P1: IZO

Archives of Sexual Behavior PP1185-aseb-484872 April 30, 2004 0:55 Style file version July 26, 1999

Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 33, No. 3, June 2004, pp. 277–286 (°
C 2004)

Invited Essay

Sex Will Never Be the Same: The Contributions

of Alfred C. Kinsey1

Vern L. Bullough, Ph.D., R.N.2

Kinsey built upon what other European and American researchers had done, but in his male volume he
was much more critical of his predecessors than he was in the female volume. Although he mentioned
many of the European sex researchers, several were conspicuous by their absence and, at times, he
seemed very moralistic (e.g., that Hirschfeld was not an objective researcher because of his campaign
for gay rights or the failure of H. Ellis to have face-to-face contact with his participants). He had little
positive to say about psychiatrists in general, although he imparted a more positive message in the
female volume. If bibliographical citations are any example, Kinsey explored much more widely in
the social sciences in the female volume than he did in the male volume, indicating that he himself
acquired greater expertise over the years. Certainly, the female volume was a more well rounded
treatment. Overall, the effect of his books was to change the way people looked at sex; indeed, sex
could never be the same again.

KEY WORDS: Kinsey; sex research; early sex researchers; history.

After publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human
Male (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948), Alfred C.
Kinsey (1894–1956) became a media sensation. Maga-
zines put him on their covers. Newspapers wrote articles
about him. Much to the publisher’s surprise, his book be-
came a best-seller. Unlike most media sensations, how-
ever, his influence has not diminished. It continues to
grow. There have been at least four biographies of him
(Christenson, 1971; Gathorne-Hardy, 1998; Jones, 1997;
Pomeroy, 1972), plus a book-length anti-Kinsey polemic
(Reisman & Eichel, 1990; for a review, see Simon, 1992);
hundreds, if not thousands, of articles written about him;
one television biography and a movie now in production.
The list could go on. He has been condemned by many and
sainted by others. What he did was to change American
attitudes toward sex. But he did more than that since, as his
work became become more widely known, he forced the
discussion of sexuality into new parameters on a world-
1 This paper is a revised version of an Invited Lecture delivered at the
meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research, Bloomington,
Indiana, July 16–19, 2003.
2 3304 West Sierra Dr., Westlake Village, California 91362-3542; e-mail:
vbullough@adelphia.net.
wide basis. I regard him as one of the most influential
Americans of the twentieth century, and I think large num-
bers of others would agree with me. In fact, it seems safe
to say that sex before Kinsey was radically different than
it was after.
Kinsey brought about wide-scale public discussion
of human sexuality, forcing Americans and others to chal-
lenge traditional attitudes in every aspect of sexual be-
havior. Among other things, he was instrumental in bring-
ing homosexuality out into the open and in the United
States, providing the underpinnings for the public accep-
tance of its existence (Bullough, 2002). He was also a
major force in encouraging gays and lesbians to orga-
nize and to come out of the closet. He challenged long-
held myths about female sexuality, and his research pro-
vided fodder for the feminist movement that has led to
greater equality toward the sexes. In fact, wherever you
turn in American society today, you find changes brought
about by his writings and research. Although he felt be-
sieged and under attack at his death, he continued to plan
and work on an increasing number of fruitful projects,
gathering data that have still not yet been fully exam-
ined. Fortunately, others have picked up on some of his
projects.

277
0004-0002/04/0600-0277/0 °
C 2004 Plenum Publishing Corporation
P1: IZO
Archives of Sexual Behavior PP1185-aseb-484872 April 30, 2004 0:55 Style file version July 26, 1999
278
SEX RESEARCH BEFORE KINSEY
It is, however, important to remember that there were
sex researchers before Kinsey, many of whom made sig-
nificant contributions. This essay is an attempt to put
Kinsey in historical context. Although historians, anthro-
pologists, antiquarians, physicians, lawyers, theologians,
and what was also then labeled as “pornographers,” had
been writing about some aspects of sexuality since at least
the eighteenth century, it was not until the nineteenth cen-
tury that serious research into the topic began. Much of
the early research was about what might be called sexual
variance, sexual behaviors that departed from the norm.
Although sexually variant individuals had always existed,
the growth of urban areas increasingly brought them to
public attention. Thus, much of the concern of the early
investigators was about prostitution or homosexuality and
research on these led to studies of other stigmatized behav-
iors. There was also an independent group of investigators
and writers, which sometimes overlapped, concerned with
contraception and family planning. Much of the early re-
search was dominated by physicians who could justify
their research in terms of public health and patient wel-
fare and thus would be somewhat freer of being suspected
of being a sex pervert for their interest in sexual matters.
Havelock Ellis, for example, one of the major researchers
of the last part of the nineteenth and first part of the twenti-
eth century, went to medical school specifically to be able
to investigate sexuality.
The dominant group of researchers in the last part of
the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth century came
from German-speaking areas, a disproportionate number
of whom were Jewish physicians of one sort or another.
One reason for this Jewish predominance was not so much
their more positive attitudes about sexuality than the
Christians of their time, but the fact that in Germany Jewish
physicians were discriminated against in many of the de-
veloping specialties and denied university appointments,
although they could attend the university. Investigation
into sexuality gave them an opportunity to explore new
fields and to gain new insights into patient well-being,
independent of the university.
Not all of the researchers were Jewish, however, and
one of the founders of modern sex research was Richard
von Krafft-Ebing, who came from a Catholic background.
