John Whitehead's Commentary
Kinsey and the Sexual Revolution: Fifty-Five Years Later
Fifty-five years ago, sociologist Alfred C. Kinsey turned conventional mores on their heads by shining a spotlight on male and female sexual behaviors, deviant and otherwise. Recently, Madonna and former Disney divas-turned-pop teen idols Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera paid an unknowing tribute to the high priest of sexual liberation by sharing open-mouthed kisses at MTV's latest Music Award Show.
Kinsey, a professor at Indiana University, published his landmark Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (funded mainly by the Rockefeller Foundation) after ten years of research and some 9,000 interviews. "Not since the Darwinian theory split the world wide open," wrote Newsweek, "has there been such a scientific shocker."
Kinsey's name quickly became a household word. Within ten days of the book's release, the publisher ordered a sixth printing, making a phenomenal 185,000 copies in print. The strong interest in the book was especially significant since it was an 804-page factual tome. The book became a bestseller, with generally positive reviews. Polls taken of ordinary Americans showed that not only did they agree with his evidence, they also believed such studies were accurate and useful.
The August 1953 planned date of publication for Kinsey's next book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, was so anticipated that journalists dubbed it "K-Day." In the Female volume, Kinsey addressed the subject of religion, noting that religious women tended to have less sexual experience and to achieve orgasm less often than nonreligious women. He used this data to suggest that inhibitions about premarital sex caused unhealthy sexual relations in marriage. Although the initial reception to the book was positive, however, many also criticized it. "It is impossible to estimate the damage this book will do to the already deteriorating morals of America," Billy Graham pronounced.
To a culture that has become so frank about sexuality that our television programming now revolves around dating reality shows like Boy Meets Boy and Temptation Island, America's wide-eyed reaction to Kinsey's work might seem overdone. But as the past 55 years have shown, Kinsey's studies on human sexuality have influenced American attitudes more fundamentally than the work of other great sexual theorists, including Sigmund Freud. And Hugh Hefner, who later founded the Playboy empire, regarded Kinsey as a hero, a man who more than anyone else had pointed out what he saw as the hypocrisy of daily American life.
The shock value in Kinsey's work was to be found in the variety of sexual experiences he reported, as well as the explicit nature of the research itself. In compiling an inventory of garden-variety sexual code breakers, Kinsey eagerly sought out groups whose members operated in the shadowlands of America. Here he found homosexuals, sadomasochists, voyeurs, exhibitionists, pedophiles, transsexuals, transvestites and fetishists of various stripes. However, Kinsey's later critics have often pointed out that his methodology and data were flawed and that the people he interviewed may have lied, exaggerated or remembered inaccurately.
Cloaked in the cultural authority of science, Kinsey was always quick to note that he "never suggested what should or should not be done in human behavior." But, unbeknownst to the general public, Kinsey was not simply a compiler of data who reported facts with scientific disinterest. He was also a man of secrets. "Beginning with his childhood," writes biographer James H. Jones, "Kinsey had lived with two shameful secrets: he was both a homosexual and a masochist." As such, Kinsey approached his work with a missionary zeal. "Kinsey loathed Victorian morality," notes Jones. "He wanted to undermine traditional morality, to soften the rules of restraint, and to help people develop positive attitudes toward their sexual needs and desire. Kinsey was a crypto-reformer who spent his every waking hour attempting to change the sexual mores and sex offender laws of the United States."
His "everybody's doing it" conclusion proved to be a behavior-affecting argument. As author Paul Robinson writes:
One can also sense Kinsey's influence in the increasing tolerance with which the sexual activities of the young, especially the unmarried young, are contemplated. As with homosexuality, this liberalizing influence has stemmed in part from a simple empirical discovery, namely that a great deal of sexual activity, among young and old alike, occurs outside marriage.
