The Child Experiments
<< Child-research “Methods” or Systematic Sex Abuse? >>
Kinsey described three child-research “methods”: recalling childhood, interviewing children, and direct observation. Substantial amounts of his data were based on adolescent and adult recall of experiences long past, but he was unsatisfied with the results, so sought more direct sources.3-46 Pomeroy explains: “In taking a sexual history, we asked people about their sexual behavior from earliest memory-four, five and six-and realized how fragmentary these memories were, and how much we were missing. At some point, Kinsey wondered what would happen if he went to children themselves and asked them about their sex play. Although it was possible to find a few liberal parents who would be willing to have a sex researcher question their children on this subject, we doubted that we could get an adequate sample unless we got the parents to act. It would also be difficult and time-consuming to establish rapport with young children, without the parents involved. Consequently Kinsey began to create situations with children with the parents present [unless they were] interviewees in ghetto areas.”3-47
3-46. John Gagnon, Human Sexualities, Scott Foresman & Co., Glenview, Illinois, 1977, p. 84, and Paul Robinson, The Modernization of Sex, p. 45.
3-47. Wardell Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research, Harper & Row, New York, 1972, pp. 218-219.
According to Gebhard and Johnson, some prepubescent children qualified as one of the “special groups” in the Kinsey samples.3-48 They write that most of them “were too young to have received our standard interview and were given a variant of it.”3-49 And in Male volume (p. 180), Kinsey commented on the selection of children found in the notorious Table 34: “317 preadolescents who were either observed in self-masturbation or who were observed in contacts with other boys or older adults. [T]his is a record of a somewhat select group of younger males and not a statistical representation for any larger group.”3-50
3-48. Paul Gebhard and A. Johnson, The Kinsey Data: Marginal Tabulations of the 1938-1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for Sex Research, W.B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia, 1979, p. 6.
3-49. Gebhard and Johnson, p. 6.
3-50. Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, W.B. Saunders, Philadelphia, 1948, p. 177.
It is not clear whether the “somewhat select” group of 317 young boys was subjected to Kinsey’s force-and-threaten, measure-and-change interview “variant,” but a supposedly socially acceptable protocol was described in the Male volume. It is often publicized with photographs of Kinsey playing with a little girl of perhaps six years of age. With at least one parent present, the “technique is one in which the interviewer looks at dolls, at toys of other sorts, joins in games, builds picture puzzles, romps, shares candies and cookies, and withal makes himself an agreeable guest.”3-51
3-51. Pomeroy, pp. 114-115.
Pomeroy describes the fondness children felt for their “Uncle Kinsey” and “Uncle Pomeroy.”3-52 He also indicates the actual purpose of the sessions: “Tucked into these activities are questions that give information on the child’s sexual background. If the picture book shows kittens putting on nightgowns for bed, the child may be asked whether she wears nightgowns when she goes to bed. When the interviewer tussles with the four-year-old boy, he may ask him whether he similarly tussles with the other boys in the neighborhood, and rapidly follows up with questions concerning tussling with girls, whether he plays with any girls, whether he likes girls, whether he kisses girls.”3-53 “I found myself telling him things I had never dreamed of telling anyone else. Occasionally, as he deftly and persistently questioned me, I hesitated a moment, but then I said to myself, 'Of course. I must.'”3-5S
3-52. Pomeroy, p. 221.
3-53. Pomeroy, pp. 114-115.
3-5S. Pomeroy, p. 98.
One is struck with the vision of Kinsey as he “tussles” with the “four-year-old boy.” One may fairly wonder just whose sexuality is being discerned. “He [the four-year-old] may or may not so freely admit that there are girls in the neighborhood with whom he also plays, and his embarrassment, his hesitancy, his disturbed giggling or his calm acceptance of the fact, are important things for the student of sexual behavior to note. Many of the adult attitudes toward various items of sex are already discernible in the three- or four-year-old’s history. A later volume will cover this aspect of the study.”3-54
3-54. Male, pp. 58-9.
That “later volume” is as yet unpublished, but we understand that “research” in sex, gender, and reproduction, is on going at the Kinsey Institute today.
Pomeroy’s definition of preadolescent sex play excluded hugging, kissing, or fondling, which would have ruled out such childhood activities, as well as “romping” and “tussling.” Kinsey disagreed, stating: “Adult [sexual] behavior is more obviously a product of the specifically genital play which is found among children, and on which we can now provide a statistical record. Our own interviews with children younger than five, and observations made by parents and others who have been subjects in this study, indicate that hugging and kissing are usual in the activity of the very young child, and that self-manipulation of genitalia, the exhibition of genitalia, the exploration of the genitalia of other children, and some manual and occasionally oral manipulation of the genitalia of other children occur in the two- to five-year-olds more frequently than older persons ordinarily remember from their own histories.”3-55
3-55. Male, p. 163.
Who would associate children’s hugging and kissing with “genital play?” Pomeroy claimed: “Kinsey tried to train me to help with interviewing the children, but I found that I wasn’t good at it. For that matter, none of the other staff members was any more successful at this delicate job, and Kinsey had to do nearly all of it alone.”3-56
3-56. Pomeroy, p. 219.
Although Kinsey claimed that the child interviews were innocuous, at least one critic noticed the potentially traumatic impact they may have had. George A. Baitsell, writing in Yale News, is quoted by Pomeroy: “I don’t like Kinsey! I don’t like his report; I don’t like anything about it. Kinsey is not trained to do work in this field. The work should be done by a sociologist. In his interviews, Kinsey employed a thoroughly objectionable technique. The interviews often have a serious effect on the subject’s nerves. Children, reluctant to be questioned, have been virtually forced to submit because of the possibility of being labeled “deficient.” The Kinsey Report might well be called the “Kinsey Inquisition.””3-57
3-57. Pomeroy, p. 287.