Whatever their background, sexology, as a new specialty
and research area, attracted a number of new investigators
into sexually related subjects, although the Germans were
quite clearly dominant. An alphabetical listing of some of
the German- (and Dutch-) speaking ones would include
Alfred Adler, Iwan Bloch, Paul Ehrlich, Albert Eulenburg,
Sigmund Freud, Magnus Hirschfeld, Carl Jung, W. P. J.
Bullough
Mensinga (C. Haase), Albert Moll, Hermann Ploss,
Wilhelm Reich, Hermann Rohleder, Eugen Steinach,
Albert Schrenck-Notzing, Wilhelm Stekel, Theodoor van
de Velde, and Carl Westphal. There were also journals and
an increasing number of books on various aspects of sex-
uality, again mostly in German, although there were also
Dutch, English, French, Hungarian, Russian, and other
researchers.
World War I and the subsequent inflation in Germany
and middle Europe was a setback to research, and although
in the 1920s international conferences and congresses on
sexology were held, the whole discussion of sexology be-
came increasingly polarized over the questions of whether
it was possible to change religious, governmental, and
public attitudes toward sex without changing society it-
self. Was it enough for sex researchers to narrowly con-
centrate on purely sexual issues or should they agitate
for social change everywhere? Most opted for the for-
mer rather than the latter but unfortunately even those
more narrowly focused soon found themselves in diffi-
culty, in part because of the growing economic problems
in the world and in Germany by the rise of the Nazis who
deliberately set out to destroy Hirschfeld and to ignore
or repress much of the findings that sex researchers had
made. Although many of those associated with sex re-
search found refuge in other countries, the economic and
political difficulties of the 1930s and then the mass dislo-
cation of society by World War II put a temporary end to
serious research in Europe. Unfortunately, few Americans
had been involved in the international conferences or con-
gresses, and only selective authors from other languages
had been translated into English. Many of the classics of
German and other researchers remained unpublished in
English and, if not forgotten, certainly misinterpreted, as
were Hirschfeld’s (1991, 2000) significant books on ho-
mosexuality and transvestism, which were not given an
English translation until the 1990s (Bullough, 1994).
THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND
One of the major factors in originally arousing
German interest in sexual studies in a newly united
German empire was the question of laws about homosexu-
ality and other variant forms of sexual behavior. Although
Americans seemed blissfully ignorant of homosexuality,
there was a growing concern about prostitution with a
number of reform groups advocating control or elimina-
tion of prostitution as their cause. Prostitution, in fact,
was one of the few sexual issues that could be discussed
publicly because the American federal government, fol-
lowing the Civil War, had adopted stringent censorship
P1: IZO
Archives of Sexual Behavior PP1185-aseb-484872 April 30, 2004 0:55
The Contributions of Alfred C. Kinsey
restrictions about sending sexually oriented materials
through the mails or importing them into the country. Most
states adopted similar legislation, and information about
such things as birth control, for example, was prohibited
from being disseminated. Books were censored, paintings
and art work denied entry into the country, and libraries
that had any material dealing with sexual matters were of-
ten forced to restrict access to physicians or other similar
professionals. Prostitution was an exception in this prohi-
bition if only because much of the discussion originally
was aimed at reform or elimination. The effort at moral
reform, however, had not ended prostitution (which was
controlled by local or state authorities), and prostitution
was widespread in the larger cities, as well as in mining
towns, isolated forestry camps, near military bases, and in
many other places. The problem was how to deal with it.
This is where John D. Rockefeller Jr. appeared on
the scene. He had been appointed to a grand jury in New
York City to examine prostitution and other “social evils”
and their effect on law enforcement. Rockefeller, dissat-
isfied with the lack of real knowledge about the topic,
founded the Bureau of Social Hygiene in 1911 to do seri-
ous study of the social evils and investigate possible solu-
tions. Among other things, the Bureau sponsored several
book-length studies on prostitution and on law enforce-
ment. Closely allied with Rockefeller was Catherine
Bement Davis, who, before joining Rockefeller, had been
warden of a woman’s prison where a significant proportion
of the prisoners were there because of prostitution-related
offences. Davis, who had a Ph.D. in sociology and eco-
nomics, initially served on the advisory board Rockefeller
had set up, and soon became its executive director. It did
not take long for both Davis and Rockefeller to realize that
the narrow studies, while valuable and important, needed
to be put in a larger context of human sexuality. Davis,
in particular, had become aware of research taking place
in Europe. Max Exner, whom she knew, had published a
book on college men and sex (Exner, 1915), and he encour-
aged her to explore the possibility of Rockefeller support
for wide-ranging studies of sexuality. Exner had become
convinced of the importance of this kind of study by his
assistant, Earl F. Zinn, who had drawn up such rough plans
for such studies. Davis was enthusiastic about the possibil-
ity of such studies, and Rockefeller proved receptive. He,
however, did not want such studies to be identified with the
Rockefeller family and wanted a neutral scientific group
to be sponsor, preferably the National Research Council
(NRC), and not the Bureau of Social Hygiene, which had a
more limited mission and was more clearly identified with
him. The NRC was a private nonprofit group originally set
up by the National Academy of Science to coordinate re-
search funding during World War I (it was a forerunner
Style file version July 26, 1999
279
of what eventually became the National Science Founda-
tion).
Getting the NRC to sponsor research into sexual-
ity was not an easy task. Robert M. Yerkes, the resident
salaried officer, was supportive but he needed one of the
Divisions to sponsor it. He initially tried to get the newly
formed Division of Anthropology and Psychology to do
so, but the division refused to deal with sexual topics.
