The Kinsey Reports and their Impact

The Kinsey Reports are two books on human sexual behavior: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) which are widely considered one of the most successful and influential scientific books of the 20th century. Although a collaborative effort, the main authorship of the books was ascribed to Dr. Alfred Kinsey,  a zoologist at Indiana University and the founder of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. The first of these two books came out in the year 1948 and rocked American society. The findings caused shock and outrage, both because they challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and because they discussed subjects that had previously been taboo. Nevertheless the Kinsey Reports together sold three-quarters of a million copies and were translated in thirteen languages. Here is a bit more about how the content of the Kinsey Reports left a lasting impact on different aspects of American society.

On sexual discussion

The most immediate impact of the Kinsey Reports was that it made sex a topic of general discussion. For the first time frank talk about sex was no longer the sole domain of the church and psychoanalysts – until then perhaps the only two organized groups have been entitled to talk about sex. After the publication of Kinsey Reports, sex became a matter for more or less mature discussion by the general populace. It was little wonder, then, that clergymen and psychoanalysts were among the fiercest critics of the report. Among the findings that generated some of the most animated discussions were the differences in sex behavior between religiously devout persons and religiously inactive persons, the social level as the most powerful factor affecting the pattern of the nine established categories of sexual outlet, the statistical evidence for infantile as well as senile sexuality and incidence of masturbation among males. Another important finding in the Kinsey Reports was that prostitution played a relatively small part in heterosexual activity even among single males in this country than thought earlier.

On sexual orientation

The Kinsey Reports famously stated that 10 percent of the population was homosexual, that 37 percent have had some homosexual experience, and that nearly 46% of the male subjects had "reacted" sexually to persons of both sexes¹. 2 to 6% of females, aged 20–35, were more or less exclusively homosexual in experience/response, and 1 to 3% of unmarried females aged 20–35 were exclusively homosexual in experience/response². 11.6% of white males (ages 20–35), 7% of single females (ages 20–35) and 4% of previously married females were given a rating of 3 on the Kinsey Scale which signified about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response throughout their adult lives. Though critics have questioned Kinsey’s methodology and the scale by which he measured sexual orientation, 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 like desire, sexual attraction and fantasy. Based on the Kinsey report, gay activists of the time pointed out that since as much as 10% of American society consisted of homosexuals, anti-gay laws should be struck down and more should be done for their rights.

On extra-marital sex

Kinsey reported that most men cheat on their wives and this does not harm the marriage. The Report listed that approximately 50% of all married males had some extramarital experience at some time during their married lives. 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. These findings made the incidence extra-marital sex more common than thought before – if one in two married men in America cheated on their wives at least once, then the act was no longer as rare as widely considered and with greater frequency came the prospect of greater acceptability or extra-marital sex in society – a realized which had the potential to usher in widespread changes in social and sexual mores. However, it was later found out that Kinsey classified couples who have lived together for at least a year as "married", inflating the statistics for extra-marital sex 30 to 45 percent have extra-marital intercourse.

On deviant sexuality

A significant part of Kinsey Reports dealt with unnatural forms of sex. It was reported that 17 percent of farm boys have intercourse with animals. Again as high as 59 percent of subjects have some experience in oral-genital contacts which incidentally was then a criminal offense in a number of states. Also the Reports listed 12% of females and 22% of males having an erotic response to a sadomasochistic story. While critics have drilled holes into such claims in the Kinsey Reports, there is little doubt of the fact that by mentioning forms of unnatural sex and showing how widespread they were, Kinsey brought these practices out in the open and paved the way of discussion on deviant sexuality.

On pornography

Founder of famous soft-porn magazine Hugh Hefner has credited Kinsey with almost single-handedly producing "a tremendous sexual awakening" in America. As a student, Hefner wrote a college thesis on Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and then went on to found Playboy magazine, as a way of furthering that sexual awakening through a "soft-core" approach that made pornography more socially acceptable.  Hefner has directly argued his case in a series of columns called the "Playboy Philosophy," and in the first issue, he wrote: "We believe... we are filling a publishing need only slightly less important than one just taken care of by the Kinsey Report."³

On guilt

Yet another important effect of the Kinsey Reports was that it lifted to a certain extent the feeling of guilt from hundreds of thousands of readers. People willingly ploughed through the boring mass of charts and statistics in order to discover with relief that they were not outcasts, not psychopaths and not criminals, if they occasionally engaged in masturbation or other "abnormal" sexual outlets. They learnt that they were as "normal" or as "vicious" as anybody they might meet down the streets of their home town. This mass psychotherapeutic function was one secret of the popular success of the Kinsey Reports.

What critics have to say?

Despite the popular success that Kinsey Reports enjoyed upon their publication, critics have found a number of statistical and technical errors in the works. It is not, as it purports to be, an entirely objective report of "what people do." There is frequent evidence of social and moral interpretation which should not be the case in a scientific work. Problems also arise from its fragmentary character since the books are only two of a series of planned volumes. This preliminary nature of the books should be stressed again and again in order to protect the unscientific and untrained reader from unwarranted conclusions.

More than any other documents in history, the Kinsey Reports shaped mid-twentieth century American society's beliefs and understanding about what human sexuality was. They defined what people allegedly do sexually, thereby establishing what was allegedly normal. Even years later the Kinsey Reports continued to be 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 sexual revolution of the times. 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. While to what extent the Reports promoted this change and to what extent they merely expressed the conditions that were producing it, remains a matter of much debate and speculation, there is little doubt about the fact that the impact of the Kinsey Reports on attitudes, subsequent developments in sexual behavior, politics, law, sex education and even religion in America has been immense.

References:

1. Kinsey, A.; Pomeroy, W.; Martin, C., & Gebhard, P. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Philadelphia: Saunders (1948)
    
2. Kinsey, A.; Pomeroy, W.; Martin, C., & Gebhard, P. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Philadelphia: Saunders (1953)
    
3. Playboy Magazine ; Vol.1 No.1 (December 1953)