Yale zoologist Baitsell’s suspicions about the abuse inherent in the Kinsey team’s methodology have gone largely unheeded by the academic elite, and by the thousands of world-famous analysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, criminologists, educators, ministers, and others whose careers have largely been built around Kinsey.
Pomeroy explains how critics were lulled into a false sense of security about the sources of the child samples by Kinsey’s euphemistic description of the interview process: “He concentrated at first on the three-, four- and five-year-old levels, working primarily in nursery schools, and always getting parents’ histories first. He also took a scattering of older children, and found that after age eight it was better to exclude parents. There were a few nine-and ten-year-olds that gave histories, but this aspect of the project never really developed. Kinsey had hopes and dreams of exploring in depth such a relatively untouched field, but that part of the investigation died with him.”3-58
3-58. Pomeroy, p. 219.
Note Pomeroy’s admission that post-eight-year-old children were left alone with “Uncle Kinsey.” Kinsey told Dr. Frank K. Shuttleworth of the Institute of Child Welfare, University of California at Berkeley, “that students in the field had all been ‘too prudish’ to make an actual investigation of sperm count in early adolescent males.” Pomeroy stated that Kinsey’s “own research for the Male volume had produced some material” in the “first ejaculate,” but “not enough”. [Kinsey] “could report, however, that there were mature sperm even in the first ejaculation, although he did not yet have any actual counts.”3-59
3-59. Pomeroy, p. 315.
“At this stage in the research, we were also beginning to penetrate more deeply into specialized categories of histories... Kinsey’s success with children is especially worth noting, I think, not only because he was so good with them but because here he was moving in perhaps the most dangerous and controversial area of all.
In taking a sexual history, we asked people about their sexual behavior from earliest memory—four, five and six—and realized how fragmentary these memories were, and how much we were missing.
At some point Kinsey wondered what would happen if he went to children themselves and asked them about their sex play. Although it was possible to find a few liberal parents who would be willing to have a sex researcher question their young children on this subject, we doubted that we could get an adequate sample unless we got the parents into the act. It would also be difficult and time-consuming to establish rapport with young children, without the parents being involved.
Consequently Kinsey began to create situations with children, with the parents present. These four- and five-year-olds would tell about their sex play while the parents listened, often with surprise. From this preliminary work we discovered an important fact: young children would talk more easily of homosexuality in their histories than about heterosexuality; with adults, the reverse was true.
Kinsey tried to train me to help with interviewing the children, but I found that I wasn’t good at it. I was not patient enough, and clearly it was not my forte. For that matter, none of the other staff members was any more successful at this delicate job, and Kinsey had to do nearly all of it alone.
He concentrated at first on the three-, four- and five-year-old levels, working primarily in nursery schools, and always getting the parents’ histories first. He also took a scattering of older children, and found that after age eight it was better to exclude parents. There were a few nine- and ten-year-olds who gave histories, but this aspect of the project never really developed. Kinsey had hopes and dreams of exploring in depth such a relatively untouched field, but that part of the investigation died with him.
Nevertheless, we were able to get a fairly broad sampling. When he worked upward into the post-adolescent group, Kinsey discovered that he could easily bridge what is now known as the generation gap. These older children got the feeling that he was desperately trying to understand them, and that was enough. He insisted that anyone under eighteen had to get parental consent; this was a firm policy. The exceptions were college students under eighteen, and interviewees in ghetto areas. We seldom had trouble getting permission from parents.
In Chicago we worked extensively in the Francis Parker School and in Chicago University’s high school, with grades from kindergarten through twelfth. Kinsey would lecture to faculty, parents and the PTA, getting many histories from these people as well, and never experiencing any difficulty—probably because these were upper-level groups and we had the school faculties behind us.
He once described the procedure he followed in getting children’s histories in a letter to Dr. Sophia J. Kleegman, a New York gynecologist.
“Our usual procedure is for us to speak to the parents or parents and teachers first, and to go after histories from the parents and teachers. We do not take any history from a child until at least one of his parents has given us a history and has consented to our getting a history from their child. We never take the history of a child under seven unless at least one of the parents is present at the interview. We prefer to take the histories of the children under seven in their own homes, or in some place, such as a school, with which they are familiar. Where the child is not timid, and where the parents find it more convenient, we can, of course, meet them at our hotel.
This children’s material is precious. It is giving us more insights into the patterns of behavior than we ever anticipated we could get.”
Those who helped Kinsey get these histories were always impressed with the easy way he worked with children, and specialists in the field became immediately aware of his talent. Mr. A. E. Hamilton, a consulting psychologist who headed the Hamilton School, where Kinsey took histories, wrote to him after their first meeting:
“That was a nice chat we had about kids. You made me feel that you’ve got the “way” to go about the job with little people. I’m conceited enough to feel that I know kids about the way you do wasps—and have been on my job with youngsters a little longer, and in somewhat the same way you were with the wonderful stingy folk. And when I come across a fellow who clicks with a child. I’m happy about it.”
Mr. Hamilton offered his whole family for histories—“one daddy of sixty, one marna of forty (approximately), one girl of going on thirteen, one boy of seven, one young amazon of three.”
“Something of Kinsey’s approach can be sensed in the letters he wrote to two little girls who had given him (and me) their histories. To Pam he wrote:
Uncle Pomeroy and Uncle Kinsey want you to have a whole letter for yourself while we are sending a whole letter to your sister just for herself. I hope the mailman will ring the bell in a very important fashion and hand you a letter which has your name on it and which is just for your very own.
