin sweeping away the myths and fears which surround sex. Yet, the pressure of conservative politicians and clergy eventually led to the loss of the Institute for Sex Research (ISR ‘s) Rockefeller Foundation grant. Kinsey died before new sources of adequate revenue were found.
Although it went through some hard times; the ISR is still around today. Chances are that it will make some new headlines this year when it releases two volumes of research on homosexuality.