After some cajoling and a fortuitous change in the divi-
sion head, he managed to get the conference sponsored
by the Medical Sciences Division and, of course, it was
paid for by John D. Rockefeller Jr. The conference, held in
1921, recognized that although there were many potential
impediments, the problems of sexual behavior could and
should be subjected to scientific investigation. The result
was the establishment of the Committee for Research in
the Problems of Sex (CRPS) totally funded by Rockefeller
but sponsored by the NRC. Later, after the reorganization
of the Rockefeller financial holdings, the sponsor became
the Rockefeller Foundation.
From the first, there were difficulties about what type
of studies should be undertaken. One of the first studies
recommended to the Council for support was a proposed
study of 200 married persons by Gilbert V. Hamilton, a
psychiatrist. The Council turned it down but Davis found
support for the project with the Bureau of Social Hygiene
(Hamilton, 1929), as she did for her own studies on female
sexuality (Davis, 1929). That these studies were funded
elsewhere, as were those of Robert Latou Dickinson
(Dickinson & Beam, 1931, 1934), another pioneer re-
searcher, was indicative of the reluctance of the Council
to get into serious studies of actual human sexual behav-
ior, a reluctance that it took years to overcome. Initially,
much of the research supported by the CRPS was into
internal secretions (hormones), and this research led to
major breakthroughs in endocrinology. Once the council
started in this direction, it was difficult to change its fo-
cus to follow through in other areas of human sexuality
because research grants came to be very much controlled
by in-groups and the committee members either received
significant grants of their own or gave such grants to their
students or colleagues. In the 1930s, when the makeup of
the board began to change because of deaths, resignations,
and new appointments, the CRPS was able to expand its
scope to fund psychological studies by individuals such
as Terman (1938) and Landis (1940). It also gave money
to Adolf Meyer, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity, to do a study of sexual attitudes of medical students
as well as to make actual observation of the sex life of
selected groups. Meyer’s failure to complete the project
was probably a factor in the support Kinsey received from
the committee. In fact, the committee, under the influence
P1: IZO
Archives of Sexual Behavior PP1185-aseb-484872 April 30, 2004 0:55 Style file version July 26, 1999
280
of George Corner, began looking for someone to give
money to in this area who would actually follow through
(Bullough, 1994). Kinsey fortuitously came to the atten-
tion of the CRPS when they most wanted studies such as
he had already undertaken.
KINSEY AND THE CRPS
While most of those who knew Kinsey as a young
man were impressed by his intelligence and enterprise and
would have predicted he would be successful in whatever
enterprise he undertook, no one would have predicted that
he would find his great reputation in the study of human
sexuality. He was initially, to say the least, prudish about
sexual issues, so innocent that he was unable to consum-
mate his marriage until several months after his wedding
(Gathorne-Hardy, 1998, pp. 59–60; Jones, 1997, pp. 174–
175). Only when Clara, his wife, had minor surgery to
deal with what is called an adherent clitoris did successful
intercourse took place. Although an adherent clitoris does
not physically prevent intercourse, it might result in pain,
which, in the case of the Kinseys, would have been com-
plicated by anxiety inhibitions, made worse by a lack of
skill since neither partner had ever had sexual intercourse
before. Some indication of what the Kinseys went through
in their 1st year of marriage seems to come out when he
generalized about the unpreparedness of newly married
couples for the sexual aspects of marriage in his volume on
the female (Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953).
Kinsey et al. (1953) wrote that at marriage “husband and
wife are supposed to break down all inhibitions” but un-
fortunately, there is “no magic in the marriage ceremony
which could accomplish this.” As a result, a “very high
proportion of females,” as well as a “considerable number
of males,” find it difficult and it “could take years to get rid
of these learnt inhibitions” (Kinsey et al., 1953, p. 327).
These remarks show the wisdom of age and, although the
newly married Kinsey, as an evolutionary biologist knew
about sex and reproduction, he knew little about the hu-
man sexual response, despite the fact that Kinsey for much
of his life had taught general biology, even writing a pop-
ular text on the topic. Sex was accepted as a fact of life in
animals, but human sexuality was ignored.
The first two decades of Kinsey’s academic life were
spent doing taxonomical study of gall wasps, collecting
and classifying them, in the process describing more than
anyone else before him. There are whole families of gall
wasps named after him: Apache Kinsey, Avida Kinsey,
Anceps Kinsey, Alrifolii Kinsey, and on through the rest
of the alphabet. It is estimated that he examined and mea-
sured in detail over 35,000 individual gall wasps (his col-
Bullough
lection is now in the American Museum of Natural History
in New York) and over 124,000 galls, the abnormal growth
of excrescence produced on the trees by the activities of
the wasps (Kinsey, 1929, 1936). He described his findings
in detail but also put them in a larger context because he
was interested in explaining the differences, among them
to evolutionary development.
These exhausting time-consuming meticulous stud-
ies enabled Kinsey to become the most knowledgeable
person in the world on the subject of gall wasps. Kinsey
then began exploring other areas for research. Although
he had done his gall wasp studies in part to develop evolu-
tionary explanations for change, he found that only a few
specialists knew or cared about his detailed studies. He
wanted, I believe, a larger topic that would reach a greater
audience.
He found it in sexuality. Kinsey had become inter-
ested in sexuality through informal conversations with his
graduate assistants in the early 1930s and had begun some
preliminary investigations. He first went public with his
interest in a talk on sexual frustration and ignorance about
sex among students at a faculty discussion group in 1935.