We are writing you this letter because we want to thank you for letting us come to see you at your house, and for talking to us so nicely while we were there. We think both of you are very nice girls. Tell your mother that we think you are very good girls.
I have just gotten back home, at Bloomington, Indiana. That is why I can write you a letter now. I am writing it so that it will reach you before Christmas. I hope you have a very good Christmas.”
And we signed it separately—“Uncle Kinsey” and “Uncle Pomeroy.”
To Pam's older sister, Penny, went a different kind of letter:
“I am writing to thank you for the very important help that you gave us when you let me talk to you the last time I visited you at your home. Uncle Pomeroy and Uncle Kinsey think you are both very fine girls, and you were very nice to let us talk to you and to draw pictures for us, and to tell us all about the things that you do.
I should have written you this letter sooner, but I went off to talk to a lot of older people after I talked to you and I only came home yesterday. Now I shall be home with all of my own children for Christmas. I hope you have a very good Christmas.”
Even when the burden of answering letters weighed him down most, Kinsey always found time to answer a youthful correspondent. A boy in Northfield, Minnesota, a senior in high school, wrote to him and declared he planned to study sexology, but before he made up his mind completely, he wanted to ask advice. Kinsey seriously outlined what he considered the basic requirements.
A little Indiana farm girl wrote:
“I am in the fourth grade in school. In science we have studied about bees. We wondered how you found out that nectar mixes with the juice in the bee’s stomach while it is flying to its hive. Would you be so kind as to give us this information?”
To this Kinsey replied a bit ruefully:
“It is quite a compliment to have you think that I can answer questions about honey bees and clover at this time. Frankly, I do not remember who did the original studies which explained how the bees turned nectar into honey, and I am so very busy with the other sort of research that we have been doing in the last years that I cannot take time off to look the matter up. So you have the honor of discovering that a scientist doesn’t know any more than you do about some things. Keep up your interest in the outdoors!”
Inevitably, Kinsey’s work with children led him counter to the conventional wisdom. A few months before he died, he wrote indignantly to Dr. Karl Bowman, of the Langley Porter Clinic, in San Francisco, to deplore two pamphlets issued by the Oakland police force, warning children against speaking to strangers or allowing them to touch them. The pamphlets, he noted, had "gone through the hierarchy and bear the imprimatur of J. Edgar Hoover,” and he concluded: “Just where will our world be if all people are raised from here in, never to speak to any stranger? I think . . . we are agreed on the traumatic effects of this sort of thinking.””
Pomeroy, pp. 218-223.
The third research method employed by the Kinsey team entailed genital experiments; observing, recording, and filming not only adults, but children and infants as well. This technique primarily underpins Chapter 5 of the Male volume and Chapter 4 of the Female volume. Data about the sexual response of children could not be obtained by interview, and the precise details on how the data were obtained may never be fully revealed. It will likely require intense public pressure to force full disclosure. As noted, however, comments about the process have occasionally surfaced from Kinsey Institute team members. In Human Sexualities (1997), John Gagnon, a Kinsey Institute associate, offhandedly acknowledges the illegality of the experiments: “A less neutral observer than Kinsey would have described these events as sex crimes, since they involved sexual contact between adults and children. Whether or not these observers were “scientifically trained” [as Kinsey claimed] it seems advisable to use caution in interpreting their findings.”3-60
3-60. John Gagnon, Human Sexualities, Scott Foresman & Co., Glenview, Illinois, 1977, p. 84.
Gagnon did not demand that the adults who committed the “sex crimes” be arrested and prosecuted, or that the public be fully informed about the ghastly project.
Pomeroy writes: “[We] were eager in the 1940’s and early 1950’s to supplement our interview studies with controlled laboratory observations.... At an early point in the development of our research, Kinsey began to feel a certain impatience with the fact that the data we were collecting was necessarily secondhand. Like any scholar, [Kinsey] yearned for original sources…. [I]t occurred to him that we ought to observe at firsthand some of the behavior we were recording…. Kinsey began looking for opportunities to observe. He was acutely aware of the serious dangers implicit in such work and proceeded cautiously, knowing that he could expect little understanding of what he was doing if it was ever disclosed…. [N]ot even many scientists could be expected to condone it. Few people would believe in the scientific purity of his motives.”
Kinsey’s fixation on direct participation in, and observation of, sex acts led eventually to the construction of a soundproof laboratory at Indiana University’s Wiley Hall, where Kinsey, his staff, their wives, and invited guests could engage in all sorts of sexual antics. Some were documented on film. Kinsey believed that sexual experiments on humans should not differ measurably from those on “other animals.” Wrapped in the protective aura of “scientific research,” he sought to access and study human subjects. Film, he argued, was a way to capture the ephemeral features of sexual interaction.