A nation addicted to polls and public opinion allowed Kinsey's research to dictate its morals. Kinsey, however, was not alone in affecting the moral landscape. Numerous factors contributed to changing sexual mores in American society. Activists such as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and cultural movements laid the groundwork for the change in sexual behavior. World War I also impacted sexual behavior. Even more dramatic cultural change occurred with World War II and its devastating effects on sexual mores. Added to these factors was Kinsey's clinical approach, which would remove the mystery of sexual behavior and its connection to the institution of marriage.
Ideas have consequences in the way we live and act, both in our personal lives and in the culture as a whole. And half a century later, we see the consequences of the work of Kinsey and others. Besides the escalation in divorce and the unsettling residue of broken families, we continue to deal with the AIDS epidemic, a surge in sexual openness and a catastrophic confusion regarding sex and gender roles--which brings me back to those on-camera kisses shared by Madonna, Spears and Aguilera. MTV's viewing audience is made up primarily of adolescents, many of whom are at a stage in their lives when questions about sexual identity and gender confusion are at the forefront. So for these so-called role models to "cross over" in such a careless and public way only serves to add to the confusion over gender and sexuality.
Yet this is not an issue that should be treated lightly, and the consequences are often tragic. The rate of suicide among adolescents and young adults has nearly tripled since the 1950s. Every year in the U.S., approximately 5,000 young people between the ages of 15 and 24 kill themselves; 30 percent of these cases are related to confusion over sexual orientation. In fact, while suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people (more youth die by suicide than from all natural causes combined), gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens are at a high risk for suicide. It is, in fact, the number one cause of death for gay teens. Sexual confusion causes higher dropout rates, higher levels of drug and alcohol abuse, parental rejection, hopelessness and prostitution.
No longer anchored or guided by religious values or traditional ideas about sex in the context of marriage, open sexuality, as advocated by Kinsey in his influential studies, and competing messages of proper sexual fulfillment seem to have left thousands of children--and adults--floundering. As novelist and social commentator Tom Wolfe recently remarked:
There's a lot of soul searching going on these days--people literally searching for their own souls. Now I think we're heading deeper and deeper into the shadow of the eclipse of all values. What is so interesting is the degree to which perfectly traditional Christian belief as of, say, 1955, is now ridiculed as right-wing bigotry! Take, for example, the idea that abortion is evil. Or for that matter, the idea that premarital cohabitation is evil--these days, that's the standard form of American courtship!
So, are we better off post-Kinsey? You be the judge.
Kinsey, a professor at Indiana University, published his landmark Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (funded mainly by the Rockefeller Foundation) after ten years of research and some 9,000 interviews. "Not since the Darwinian theory split the world wide open," wrote Newsweek, "has there been such a scientific shocker."
Kinsey's name quickly became a household word. Within ten days of the book's release, the publisher ordered a sixth printing, making a phenomenal 185,000 copies in print. The strong interest in the book was especially significant since it was an 804-page factual tome. The book became a bestseller, with generally positive reviews. Polls taken of ordinary Americans showed that not only did they agree with his evidence, they also believed such studies were accurate and useful.
The August 1953 planned date of publication for Kinsey's next book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, was so anticipated that journalists dubbed it "K-Day." In the Female volume, Kinsey addressed the subject of religion, noting that religious women tended to have less sexual experience and to achieve orgasm less often than nonreligious women. He used this data to suggest that inhibitions about premarital sex caused unhealthy sexual relations in marriage. Although the initial reception to the book was positive, however, many also criticized it. "It is impossible to estimate the damage this book will do to the already deteriorating morals of America," Billy Graham pronounced.
To a culture that has become so frank about sexuality that our television programming now revolves around dating reality shows like Boy Meets Boy and Temptation Island, America's wide-eyed reaction to Kinsey's work might seem overdone. But as the past 55 years have shown, Kinsey's studies on human sexuality have influenced American attitudes more fundamentally than the work of other great sexual theorists, including Sigmund Freud. And Hugh Hefner, who later founded the Playboy empire, regarded Kinsey as a hero, a man who more than anyone else had pointed out what he saw as the hypocrisy of daily American life.