The question basically was how one could legitimately do
sex research on a college campus because few academics
would have regarded it as a proper subject for research or
for teaching. His opportunity came when Indiana Univer-
sity began to explore the possibility of an interdisciplinary
undergraduate course on marriage, a subject then under
discussion at a variety of campuses, particularly in home
economics, which at that time was a broad-ranging disci-
pline, including subjects ranging from child development
to fashion design to nutrition. Kinsey seized the opportu-
nity to participate in such a development and, in fact, dom-
inated the discussion. The result was a team taught course
on the topic in 1938 in which he taught the biological as-
pects of sex in the course on marriage and more or less
supervised the other faculty, much to their growing hos-
tility. Having gained an academic justification for study-
ing sexuality, the question was how to use his taxonomic
skills to do serious investigation. He could not do what
he did to gall wasps, that is, collect, examine, and classify
specimens, but he could encourage students to personally
discuss with him their sexual experience and problems,
and to collect, examine, and classify their replies.
Kinsey soon ran into trouble in his teaching of the
marriage course. Several of his co-teachers as well as
nonparticipating colleagues strongly objected to his frank
descriptions of sexual activities and they were also partic-
ularly critical of the interviews he did with students about
their sex lives. When the controversy reached the office
of the president, Herman B. Wells, a friend and supporter
of Kinsey, gave Kinsey a choice. He could either continue
P1: IZO
Archives of Sexual Behavior PP1185-aseb-484872 April 30, 2004 0:55
The Contributions of Alfred C. Kinsey
to teach the course in ways to meet the objection of his
colleagues or instead devote more time to his sex research.
In any case, he would continue to teach in the biology de-
partment where his text had become widely adopted as an
introduction to biology. Kinsey must have jumped with
joy at the chance to do legitimate academic sex research
supported by the president, but although the university
gave him the opportunity, neither Wells nor the university
gave him money to do so. He immediately set about to
get funding by applying to the CRPS in 1940. The com-
mittee, anxious to support the kind of research of the type
Kinsey was beginning to do, was particularly receptive
because Kinsey was an established scientist, was married
(therefore no sex pervert), had a family, and had a history
of carrying difficult projects through to the finish. Within
a few years, Kinsey was consuming an ever-increasing
share of the committee’s budget.
THE 1948 VOLUME
Like any researcher in a new field, Kinsey had be-
gun his studies by surveying the work of his predecessors
that he summarized critically in the Introduction to Kinsey
et al. (1948). He claimed that although there was no as-
pect of human behavior about which there had been more
thought, more talk, and more books written than human
sexuality, serious scientists as a whole had avoided the
topic.
For bulk, the literature cannot be surpassed in many
other fields; for scholarship, esthetic merit, or scientific
validity it is of such mixed quality that it is difficult to
separate the kernel from the chaff, and still more diffi-
cult to maintain any perspective during its perusal. It is, at
once, an interesting reflection of a man’s absorbing inter-
est in sex and his astounding ignorance of it. He held that
to fully understand sex, any scholarly review of it would
have to cover material drawn from practically all biomed-
ical fields as well as the social and behavioral sciences,
religion, education, law, literature, the arts, erotica, music
and ballads, wall inscriptions, newspapers, scandal sheets,
magazines, household implements, advertisements, comic
books, and the list could go on. All told, he listed 35 major
categories and over 200 subcategories of potential source
material, and it was in his insistence on examining and
collecting such material that makes the collections in the
Kinsey Institute so valuable. He collected materials like
he collected wasps.
In surveying previous American writings on sexual
behavior, he found only 19 American researchers of sex
behavior (23 titles), who he felt had approached the sub-
ject somewhat scientifically, that is, they based their data
Style file version July 26, 1999
281
on more or less complete case histories, had a fairly large
sample, involved a systematic coverage of approximately
the same items on each subject, and were statistical. Al-
though he felt that at least 300 cases were desirable for a
sample in a group that was homogenous for sex, age, edu-
cational level, and similar factors, he included five studies
that had less than this, one of which had only 40, and only
a few of those with larger samples met his standard for ho-
mogeneity. Eight of the studies were journal publications,
one was an unpublished manuscript, and the rest were
book-length studies. Nine of the investigators had been
psychologists, four psychiatrists, two journalists, two bi-
ologists, a gynecologist, a student of education, a public
health officer, a social worker, a probation officer, and a
physician who was an officer in the YMCA. In eight of
the studies, he reported that the investigator actually faced
his/her subject in an actual interview, and in only four of
these did the interviewer go beyond preformed questions.
Seven of the studies were based on material from the New
York City area, and five others came from nearby points
in the Eastern seaboard. Three of the studies on college
students were the only ones that drew data from any wide
area over the country. Ten studies were based wholly or
primarily on individuals of college level.
In general, Kinsey was critical of most of the studies,
ever willing to point out their defects. When he spoke of
the Terman (1938) study, for example, he reported that
the statistical analysis was good, but added that the data
would have been more reliable if it had involved direct
interviewing and implied that the conclusions would have
been totally different at certain points if the analyses had
been confined to particular education levels. Later, in talk-
ing about incidence of premarital intercourse, he held that
Terman’s studies, which involved data of mixed social lev-
els, were not adequate for making generalizations about
social class (Kinsey et al., 1948, p. 552).