“With the idea of recording what he hoped to observe, Kinsey hired Bill Dallenback, who was Clarence Tripp’s partner in a photographic studio in New York…. The University authorities, who had to approve our budget, quite naturally wanted to know why we needed a photographer. Kinsey told them, truthfully, that we wanted to photograph animal behavior, but he did not add that he included humans in this category... He set aside space for a laboratory after he returned from the initial photographic session in New York and began looking for subjects. As Masters and Johnson have since demonstrated, it is no trick at all, in spite of what the public believes, to obtain people for sexual observation, nor are they prostitutes, exhibitionists, or any other kind of variant from the conventional norm, as is popularly supposed…. The folk belief that no “decent” person will allow himself to be observed is only one more illustration of the vast distance between what Americans say they believe and what they do... For the benefit of skeptics, let me say that Kinsey possessed the ability to observe actual sexual behavior with the same objectivity he maintained during interviews.... He would move quietly round the room, never intruding, occasionally whispering a direction to Bill [Dallenback]. He always complimented the subjects after a session and reassured them about the quality and value of what they had done. If they had failed to perform satisfactorily whatever act was involved, Kinsey would say, “You did very well. Just great.” On one occasion... the subject went on and on with the act until the camera began to overheat and Bill knew he was about to run out of film. He made a despairing gesture to Kinsey, indicating what was happening. Prok leaned forward to the subject and said gently, politely, “If you would just come now...” “Oh, sure,” the subject said, and immediately came to orgasm just as the film ran out. The man had misunderstood and thought Kinsey wanted a lengthy sequence of masturbation, which he was prepared to keep up indefinitely... We believed we were demonstrating something that would help us better to understand what human sexual behavior, particularly orgasm, was like... [O]ne investigator asked if we could find subjects in his area who were capable of repeated ejaculation and who would come to his laboratory. On our next trip to that part of the country we located a number of men willing to cooperate…. Some [women] who had multiple orgasms... were willing to have coitus under observation…. [The old man] said he was able to masturbate to ejaculation in ten seconds from a flaccid start… [then he] demonstrated it to us. I might add, in case this story confirms the worst fears of any surviving critics, it was the only sexual demonstration among the 18,000 subjects who gave their histories.”4-9
4-9. Wardell Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research, Harper & Row, New York, 1972, pp. 173-176, 180, 179, 122.
Kinsey, according to Pomeroy, was the type of person who needed to see things for himself. Pomeroy gave the example of orgasm in the female rabbit. Because he had not personally witnessed this event, Kinsey had difficulty in accepting its reality, even on the strength of testimony from a distinguished scientist (Pomeroy, 1972, pp. 184, 185). How then did Kinsey testify to the actuality of orgasm in a 5-month-old infant from the mere “history” of a sex offender?
According to Kinsey biographer C.V. Christenson, Kinsey made it clear back in 1940 in an address to the National Association of Biology Teachers that the resolution of the nature of erotic arousal lay in the laboratory and science classroom (Christenson, 1971, p. 211). In his Male Report, Kinsey repeats this view (p. 157). Pomeroy noted Kinsey's “determination to go further in his work than anyone had done before” (Pomeroy, 1972, p. 195). In another insight he states that Kinsey “would have done business with the devil himself” (Pomeroy, 1972, p. 198).
One further, remote possibility may be advanced to explain Kinsey's experimental child sex data. It may not be Kinsey's work at all. We are told by Pomeroy in his 1972 Kinsey biography that Kinsey interviewed a disproportionate number of social scientists, some of whom may have volunteered the results of their own surreptitious, illegal studies. There clearly are professionals capable of such experimentation (e.g., Mengele) without the slightest twinge of conscience. However, it is highly unlikely that Kinsey would have known enough such persons who all had the same notes from identical experiments to provide such a large body of precisely measured information. It is certainly more likely that the “some” who witnessed such activity and “kept .. . records” were a team of researchers, composed of observers and men who had “contacts” with infants and very small children.
Kinsey's highly detailed child sex experiment data, obtained apparently without parental and certainly without “informed” subject consent and involving clear abuse of infants and children, elicited no comment whatever with respect to how this research was conducted. Reviewers evidently took at face value the claim that they were reading “historical recall”--or they did not pay close attention--when they encountered passages in the Male Report describing extreme cruelty to child subjects, such as the already-quoted description of the emotional and physiological responses to adult-induced orgasm in 196 boys: “Extreme tension with violent convulsion ... mouth distorted ... tongue protruding ... spasmodically twitching ... eyes staring ... hands grasping ... throbs or violent jerking of the penis ... sobbing or more violent cries, sometimes with an abundance of tears (especially among younger children) ... will fight away from the partner and may make violent attempts to avoid climax, although they derive definite pleasure from the situation ...” [Male Report, p. 161; emphasis added].
The incongruous use of the word “pleasure” in this context was not explained by the authors. It presumably was considered a scientifically accurate observation by the “partners.” No reviewers have commented on this passage.
It was from the just-described experiments that the scientific world first learned that orgasm in male infants and children “is, except for the lack of an ejaculation, a striking duplicate of orgasm in an older adult.” The nature of this orgasm was described in some detail: “... the behavior involves a series of gradual physiologic changes, the development of rhythmic body movements with distinct penis throbs and pelvic thrusts, an obvious change in sensory capacities, a final tension of muscles, especially of the abdomen, hips, and back, a sudden release with convulsions, including rhythmic anal contractions-followed by the disappearance of all symptoms .... It may be some time before an erection can be induced again after such an experience“ [Male Report, p. 177].
Observations from separate histories are unlikely to have provided specific, clinical, difficult-to-recognize details such as the presence and type of “anal contractions” in an infant who is being masturbated presumably for the pleasure of the participating sex offender. No reviewers asked the obvious question: “How could this have been done other than by directed, prospective research by individuals who knew what they were looking for?” We asked Dr. Albert Hobbs, a 1948 Kinsey reviewer, why he had not questioned the nature of the Kinsey child sex research. His response was that in concentrating on other aspects of Kinsey's work, such as statistical methods, he had not noticed the problem.
Kinsey's research conclusions on childhood sexuality, based on hideously unethical experiments on children, have been accepted as “fact” and repeatedly referred to in reputable textbooks and scientific journals for 40 years. This perhaps is better understood in light of what William Seidelman observed in 1989 in the International Journal of Health Services in an article titled “Mengele Medicus: Medicine's Nazi Heritage.” Two of Nazi medicine's most infamous experimenters, Otmar von Verschuer (experimentation on human twins) and Ernst Rudin (eugenic sterilization of humans), “continue to be referred to in the medical scientific literature without critical reference to ... the context of their work. Each man has been cited at least 20 separate times in the past 10 years in some of the leading modem medical journals.” In other words, the original nature of some of their work has been forgotten.
