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How true is it?
What about Kinsey's family?
Did the Institute collaborate with the
film makers, was it filmed here, does the Institute get profits,
etc?
What really happened to funding for sex research?
What role did Indiana University play in supporting
Kinsey?
Where did the childhood sexual data come from?
What was the reaction to the research from the
media and the public?
What was the scope of Kinsey's data?
How has the data held up, over 50 years later?
How is sex research carried out
today?
How true is it?
We don't know everything about the intimacies of Alfred Kinsey's
life (we leave that to the biographers), but we do know that he
and his staff wanted to understand the variety of human sexual behavior.
They didn't have a road map for doing this kind of investigation,
with specific procedures and consent forms like we do today, but
tried different ways to learn about behavior, always with strict
concern for confidentiality. This search for knowledge led to the
collection of historical and cultural data - written books and materials,
art, and photography - the basis of the Kinsey Institute research
collections today.
Dr. Kinsey was interested in mammalian sexual behavior, and collected
films of mating behavior of many animals. He also did not feel that
still photography could accurately portray the human sexual response,
so he began to film human sexual activity. There were only a few
of these films made, and those were of selected staff and spouses,
as well as a handful of volunteers. It was not until the next decade
that this form of observation became a more acceptable part of scientific
inquiry, beginning with the work of William Masters, who made a
science of the study of physiological response in the laboratory.
(See "Sex Research Today" for more about contemporary
physiological methodology.)
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What about Kinsey's family?
Alfred and Clara Kinsey were married in 1921 and had 4 children.
Don, (1922), the first born, died just before his 5th birthday from
diabetes. Anne was born in 1924, Joan in 1925, and Bruce in 1928.
In 1930, Kinsey's father, Alfred Seguine Kinsey, divorced his wife
in Reno, NV. Kinsey never contacted his father after the divorce.
Dr. Kinsey died in 1956 at the age of 62. Clara Kinsey died in 1982;
she was 83 years old.
Did the Institute collaborate with
the film makers, was it filmed here, does the Institute get profits,
etc?
The writer/director Bill Condon, the set designer, and Liam Neeson
visited the Institute just before filming last summer, and spent
a day using the archival collections in the library. They also walked
around the campus and met with people who had known Kinsey in the
1950's.
The film crew followed the same policies and procedures for use
of materials as anyone wishing to use the collections of The Kinsey
Institute. We do not receive any profits from this film. The filmmakers
do, however, have a deep respect for the work of The Kinsey Institute,
and have been very supportive in helping get the word out about
the Institute today.
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What really happened to funding for sex
research?
In 1954, U.S. Representative B. Carroll Reece from Tennessee formed
the "House Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations."
Though the name made it appear to have a broader focus, the conservative
chairman himself stated, "The Congress has been asked to investigate
the financial backers of the institute that turned out the Kinsey
sex report last August." (Pomeroy, p. 375). The Rockefeller
Foundation's Board of Directors, under pressure from Reece's committee,
withdrew financial support for Dr. Kinsey's research. President
Wells then approached the Trustees of Indiana University to ask
for continued support of the Institute for Sex Research, which they
granted. Since then the Institute has received funding from various
private and public sources, including the National Institutes of
Health (NIMH, NICHD, NIDA), Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation,
Eli Lilly & Co., and Indiana University.
What role did Indiana University play in
supporting Kinsey?
In 1938, Herman B Wells became President of Indiana University.
His staunch support of Kinsey's controversial human sexuality research
earned him a reputation as a champion of academic freedom. In 1947,
President Wells helped to establish the Institute for Sex Research
as a not-for-profit corporation, helping to guarantee the protection
and confidentiality of research subjects. Known today as The Kinsey
Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, the Institute
holds the comprehensive library and collections, the data from research
projects, and the archival materials from leading sex researchers.
It is governed by a Board of Governors
and Trustees.
The Kinsey Institute continues to be an active research Institute
of Indiana University. Faculty and students from arts and sciences,
applied health sciences, library science, journalism, education,
public affairs and business collaborate on research, teaching and
community projects. The Institute co-directs the doctoral level
minor in Human Sexuality at Indiana University.
Where did the childhood sexual data
come from?
Reports of childhood sexual behavior were mostly from interviews
of adults recalling their early experiences. Parents and teachers
were also asked if they had noticed sexual reactions in their children,
and some children were interviewed in the presence of a parent or
teacher. Among more than 5,000 men interviewed for Sexual Behavior
in the Human Male, there were 9 who reported having had sexual
relations with children. One in particular, with an extensive sexual
history, is the source of the childhood response tables in the Male
book. Dr. Kinsey and his staff never conducted experiments with
children.
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What was the reaction to the research
from the media and the public?
Reaction to Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953 was
initially favorable.
The Print Media Response to the Kinsey Report at The Kinsey Institute
library consists of 72 binders, which contain 18,700 clippings from
international journals, newspapers and magazines. "Analysis
of the leading magazines found all but one (Cosmopolitan) favorable,
and of 124 leading newspapers, 64 per cent were favorable to 31
not." (Gathorne-Hardy p. 395). But a second wave of comments
were negative, and Kinsey was attacked by religious and conservative
groups, and in some cases by the academic community, which questioned
his data collection and analysis.
What was the scope of Kinsey's data?
Dr. Kinsey conducted 7985 of the almost 18,000 sexual histories
of the research team. He and his staff interviewed "bootleggers,
clergymen, clerks, clinical psychologists…housewives, lawyers,
marriage counselors, n'er-do-wells, persons in the social register…"(Male,
p.39)
In each history, a subject would be questioned on up to 521 items,
depending on his/her specific experience (the average in each case
being near 300). Histories covered social and economic data, physical
and physiologic data, marital histories, sexual outlets, heterosexual
histories, and homosexual histories.
Known together as 'the Kinsey Reports,' Sexual Behavior in the
Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female included
hundreds of references to previous studies in human sexual behavior.
Both Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior
in the Human Female each sold close to 300,000 copies, and were
translated into 11 languages.
How has the data held up, over 50 years later?
In 1979, Gebhard and Johnson published The Kinsey Data: Marginal
Tabulations of 1938-1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for
Sex Research, reanalyzing the original data to be more statistically
accurate. Interestingly, most statistics, such as homosexual behavior,
did not change significantly from the original reports. To this
day, researchers still request original interview data to analyze
and compare to current research findings. Kinsey is widely respected
today for interview methodology, documenting the wide variation
in sexual behavior, studying the differences in male and female
sexual response and perceptions, and launching the scientific study
of sex.
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More about Sex Research today
Join the Kinsey Institute on November 13th for a benefit
reception and screening of Fox Searchlight Pictures' film Kinsey.
Historical timeline:
http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/about/chronology.html
For biographical information and references:
http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/about/kinseybio.html
More on controversy: www.kinseyinstitute.org/about/controversy.html
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