Kinsey reported that although the pioneering study
of the gynecologist cases of Dickinson had great influ-
ence on physicians, gynecologists, marriage counselors,
students of fertility, and other similar groups, he com-
plained there were only occasional tabulations of data,
and the calculations of averages were sometimes inaccu-
rate. He also stated there was no selection of the sample,
and no analyses of the population upon which various tab-
ulations were based and, therefore, the findings could not
be transferred to other segments of the population. He was
somewhat more neutral on the findings in Davis’ (1929)
study of 2,200 women, most of whom were graduates of
women’s colleges and club women, but observed that the
sample was not a representative one. He found the data on
petting and premarital intercourse in the study of college
students by the journalists Bromley and Britten (1938) to
P1: IZO
Archives of Sexual Behavior PP1185-aseb-484872 April 30, 2004 0:55 Style file version July 26, 1999
282
agree with his own findings, but that the refusal of their
male participants to answer questions on masturbation or
homosexuality to the women investigators distorted their
findings. The study of the psychiatrist Hamilton (1929)
on marriage, Kinsey noted, had systematic coverage of
a large number of sexual items where the findings were
similar to his own for White, married, college men (and
later women). He complained, however, that there was no
attempt to delve deeply into any of the answers and no
attempt to expand the sample to include more disparate
economic and social groups.
In sum, he found most of the American studies not
very good, but he quite clearly learned from their fail-
ures. Personally, I think that they did much better than he
thought. He either did not realize or did not know that
standards change and as new findings emerge, different
questions are asked and different procedures tried. He was
a strong believer in the ability of science to give answers.
Also, it might be that he had to point out weaknesses in
others in order to emphasize his own strength (cf. Money,
2002). Much of the writing of others, he simply ignored.
For example, he recognized that there were vast number
of individual sex cases in the psychiatric, psychological,
and medical journals that could add to the overall picture,
but he was skeptical about what they would demonstrate
and indicated that he would be willing to leave the explo-
ration of them to others, a kind of half-hearted dismissal
of many of his contemporaries.
Kinsey was also critical of his European predeces-
sors. He had little use for Krafft-Ebing (1922) (which he
read only in translation), calling it an unscientific cata-
loguing of sexual behavior. On the other hand, he thought
highly of Moll’s (1899, 1921) studies on sexual inversion
as well as his Handbuch. He was offended by Hirschfeld’s
open proclamation of his own homosexuality, which led
him to regard Hirschfeld as a special pleader and not al-
ways an objective scientist. I am not certain that he read
Hirschfeld’s studies as thoroughly as he might have for
that reason. He initially had good words to say about
Ellis (1936), but his esteem dwindled when he learned
Ellis was so timid about his work that he could not talk
to his participants face to face and depended entirely on
letters written to him. Still, he felt that these pioneers
in the field collectively were most significant in the de-
velopment of a public realization that there were scien-
tific aspects to human sexual behavior. He also mentioned
Iwan Bloch, M. Marcuse, Wilhelm Stekel, H. Rohleder,
and others, in more or less the same terms (Bullough,
1994). Still, he concluded, that none of the authors of
the older studies, in spite of their keen insights into the
meanings of certain aspects of human sexuality, ever had
any precise or even an approximate knowledge of what
Bullough
average people did sexually. He said that they accumu-
lated great bodies of sexual facts about particular people,
but they did not know what people in general did sexually.
They never knew what sexual activities were common and
what were rare, because their data came from the miscel-
laneous and usually unrepresentative persons who came
to their clinics (Freud, Hirschfeld), from persons whom
they happened to receive correspondence (Ellis), or from
a limited number of persons whom they interviewed in
elaborate detail (Henry, 1941). With the possible excep-
tion of Hirschfeld, Kinsey claimed that none of the older
authors attempted any systematic coverage of particular
items in each history and, consequently, there was noth-
ing to be added or averaged, even for the populations with
which they dealt. Kinsey did not include any references to
Alfred Adler or C. G. Jung and, in fact, generally ignored
psychiatrists entirely. He felt that Freud was extremely
important in emphasizing sex as a normal part of bio-
logical function (Kinsey et al., 1948, p. 163), but wrote
that Freud’s American followers were not objective scien-
tists and were too highly influenced by traditional moral
codes.
Although I can agree with much of Kinsey’s critique,
it is not politically very wise to find fault with almost every
one of your predecessors. In fact, one of his most harshest
book reviews was by an American whom he had been
somewhat negative about (Terman, 1948). To those who
objected, Kinsey probably would have replied that this was
how science works and that there was nothing personal in
what he said. He believed strongly that he was a scientist
investigating sexual behavior, and that it was the duty of
a scientist to point out past errors or misperceptions, even
his own.
THE FEMALE VOLUME
This Kinsey seemed willing to do. One of the im-
portant things about Kinsey, however, is that he contin-
ued to learn, to add to his knowledge base, to modify
his opinion of some of his predecessors as well as his
own. This growth was most evident in comparing the fe-
male volume with that of the male volume. There was,
for example, a tremendous expansion of his bibliography,
from 21 pages to 47 pages. There were more frequent ci-
tations to Bloch, Ellis, Freud, Hirschfeld, Krafft-Ebing,
and numerous others. Hirschfeld, for example, goes from
4 to 38 citations, Krafft-Ebing from 3 to 23. There was a
tremendous jump in discussion of psychiatric and psycho-
logical aspects of sexuality, with psychology, which only
had 15 references in the index, going to two full columns.
There was also far more on anthropology in the second
volume than in the first, perhaps reflecting the influence of
P1: IZO
Archives of Sexual Behavior PP1185-aseb-484872 April 30, 2004 0:55
The Contributions of Alfred C. Kinsey
Paul Gebhard. The result is that the volume on the female
gives a far more comprehensive look at sexuality than the
male one.