In Kinsey's case, however, there should be no debate about using the results of unethical experiments. The “science” was as bad as the ethics.
Kinsey’s revolutionary focus on “orgasm” to measure sexual, marital, dating, and general emotional satisfaction, has become so accepted in the Western world that it is no longer questioned. Yet, while there is a body of literature confirming that orgasm is helpful in marriage, it has never been shown to be a valid measure of sexual success or marital bliss. The data on pedophiles, rapists, and rapist-murderers6-58 indicate that while the perpetrators commonly began “petting” to orgasm as youths, their libidos soon required more danger and perversion to attain orgasmic release. The goal may be “orgasm,” but the method often becomes increasingly antisocial and violent.
6-58. See data from The Missing and Exploited Children’s Center in Arlington, Virginia and also, Reisman, Images of Children, Crime and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, 1989 and “Soft Porn” Plays Hardball, 1991. For much of the data on increased violence included in this chapter see William J. Bennett, The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, Empower America, the Heritage Foundation, Free Congress Foundation, Washington, D.C., Vol. 1, March 1993, pp. 2-22 and Patrick Fagan, The Root Causes of Violent Crime: The Breakdown of Marriage, Family and Community, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC, B-10265, March 17, 1995.
Kinsey suggested that his 75 percent orgasm rate in the first marital year was a problem that could be eliminated by women having sex outside of marriage earlier. To cure his mythical sexual disorder, Kinsey recommended such early sexual “outlets” as regular masturbation and peer sex accompanied, when deemed appropriate, by “erotic aids.” Robinson writes, “Kinsey claimed to have observed tremendous psychic damage in those who had fretted over their masturbation or attempted vainly to give it up.… This claim was largely impressionistic. He had undertaken neither a systematic survey of his subjects’ health nor any controlled experiments that might have established the etiological significance of masturbation. Yet his commitment to autoeroticism was such that he spoke as though his generalizations were supported by unimpeachable statistical evidence… arguing that masturbation actually helped the individual achieve a satisfactory sexual adjustment in marriage. This was particularly true, he argued, in the case of women. The girl who did not masturbate was at a serious sexual disadvantage [developing] habits not easily unlearned after marriage.”70
6-70. Paul Robinson, The Modernization of Sex, Harper & Row, New York, 1976, p. 65.
Kinsey’s early-sex recommendations, then, were based on statistically invalid data compiled by an obsessive-compulsive, masturbating researcher who was himself a sexual deviant.
“Kinsey’s mail was full of excursions into every conceivable aspect of sex, from the commonplace to the esoteric, demonstrating once more the wide-ranging capacity of his mind. On so ordinary a subject as masturbation, he not only took every opportunity to clear away the remaining cobwebs, but he meant to be precise about the matter. Thus, when a third-year medical student at the University of Wisconsin wrote to ask whether it was true that 2 percent of males did not masturbate, or whether all of them did at some time in their lives, Kinsey was happy to give him an answer which knocked down one more myth:
“Our survey indicates that ninety-six percent of the males masturbate at some time in their lives. The popular opinion that one hundred percent are so involved is not based on any statistical study and is very clearly incorrect. The four percent not involved includes a certain number of apathetic individuals who are satisfied by an occasional wet dream, a larger number of persons who have nocturnal dreams with such frequency as to provide considerable outlet, and a still larger number of persons, particularly from lower social levels, who begin intercourse with considerable frequency at an early age.”....
He had positive ideas about how information on such subjects as masturbation should be given. Writing to a Bronxville, New York, doctor who was planning a questionnaire survey of eleventh- and twelfth-grade high school boys or college freshmen to measure the effect of telling adolescent boys the truth about masturbation, Kinsey had some things to say that would have confounded those who did not understand his attitudes. He does not, of course, approve of questionnaires as a method (refusing to answer one, he condemned them as “too easy a way for one person to make hundreds of other persons do work for him”), but having disposed of this objection, he tells the doctor:
Telling a boy that masturbation will do him no physical harm is giving him the peace of scientifically established information with which I should concur. Advising a boy to masturbate or advising a boy that masturbation is a better source of outlet than pre-marital intercourse whether it is with companions or with prostitutes is a totally different matter that involves evaluations and a minimum of any science. As a fact-finding scientist, I can not agree with you on your policy nor disagree with it.
I would remind you, however, that there are a great many people, including half or more of the psychiatrists, who would strenuously disagree with you. You may be interested to know that we have the personal histories of over two hundred psychiatrists; and on this issue of masturbation I find that the European group, which is the larger group, objects rather consistently against masturbation and against the lack of pre-marital coitus, while a larger number of the American bred group would agree with you.””*
*. Wardell Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research, Harper & Row, New York, 1972, pp. 313-314.
According to psychiatrist and child specialist Dr. Iago Galdston, “One of Kinsey’s obsessive convictions is that premarital experience in orgasm favors the female’s effective sexual performance in marriage. The entire work is colored by the authors’ conviction that experience with premarital orgasm, preferably in coitus, is the most promising therapy for successful sexual performance in marriage… Kinsey contemplates the sexual function quite as on a par with any other function of the organism, such as eating or defecating. It is pleasurable—when it is good…. He seemingly applauds the Lepcha, primitive people, among whom “sexual activity is practically divorced from emotion; it is pleasant and an experience, and as much a necessity as food and drink; and like food and drink it does not matter from whom you receive it, as long as you get it.…” (Page 412) This description also fits some of our most neurotically sick individuals, those who are promiscuous and loveless.”6-62
6-62. Iago Galdston, “So Noble an Effort Corrupted,” in Donald P. Geddes, An Analysis of the Kinsey Report, A Mentor Book, New York, p. 42-6.
