1948: Kinsey
Publishes Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
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In
1948, Sexual
Behavior in the Human Male shocked and titillated
Americans enough to make it a bestseller. Americans
who claimed to be prudish about sex were anything but,
according to the book. Statistical calculations taken from
a huge sample
showed that 92% of men and boys masturbate. By age 20, over 70% of unmarried men have had
intercourse. 40% of America's husbands have had extramarital
flings. 69% of male Americans have had sex with a
prostitute at least once. 10% of adult males are
exclusively homosexual for a period of three years during
their lives, while 4% of American men were “exclusively
homosexual throughout their lives.”
Even though the book was a
publishing success story, it stirred controversy, and
nothing provoked more
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The male book was
received warmly in 1948 |
dissent
than Alfred Kinsey's treatment of homosexuality. At a time
when psychiatry was dominated by Freudians who believed
that homosexuals have disturbed personalities, Kinsey
argued that male-male sex is just one of many
"outlets" that are part of any man's sexual
repertoire. The idea that some people are
constitutionally different from other people simply
because they prefer homosexual "outlets" seemed
absurd to Kinsey. Instead, he felt that individuals
fit on a continuum of sexual preferences that he arranged
on a six point scale. Men grouped in category 1 feel
not even a twinge of sexual interest in homosexual outlets
while those in category 6 prefer nothing else, but
according to Kinsey, men often move between categories
during their lifetimes.
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The female book was
labeled communist in 1953 |
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The
male book was generally warmly received in 1948,
but when a companion volume, Sexual Behavior in
the Human Female appeared in 1953, it suffered a
different fate. Americans were ready to
imagine that their men were randy, but when Kinsey
reported that married women who had premarital
sexual experience had more orgasms after they
married and that lesbians were better at inducing
climax than males were, a storm of opposition
arose. Some complained that Kinsey was
attacking America's morals. 1953 was a year
fraught with anti-communist hysteria, and some
congressmen suspected that Kinsey might be a fifth
columnist working to erode America's morals and
weaken her against a communist onslaught.
The charges were false, but the accusation alone
was enough to end Kinsey's research grant. |
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