Between the appearance of the two volumes, Kinsey
had questioned some of his own basic assumptions and
began to accept what we now call gender distinctions,
to recognize that, at least for women, sexuality might be
partly a product of the social pressure rather than a force
existing in opposition to the social. Apparently, he also
felt somewhat more secure in his own findings and will-
ing to give more credit to others. This did not change
the hard data, but it did provide additional insights for
interpretation, and others might now interpret some of
his data differently because it is all there for others
to see.
THE INTERVIEW METHOD
The key to Kinsey’s studies was the interview. He
used it to classify, segregate, and analyze individuals, much
the same way he did with the more physical measurements
of the gall wasps. He was convinced that only through such
analytical methods could accurate data be compiled. He
was very conscious of the problem of deliberate deceit
and willful or unconscious exaggeration that respondents
might engage in, as well as by the uncertainty of accu-
rate recollection. Exaggeration became almost impossi-
ble in his system because questions were asked rapidly
and in detail and he believed few participants could give
consistent answers throughout. A deliberate coverup was
a more serious problem but he felt his numerous cross-
checks made that difficult. He also did periodic retakes of
some after 2- or 4-year intervals to see if people would
give the same basic answers. In addition, he restricted the
number of interviewers to retain consistency. This meant
that Kinsey and his key assistant, Wardell Pomeroy, had
to work extremely hard and long hours to gain his sample.
The team completed some 18,000 interviews, 8,000 each
by Kinsey and Pomeroy, and 2,000 by Clyde Martin and
Paul Gebhard collectively. His goal was to collect 100,000
interviews. I estimate that Kinsey himself spent some-
where between 20,000 and 30,000 hr doing interviews.
This does not include the time for arranging them, travel-
ing to them, or even taking necessary food and bathroom
breaks. Interviews are time consuming and they require
the interviewer to continually remain alert. The base in-
terview covered a minimum of about 350 items and these
items remained almost unchanged throughout the entire
time period. Depending on the answers, additional ques-
tions could be asked. A maximum history covered 521
items and whenever there was any indication of sexual
Style file version July 26, 1999
283
activity beyond what the basic questions covered, the in-
terviewer could go as long as he thought necessary to get
the data.
All questions had been memorized by the interview-
ers and there was no referral to any question sheet. Ques-
tions were asked directly and without apology, and the
interviewer waited for a response from the participants.
Replies were indicated by marks placed on different places
on a sheet of paper. Initial questions were simply infor-
mational ones about the informant’s age, birthplace, edu-
cational experience, marital status, and children. This was
followed by questions on religion, personal health, hob-
bies, special interests, and so on. Not until 20 min into
the interview did sex questions appear and these started
with recollections of early sex education, seeking to find
the age when a person first became aware of where babies
came from, and then on to menstruation, growth of pubic
hair, and various anatomical changes. The questioner then
proceeded to questions about masturbation, masturbatory
techniques, erotic fantasies, and so forth. Before any ques-
tion about homosexuality was asked, 12 preliminary in-
quiries were scattered throughout the early questions, the
answers to which would give the interviewer hints about
the participant’s sexual preference. If the interviewer was
not being honest, the person was told so and the interview
was often then terminated. In some cases, the interview
continued, but at the end the interviewer told the partici-
pant he wanted to go through some questions again, so that
the participant would answer accurately questions that he
or she had not been honest about. In general, the interview
ran from l.5 to 2 hr.
Children were also interviewed, but a different ap-
proach was used and at least one parent was always present.
Among the children interviewed were those of Wardell
Pomeroy and C. E. Martin. Some individuals, as indi-
cated above, were interviewed for longer periods. The
longest interview was 17 hr and it involved both Kinsey
and Pomeroy. The participant had had sexual experiences
with 600 preadolescent males, 200 preadolescent girls,
many adults of both sexes, plus a variety of animals. The
participant had kept extensive notes, including timing the
length of time it took a child to be aroused, the child’s
response, and other such data. Kinsey’s use of these data
has been much criticized, in part because Kinsey did not
turn his subject over to authorities, something I believe is
not a valid criticism because the interview was not even
in the United States. During the interview, the man was
boastful about his ability in masturbating to go from a flac-
cid penis to orgasm in 10 s. When Kinsey and Pomeroy
openly expressed their disbelief of such a statement, the
man effectively demonstrated his ability to them then and
there. Pomeroy emphasized that this was the only sexual
P1: IZO
Archives of Sexual Behavior PP1185-aseb-484872 April 30, 2004 0:55 Style file version July 26, 1999
284
demonstration that took place during the 18,000 interview
sessions.
There were also laboratory observations from which
data were derived but these were separate from the inter-
view and did not necessarily include the same individuals,
and in a sense Kinsey pioneered what Masters and Johnson
later did. Kinsey and his colleagues were handicapped by
the lack of sophisticated equipment that had been devel-
oped by the time Masters and Johnson did their studies.
In classifying his data about sexual behavior, Kinsey
utilized a 7-point Likert scale based on a bipolar view of
sexuality ranging from 0 (exclusive heterosexuality) to 6
(exclusive homosexuality), a view that many today would
feel too confining. He assumed it was a precise scale yet
assigning a person to a 2 or a 3 or a 4 or 5 on the scale
was more subjective than appeared and often there was de-
bate as to which category an individual should be placed.
