Kinsey, Alfred C. (1894-1956)

Alfred C. Kinsey was a pioneering and controversial American sexologist whose work in the 1940s and 1950s challenged the scientific, moral, and political conventional wisdom about sex in America.

A Harvard-trained zoologist, Kinsey began studying sex to address what he saw as a dangerous lack of credible information about what was common and “normal” sexual behavior. By the late 1930s, Kinsey had abandoned zoological research and dedicated himself to collecting the sexual histories of thousands of men and women.

The Kinsey interview was groundbreaking in its methods, scope, and audacity. The basic one-on-one interview consisted of 350 items. The questions targeted sexual behaviors (such as masturbation and vaginal, oral, and anal sex), sources of knowledge about sex, and sex partners. Kinsey and his team ultimately conducted 1,800 interviews.

The project resulted in the publication of two major volumes, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). The male volume was received enthusiastically and praised widely. The female volume was publicly condemned, however, and most commentators attribute this to the fact that Kinsey's findings were at odds with the prevailing cultural expectation that women be reserved about or disinterested in sex. Kinsey reported, for instance, that women were more orgasmic, more frequent masturbators, and—like men— had more premarital and extramarital sex than most presumed.

Kinsey's findings also challenged orthodoxy regarding homosexuality. Kinsey measured sexual orientation on a 7-point scale (0 being exclusively heterosexual), based solely on reported behaviors. Using this scheme, he reported that 37 percent of men had some homosexual experience, although only 4 percent of his sample could be considered exclusively homosexual. These findings comforted homosexuals who recognized strength in numbers and heterosexual men unnerved by having engaged in homosexual activity.

Methodological criticisms of Kinsey's work center on sampling. The sample depended on volunteers and overrepresented some groups, such as incarcerated males. Liberal critics note that many sexual acts (e.g., voyeurism, sadomasochism) were not explored, and conservative critics target the propriety of inquiring about individuals' private sexual behaviors, the seeming normalization of homosexuality, the public “airing” of Americans' sexual behaviors, and the separation of sex from love and marriage.

After the public outcry against the female volume, Kinsey had difficulty securing funding for additional research, his institutional support waned, and his health declined. He registered a posthumous victory in 1957, however, when a dispute with the federal government regarding the importation of sexually explicit materials was decided in his favor. His legacy and research agenda are maintained today by the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University.