“But music was not his only love, although it was his first. He had friends in all the arts, and his correspondence is full of their letters. One whose work attracted him was Tennessee Williams, whom he proposed meeting at the beginning of their acquaintance by mail early in 1950. Kinsey wrote to Williams;
“As you may know, we are making an extensive study of the erotic element in the arts. This covers painting, music, writing, the stage, etc. One of the plays we have studied in some detail has been your Streetcar. We have been fortunate enough to obtain histories from a high proportion of the actors and two of the companies which have put on the play, and it has made it possible to correlate their acting with their sexual backgrounds. There are a great many points in the play which we should like to discuss with the author, to find out his original ideas and intentions. This is one of the reasons why we should get together.”
(Eventually we took the history of nearly everyone in the three separate companies playing A Streetcar Named Desire and were able to demonstrate, at least to our own satisfaction, that Stanley, or Blanche, or Mitch, as portrayed by one actor emerged differently when played by another because of differences in the actors’ sexual backgrounds.)
Williams replied cordially from Key West, gratified by the attention Kinsey had given Streetcar, and declaring that “your work, your research and its revelations to the ignorant and/or biased public, is of enormous social value. I hope that you will continue it and even extend its scope, for not the least desirable thing in this world is understanding, and sexual problems are especially in need of it.”
He welcomed the chance to meet Kinsey and discuss his plays, and did so a few months later, in November 1950. It was a cordial meeting, and the beginning of a friendship, carried on mostly in letters. The following year Kinsey wrote that he had seen The Rose Tattoo twice in Chicago, and thought it excellent—“a powerful thing.” He went on: “Don’t call it comedy, it was keen insight into the mixed problems which are the very human concern of a very real and considerable portion of the world. The fine humor in it provides the necessary relief for the other material.”
Through Lincoln Kirstein, Kinsey was introduced to the world of the ballet. Kirstein, director of the New York City Ballet, took him backstage after a performance at the New York City Center, and in 1954 Kinsey wrote enthusiastically to say that he had spent four evenings with Kirstein’s company in San Francisco, and thought it “a magnificent thing.” He added in his flat way: “I think such a thing adds very much to the worthwhileness of life.”
Among the dancers Kinsey came to know was Ted Shawn, who helped him get histories of others. With this aid, and that of the people at the Kamin Bookshop in New York, specialists in the literature of the dance, he was able to expand greatly the list of dancers in his files.
In the art world, Kinsey’s New York guide was Monroe Wheeler, director of exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, who arranged dinners at which Prok could meet people who might be helpful as contacts for his research. As a result he got the histories of a large group of artists.
One of the artists Kinsey met was the sculptor Paul Saint-Gaudens, who wrote to him in 1951 from Vineyard Haven, Martha’s Vineyard, to propose the theory that expression in art is an alternative or compensation for the procreative drive. As Saint-Gaudens outlined his theory:
“Many children begin to show remarkable imaginative creativity at six or seven, sometimes with an element of sex in it. The expression develops for several years, then usually diminishes toward puberty and vanishes completely in adolescence. (I have seen this pattern in children who were pupils in my clay modeling classes.) It seems to me that free fantasy and undeveloped sexuality combine in the child to make for spontaneous expression in line, form and color. There is no other satisfying outlet at that period, so the creative urge becomes symbolical. With the onset of puberty with its greater factual awareness and full sexual awakening, the artistic creativity turns into the normal adult channel of mature sexuality, romance, procreation and wage-earning.
This would make the artist an emotionally and sexually immature person. Even as an adult he is retarded at, or thrown back to, a phase of development where the sexual and procreative urge is unrealistic and incomplete. He substitutes imagery for reality and artistic fulfillment for sexual and procreative fulfillment. Ordinary everyday work is distasteful to him. This immaturity seems to be part of many artistic personalities, making them incapable of full adjustment to the usual adult business of marriage, regular work, and having children. Their sexual adventures are apt to be peculiar and unsatisfactory. Of course many non-artistic people have these troubles, too. It takes an inherent sensitivity to divert the erotic creative drive into an artistic channel.
My general theory is that all creativity is bound up in one parcel and that sex is part of it. If it is blocked in any way from finding satisfying expression in the usual channels it will find others. I shall be interested to learn to what extent your researches substantiate this.”
It was a theory Kinsey could never have embraced. He replied:
“I do not like the idea of calling every parallel that occurs between adult behavior and the behavior of children as infantile. It represents an evaluation rather than an objective recording of the fact. I am sure that this procedure has been one of the factors obscuring the real analysis of human behavior. When you record objectively on an individual, either a child or an adult, you are in a much better position to start real analysis of causative factors.
Consequently, we are recording in our histories what sorts of adjustments artists, as well as other people, make. We are also studying children. What our conclusions may ultimately be will depend upon what we actually find in the totality of histories.”
Kinsey appeared to encounter more writers than other practitioners of the arts, and they gave him the widest possible variety of viewpoints for his work. After a conversation with Katherine Anne Porter in New York, she wrote:
“I was only half joking when I remarked to you that I might have something to say to you on the subject of Sex; but I suspect nothing much is new to you by now. Still, a half-joke can be quite serious, and I did mean it, and shall be delighted to be interviewed on the subject of the erotic element in the arts, including, as you say, literature.”
They were instant friends, and they met again soon after. On Valentine’s Day, 1952, Kinsey was writing to “Dear Katherine Anne,” thanking her for her “very considerable contribution” to the research and “to our thinking on various important matters.” He hoped to see her on his next trip to New York, and meanwhile invited her to visit him in Bloomington.”