He believed that social disapproval had suppressed the
likelihood that individuals would engage in homosexual
activities, but he recognized that humans had the capacity
to respond to a wide range of sexual stimuli. Actually, his
position on this was quite similar to Freud’s idea of the
polymorphous perverse nature of human desire, although
it is unlikely that Kinsey recognized this. But if it was pun-
ishment that kept men from homosexual activities, why
did women have more 0s than men on his scale because
punishment was much less an issue? Kinsey concluded
that the explanation lay in “differences in the capacity to
be affected by psycho-social stimuli” (Kinsey et al., 1953,
p. 714), that is, women were simply less interested in sex
than men.
Kinsey viewed the individual organism as a unit of
analysis, each with an individual history. This is differ-
ent view than Laumann and his collaborators took in the
National Health and Social Life Survey, in which they
treated the sexual dyad as the unit of analysis and focused
on sexual interaction. For them, sexual behavior was a
form of social behavior (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, &
Michaels, 1994; Michaels, 1997). Kinsey, as indicated,
originally tried to separate sexual activity as a separate
biological component without considering psychosocial
factors. As Michaels (1997) notes, sexual behavior today
is viewed as a form of social interaction, a social dyad.
Kinsey viewed himself as merely recording measurements
obtained from his respondents without acting upon these
same respondents. Research itself, however, is a form
of social interaction, which seems obvious to us today.
Kinsey not only studied sexuality, but helped create it.
THE KINSEY BIOGRAPHIES
There are four major book-length biographies of
Kinsey as of this writing. Two of them are by individuals
Bullough
who worked with Kinsey, one by a professional historian,
and one by a professional writer and biographer. There is
also an anti-Kinsey study of his sex research that should
be included in this listing.
Kinsey’s first biographer was his research assistant,
Christenson (1971), who wrote Kinsey: A Biography. It
was followed by his coauthor and researcher, Pomeroy
(1972), Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research. Both
of these are full of information about Kinsey that would be
difficult to find elsewhere. Still, they might be called bi-
ographies by admiring subordinates. Christenson tells us
about his shyness, his piano playing, Indiana University’s
attitudes to sex, and his conversations with her. She says
going to a ballet with Kinsey was more interesting than
with most other people because he knew the sex life of
all the dancers. Pomeroy, who was with Kinsey almost
from the beginning, reports in detail the interview tech-
nique and the experience of doing research in the field,
recounts some of Kinsey’s own sex history, emphasizes
the dominating presence of Kinsey at such events as his
Sunday musicals, and gives much insider information.
Neither, however, is detailed heavily footnoted biogra-
phies of Kinsey or very critical of Kinsey.
This critical analysis is the meat and potatoes of the
last two authors, Jones (1997), Alfred Kinsey: A Public-
Private Life; and Gathorne-Hardy (1998), Alfred C. Kinsey:
Sex the Measure of All Things. Jones, who began his re-
search on Kinsey as part of a doctoral dissertation, spent
some 25 years investigating every niche and cranny of
Kinsey’s life before he wrote his book. Gathorne-Hardy
did not spend as much time but was more focused and
more or less repeated the same steps in data gathering
as Jones. The difference in the two books is remarkable
even though they rely on the same data, same interviews,
and do not disagree much in factual data. In Jones’ view,
Kinsey was a man driven by vicious personal “demons” to
such a degree that he ceased to be an objective researcher
and does not quite say so but implies that much of his re-
search was fraudulent. Gathorne-Hardy found that many
of the people he interviewed in his final interviews af-
ter the publication of the Jones book were so upset at
Jones’ interpretations and even sometimes his facts that
they unburdened to him more than they might otherwise
have done. Both agree that Kinsey was a complicated per-
son. Jones sees Kinsey as driven by his homosexuality,
whereas Gathorne-Hardy sees him as stretching out more
toward bisexuality than he did in his early life. He makes
Kinsey far more interesting, valuable, and profound than
did Jones, and much more balanced than Jones would ad-
mit. Different interpretations, of course, are the mainstay
of literary and critical discussions, and readers can make
their own decisions about which version of Kinsey they
prefer. Personally, I prefer the Kinsey of Gathorne-Hardy,
P1: IZO
Archives of Sexual Behavior PP1185-aseb-484872 April 30, 2004 0:55
The Contributions of Alfred C. Kinsey
which corresponds more with my own knowledge of the
man.
The fifth biography is a book-length smear by Judith
Reisman (Reisman & Eichel, 1990), who sees Kinsey as
evil incarnate. It is also one of the most poorly written and
argued books that I have ever read. She was assisted in her
writing by Edward Eichel, and lists as editors J. Gordon
Muir and John H. Court. It is an extreme right-wing polit-
ical tract, not a piece of research. As part of her campaign
against Kinsey, Reisman launched a major lawsuit against
the Kinsey Institute which she lost, but she still keeps busy
denouncing many of the major sex researchers of the day.
Unfortunately, I am not neutral on the subject, because
she also denounced me to the California State Legislature
and has publicly called me many names. Fortunately, the
California legislature rejected her charges. Readers should
judge for themselves.
KINSEY’S IMPACT
The sexuality Kinsey created had an enormous im-
pact that freed many individuals from the stigma of abnor-
mality. His shaping of the way we view sex today is a far
more important contribution of Kinsey than any specific
finding he made. When he stressed that homosexuals were
otherwise normal human beings, he gave rise to other re-
search to produce supporting evidence. In short, he helped
produce a fundamental change in the self-concept of many
young Americans (Gagnon, 1975).