The shock value in Kinsey's work was to be found in the variety of sexual experiences he reported, as well as the explicit nature of the research itself. In compiling an inventory of garden-variety sexual code breakers, Kinsey eagerly sought out groups whose members operated in the shadowlands of America. Here he found homosexuals, sadomasochists, voyeurs, exhibitionists, pedophiles, transsexuals, transvestites and fetishists of various stripes. However, Kinsey's later critics have often pointed out that his methodology and data were flawed and that the people he interviewed may have lied, exaggerated or remembered inaccurately.
Cloaked in the cultural authority of science, Kinsey was always quick to note that he "never suggested what should or should not be done in human behavior." But, unbeknownst to the general public, Kinsey was not simply a compiler of data who reported facts with scientific disinterest. He was also a man of secrets. "Beginning with his childhood," writes biographer James H. Jones, "Kinsey had lived with two shameful secrets: he was both a homosexual and a masochist." As such, Kinsey approached his work with a missionary zeal. "Kinsey loathed Victorian morality," notes Jones. "He wanted to undermine traditional morality, to soften the rules of restraint, and to help people develop positive attitudes toward their sexual needs and desire. Kinsey was a crypto-reformer who spent his every waking hour attempting to change the sexual mores and sex offender laws of the United States."
His "everybody's doing it" conclusion proved to be a behavior-affecting argument. As author Paul Robinson writes:
One can also sense Kinsey's influence in the increasing tolerance with which the sexual activities of the young, especially the unmarried young, are contemplated. As with homosexuality, this liberalizing influence has stemmed in part from a simple empirical discovery, namely that a great deal of sexual activity, among young and old alike, occurs outside marriage.
A nation addicted to polls and public opinion allowed Kinsey's research to dictate its morals. Kinsey, however, was not alone in affecting the moral landscape. Numerous factors contributed to changing sexual mores in American society. Activists such as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and cultural movements laid the groundwork for the change in sexual behavior. World War I also impacted sexual behavior. Even more dramatic cultural change occurred with World War II and its devastating effects on sexual mores. Added to these factors was Kinsey's clinical approach, which would remove the mystery of sexual behavior and its connection to the institution of marriage.
Ideas have consequences in the way we live and act, both in our personal lives and in the culture as a whole. And half a century later, we see the consequences of the work of Kinsey and others. Besides the escalation in divorce and the unsettling residue of broken families, we continue to deal with the AIDS epidemic, a surge in sexual openness and a catastrophic confusion regarding sex and gender roles--which brings me back to those on-camera kisses shared by Madonna, Spears and Aguilera. MTV's viewing audience is made up primarily of adolescents, many of whom are at a stage in their lives when questions about sexual identity and gender confusion are at the forefront. So for these so-called role models to "cross over" in such a careless and public way only serves to add to the confusion over gender and sexuality.
Yet this is not an issue that should be treated lightly, and the consequences are often tragic. The rate of suicide among adolescents and young adults has nearly tripled since the 1950s. Every year in the U.S., approximately 5,000 young people between the ages of 15 and 24 kill themselves; 30 percent of these cases are related to confusion over sexual orientation. In fact, while suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people (more youth die by suicide than from all natural causes combined), gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens are at a high risk for suicide. It is, in fact, the number one cause of death for gay teens. Sexual confusion causes higher dropout rates, higher levels of drug and alcohol abuse, parental rejection, hopelessness and prostitution.
No longer anchored or guided by religious values or traditional ideas about sex in the context of marriage, open sexuality, as advocated by Kinsey in his influential studies, and competing messages of proper sexual fulfillment seem to have left thousands of children--and adults--floundering. As novelist and social commentator Tom Wolfe recently remarked:
There's a lot of soul searching going on these days--people literally searching for their own souls. Now I think we're heading deeper and deeper into the shadow of the eclipse of all values. What is so interesting is the degree to which perfectly traditional Christian belief as of, say, 1955, is now ridiculed as right-wing bigotry! Take, for example, the idea that abortion is evil. Or for that matter, the idea that premarital cohabitation is evil--these days, that's the standard form of American courtship!
So, are we better off post-Kinsey? You be the judge.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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