Pomeroy, pp. 191-193.
LAST DAYS
Kinsey died in August 1956, shortly after his return from Europe. The official cause was given as pneumonia brought on by overwork and an enlarged heart. Jones writes: “He was suffering from pneumonia, which aggravated a long-standing heart condition.… The immediate cause of death was not pneumonia or a failing heart but an embolism caused by a bruise on one of his legs, which he had sustained in a fall while working in his garden.”9-70
9-70. James Jones, “Dr. Yes,” New Yorker, September 1, 1997, p. 113.
Despite the official medical diagnosis, there is reason to believe that Kinsey’s bizarre array of sexual activities may have done him in. Despite the reality of common STDs, he had often denied the dangers of the sexual perversions he advocated. Jones, acknowledging what those at the Kinsey Institute knew but kept hidden, asserts that for Kinsey: “Sexual activities in themselves rarely do physical damage, but disagreements over the significance of sexual behavior may result in personality conflicts, a loss of social standing, imprisonment, disgrace, and the loss of life itself.”71
9-71. Jones, Ibid, p. 108.
Throughout his life, his sexual behavior became more and more disordered. Jones recalled: “William Dallenback, the institute’s photographer [said] Kinsey was becoming overtly exhibitionistic… having himself filmed, always from the chest down… in masochistic masturbation. The world’s foremost expert on sexual behavior would insert an object such as a pipe cleaner or swizzle stick into his urethra, tie a rope around his scrotum, and then tug hard on the rope.…”9-721 “Kinsey also discovered that the urethra [the canal that carries urine from the bladder to the outside of the body] was, for him, an erogenous zone, and over time he teased and plied it with various instruments, culminating in the use of a toothbrush.”9-722 “Skillfully, he [Kinsey] tied a strong, tight knot around his scrotum with one end of the rope dangling from the pipe overhead. The other end he wrapped around his hand. Then he climbed up on a chair and jumped off, suspending himself in midair.”9-723
9-721. Jones, Ibid, p. 113.
9-722. Review of Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life by Martin Duberman, The Nation, November 3, 1997).
9-723. Jones, Ibid, p. 739.
On one occasion… Kinsey climbed into a bathtub, unfolded the blade of his pocketknife, and circumcised himself without benefit of anesthesia.… Recalled Dellenback, “God it must have been damn painful. It must have bled a hell of lot.”9-73
9-73. James H. Jones, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, W.W. Norton, New York, 1997.
Pomeroy quotes Kinsey as saying that Italian males took great pride in the size of their genitalia, and giving assurance that “on the average they were large.” Pomeroy writes:
“Perhaps the most exotic place for sexual activity that Kinsey found anywhere in Italy was on the Tiber in Rome, where several houseboats operated as restaurants during dining hours but were centers later in the evening for male homosexual prostitution.
It was widely believed by many of the Italian experts Kinsey talked to that southern Italy was the most homosexual place in the world. Prok doubted it. He believed it was surpassed by several countries in the Middle and Far East. However, there was no doubt, he concluded, that the glorification of the male reached an extreme in Italy. Certainly sex seemed to be a primary commodity in Naples, among both males and females. “I don’t suppose that we spoke to any person of any age, male or female, in the city who didn’t promptly offer to find sexual relations for us. Several girls came out of a house in a back alley and hung on to our hands, begging for money, and when we came to a cross-alley, a woman came out and got rid of the girls, then we had her for two or three blocks. It was the same way with boys, who offered to find anything for us. Any child could tell you where the nearest house of prostitution was, and it was never very far away.”
An older male offered to take him to a sexual exhibition in Naples, but this was the only place in Italy where he had such an offer.
Later, when he was in Spain and Portugal, Kinsey found that males tried to hide any appearance of having genitalia. In Italy, however, there was obvious pride in them, and on the average they were large. Italian tailors, he discovered, made a practice of making extra room for them in the pants they cut, so that it came near to being a pocket. Italian men told Kinsey they did not like American-style jockey shorts because they brought the genitalia up into the crotch.
This difference in male attitudes toward the genitals Kinsey had first observed in Cuba, where he saw boys openly touching their sexual parts, in contrast to America, where male children are taught from an early age not to do such a thing. Touching was even more common in southern Italy, where Kinsey saw men in public unzip their pants and reach in and adjust their genitalia, then zip up again. Even well-dressed businessmen did this in the middle of the day in Naples, and no one paid any attention. At times he even saw these same businessmen stroking their penises through their clothing when they had a sudden erection.
Another prime area of sexual activity in Naples was its famous Galleria, where Kinsey found it was possible to observe any number of people out hunting for sex at any hour of the day or night. Young boys masturbated and no one paid any attention, which proved once more, Kinsey wrote, “what a hysterical fear we have acquired of male genitals.”
There were both male and female prostitutes in the Galleria. One girl was completely nude to the waist; she had on a gauzy, thin shawl which kept slipping off. Kinsey saw a young, slender boy of twenty or so who was doing a big business with GIs, sailors and older Italian men. There were roving smaller children who would begin by offering to take the visitor to girls, and if that did not work, they would offer boys, their younger or older brothers, and finally themselves. Gangs of young adolescent boys swarmed on American sailors.
The public toilets often were underground, in parks and at railroad stations, and there Kinsey saw men from thirteen to fifty exhibiting and indicating they were ready for sexual contact. Kinsey and his guide saw a boy with an erection who followed them for several blocks until they made it clear that they were not interested.
