Danny
Karrs
Alfred
Kinsey
Alfred Kinsey was a biologist who
wrote 2 books, created a scale and had a life of revolutionizing the way people
looked at and thought about sex. He founded the Kinsey Institute for Research
in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University. The two books he wrote
known as the Kinsey Reports are called Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Kinsey studied Gull Wasps and their sexual
interactions; he used taxonomy to do this and used it again in his research on
sexual human behavior. His research on the sexuality of humans caused
controversy in the 40s and 50s, right as sex in America was evolving into more
modern beliefs, Kinsey is a major contributor to this. [1]
Dr. Kinsey
and his team made up of economist Clyde Martin, psychologist Wardell Pomeroy,
and anthropologist Paul Gebhard went around and interviewed 17,000 people for
their research project. Kinsey was known for keeping a straight and
non-judgmental environment for his interviews. He also was known for secrecy
and even developed a code sheet and had a key that was never written down to
ensure secrecy of his interviews. These interviews were the base for his two
books known as the Kinsey Reports. [2]
Kinsey also
developed a scale and talked about it in his first book, its called The
Homosexual –Heterosexual Rating scale, or better known as the Kinsey scale. It
is a 7-point scale (0-6) with 0 being exclusively heterosexual and 6 being
Exclusively homosexual. The middle numbers are considered in between, for
example predominantly heterosexual but incidentally or more then incidentally
homosexual. This scale has been republished in many books and used in many
topics of discussion.
There is a
lot of controversy over Kinsey’s work, more recently then ever. H “he believed
pornography was harmless, that adultery can enhance a marriage and that
children are sexual from birth.” 2 He is suspected to be very involved with
pedophiles and other sexual miscreants. He gathered data from these people to
support his hypothesis that children are sexual from birth. He introduced the
ideas of contraceptives, abortions and the porn industry publicly and made the
talks of them less taboo. Anti-contraceptive groups are really upset with
Kinsey’s research, they say “Kinsey “myths” are the reason the porn industry is
thriving and why abortion and contraception providers make millions every
year”. [3]
The controversy will always shroud
Kinsey but without his research America and the world would have never
revolutionized the ideas of sex.
Work Cited
"The Kinsey Institute." The Kinsey
Institute. http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/about/photo-tour.html tml (accessed
March 31, 2014).
"The Kinsey Institute." The Kinsey
Institute. http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/ak-hhscale.h (accessed March
31, 2014).
"The Truth Behind Alfred Kinsey | ZENIT -
The World Seen From Rome." ZENIT. http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/the-truth-behind-alfred-kinsey
(accessed March 31, 2014).
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