Gender studies, in a sense, are a natural continua-
tion of what Kinsey started. The American Law Institute’s
Model Penal Code of 1955 is heavily based on Kinsey. The
sad part of the Kinsey legacy is that perhaps as much as
90% of the data that he and his staff gathered has yet to
be published or even prepared for publication. It is still
valuable, and numerous researchers have continued since
Kinsey’s death to elaborate, change, or modify the work
he started, or even to go off into entirely different fields
that did not exist when he wrote. No one, however, has
matched the cutting edge of Kinsey or come close to the
quality and detail of his two published volumes. They en-
dure as the standard reference work on what people did and
mostly still do in sex. He made it possible to talk openly
about premarital sexual intercourse, about masturbation,
about oral–genital sex, and so forth. He helped break the
censorship barrier of sex by fighting to get material into
his collection simply because he believed that one could
not fully understand sexuality without such materials. In
short, he changed the way we think about sex. Although it
was 50 years ago that he published his book on the human
female—and I believe that Kinsey never really understood
women very well—he certainly provided the foundation
Style file version July 26, 1999
285
upon which all of us have built. He was a pioneer and
trailblazer, and although others might depart from the trail
he blazed, they could not have done so had he not been
there before. He was also arrogant, often difficult to work
with, and extremely self-confident, traits that both helped
and hindered him. He refused, for example, to join the
formation of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex
because he believed it might lead to a competitive institu-
tion to his own Institute. But he was still a great man. Few
scholars or scientists have lived under the intense firestorm
of publicity and criticism that he did but even as the attacks
on him increased and as his health failed, he continued to
gather his data, and fight for what he believed. All people
in the sex field, regardless of nationality or point of view,
cannot ignore what he did. He changed sex for all of us.
REFERENCES
Bromley, D. D., & Britten, F. H. (1938). Youth and sex. New York: Harper
and Brothers.
Bullough, V. L. (1994). Science in the bedroom: A history of sex research.
New York: Basic Books.
Bullough, V. L. (2002). Before Stonewall. New York: Harrington Press.
Christenson, C. V. (1971). Kinsey: A biography. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Davis, K. B. (1929). Factors in the sex life of twenty-five hundred women.
New York: Harper.
Dickinson, R. L., & Beam, L. (1931). A thousand marriages. Baltimore:
Williams and Wilkins.
Dickinson, R. L., & Beam, L. (1934). The single woman. Baltimore:
Williams and Wilkins.
Ellis, H. (1936). Studies in the psychology of sex (3 vols.). New York:
Modern Library.
Exner, M. (1915). Problems and principles of sex education: A study of
948 college men. New York: Association Press.
Gagnon, J. H. (1975). Sex research and social change. Archives of Sexual
Behavior, 4, 112–141.
Gathorne-Hardy, J. (1998). Sex and the measure of all things: A life of
Alfred C. Kinsey. London: Chatto and Windus.
Hamilton, G. V. (1929). A research in marriage. New York: Boni.
Henry, G. W. (1941). Sex variants. New York: Paul B. Hoeber.
Hirschfeld, M. (1991). The transvestites (M. Lombardi-Nash, Trans.).
Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (Original work published
1910)
Hirschfeld, M. (2000). Homosexual men and women (M. Lombardi-
Nash, Trans.). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (Original work
published 1920)
Jones, J. A. (1997). Alfred C. Kinsey: A public/private life. New York:
Norton.
Kinsey, A. C. (1929). The gall wasp Genus Cynips. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
Kinsey, A. C. (1936). The origin of higher categories of Cynips.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Kinsey, A. C., Pomeroy, W. B., & Martin, C. E. (1948). Sexual behavior
in the human male. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.
Kinsey, A. C., Pomeroy, W. B., Martin, C. E., & Gebhard, P. H. (1953).
Sexual behavior in the human female. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.
Krafft-Ebing, R. (1922). Psychopathia sexualis (F. J. Rebman, Trans.).
Brooklyn: Physicians and Surgeons Books Co. (Original work
published 1880)
Landis, C. (1940). Sex in development. New York: Paul B. Hoeber.
Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J. H., Michael, R. T., & and Michaels, S.
(1994). The social organization of sexuality: Sexual practices in
the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
P1: IZO
Archives of Sexual Behavior PP1185-aseb-484872 April 30, 2004 0:55 Style file version July 26, 1999
286
Michaels, S. (1997). Integrating qualitative and quantitative methods
in the study of sexuality. In J. Bancroft (Ed.), Researching sexual
behavior (pp. 299–308). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Moll, A. (1899). Die konträre Sexualempfindung. Berlin: Fischer’s
Medicine.
Moll, A. (Ed.). (1921). Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften. Leipzig:
F. C. W. Vogel.
Money, J. (2002). Once upon a time I met Alfred C. Kinsey. Archives of
Sexual Behavior, 31, 319–322.
Pomeroy, W. B. (1972). Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Reisman, J. A., & Eichel, E. W. (1990). Kinsey, sex and fraud: The in-
doctrination of a people. An investigation into the human sexuality
Bullough
research of Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin,
and Paul H. Gebhard. Lafayette, LA: Lochinvar-Huntington
House.
Simon, W. (1992). Review of Kinsey, sex and fraud: The indoctrina-
tion of a people. An investigation into the human sexuality re-
search of Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin,
and Paul H. Gebhard. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 21, 91–
93.
Terman, L. M. (1938). Psychological factors in marital happiness. New
York: McGraw-Hill.
Terman, L. M. (1948). Kinsey’s “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male”:
Some comments and criticisms. Psychological Bulletin, 45, 444–
446, 459.