Sometimes it was difficult to discourage these supplicants. One older male came up two or three times, and after being rebuffed each time, said rather plaintively, “But I have to come to orgasm, and if you are too tired now, I can see you at 2 A.M.” Even so, most of the men could not offer sex free; it would have lowered their status. Kinsey surmised this might be a cultural holdover from their Greek and Phoenician backgrounds.
Kinsey thought the Neapolitans very warmhearted. He had not been in the city more than twenty-four hours before the mayor sent his chief aide to see him, giving him an official welcome and offering any facility he desired. When he asked specifically about getting a record of sexual material, the aide said, “Of course.”
I should make it clear, I think, that Kinsey was not insensitive to the other aspects of life in Italian cities. His journal speaks often of the poverty in Naples and in other parts of Italy. He was well aware that part of the abundant sexuality directed toward him and any other obvious American was motivated by the desperate need for money. On the other hand, he believed they were very sexual people, in any case, and suspected that they had an extremely high sex outlet, perhaps higher than in any other culture he had seen. Only in the highest-level families was there the strict guarding of women he saw in Spain and the Latin American countries.
In every way Naples seemed more uninhibited than Rome to Kinsey, and he was fascinated with the aspects of sexuality he saw on every hand the longer he stayed. It was noteworthy, he said, that boys in Rome who brought letters up to the hotel rooms were satisfied with a tip, but in Naples they might sit down and make it clear they would be glad to stay longer for other purposes.
Moving over to Sicily, a difficult place to investigate, Kinsey had the help of a Roman friend, Fosco Maraini, whose wife was a native Sicilian and was able to make the necessary contacts. Maraini took him one day to three small fishing villages, as poverty-stricken as any Kinsey had seen. He was shown both the poorest and the better homes, and finally a twenty-one-year-old boy, who didn't look seventeen, escorted them to a fishing boat. When they reached the shore where it was beached, a gang of boys gathered around. One handsome thirteen-year-old looked at their guide, smiled and instantly came to erection, throwing his arms around a boy standing close to him. He followed Kinsey’s little party around for several hours, getting as close as he could and always smiling. “It was interesting,” Kinsey wrote, “that even in this remote place we were still getting the same picture.””9-48
9-48. Wardell Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research, Harper & Row, New York, 1972, pp. 424-427.
A report by Patrick Boyle, author of Scout’s Honor: Sexual Abuse in America’s Most Trusted Institution, describes Kinsey’s role in removing a warning about masturbation removed from the Scout handbook. According to Boyle, an early edition of the handbook advised Scoutmasters: “Because boys of Scouting age are naturally curious about sex, you may… discover or hear about incidents of sexual experimentation among troop members…. Incidents of sexual experimentation call for a private and thorough investigation, and frank discussion with those involved.”1-40
1-40. Patrick Boyle, Scout’s Honor: Sexual Abuse in America’s Most Trusted Institution, Prima Publishing, Rocklin, California, 1994, p. 22.
Boyle recalls Kinsey’s response when the BSA sought his advice for updating the manual in 1947: “Our years of research have failed to disclose any clear cut cases of harm resulting from masturbation, although we have thousands of cases of boys who have had years of their lives ruined by worry over masturbation…. We should be glad to serve wherever the Boy Scouts can use factual material,” he wrote. The BSA later dropped the discussion of masturbation from its handbook.”1-41
1-41. Pomeroy, p. 12.
This Kinsey-backed move increased the vulnerability of young Scouts to sexual abuse by older peers and adult pederasts.
Some accounts claim that Kinsey attended church regularly as a child, and remained devout until he entered college, but an incident involving masturbation was apparently a turning point in his life. He often described to others how a college classmate obsessed with masturbation had sought his help. Kinsey claimed that he accompanied the fellow to his room, knelt, and prayed that the lad would receive strength to stop masturbating.1-42 However, after reviewing Kinsey’s personal diaries and letters at the Kinsey Institute, Jones concluded that it was not a friend who was plagued by the impulse to masturbate, but Kinsey himself: “Kinsey prayed, asking God to forgive him and to give him the strength not to sin again. The Boy Scout manual… (along with many doctors and moral instructors)… advised boys to take cold showers to improve their health and to take their minds off sex. Kinsey took a cold shower every morning, a practice he continued for life. But neither prayer nor cold showers enabled him to stop masturbating. As a result, Kinsey was consumed by guilt.”1-43
1-42. Pomeroy, p. 33.
1-43. Jones, p. 75.
Kinsey was not only an obsessive masturbator, but impotent as well. According to Jones in The New Yorker book summary (September, 1997), Kinsey required extensive and labored private sexual activity to attain a degree of sexual arousal. By 1954, as his fame peaked, he sank into depression: “Sales of the Female volume were not as great as he had hoped, his research was investigated by a congressional committee amid charges that it aided subversion.… One evening in August 1954, dejected and bitter, stood in his offices in the basement of Wylie Hall… threw a rope over the pipe, tied a knot around his scrotum, and wrapped the other end around his hand. Then he climbed onto a chair and jumped off.”
Medical professionals explained to this author that this sado-masochistic act likely represented a long-standing pattern of behavior for Kinsey (confirmed by Gathorne-Hardy in his 1998 biography). This act of self-mutilation occurred as the Reece Committee prepared to call him to testify. He fled committee, citing health problems as an excuse. Jones continues, “Shortly after this episode, Kinsey… Gebhard and Dellenback traveled to Peru.… There, Kinsey took to his bed, suffering from an infection in his pelvic region. He attributed his illness to a throat infection he had contracted earlier in Los Angeles, explaining that the infection had spread to his pelvis. A physician friend, however, labeled Kinsey’s illness orchitis, pinpointing the testicles as the site of the infection.”
According to Dorland’s Medical Dictionary, orchitis is, “…marked by pain, swelling… usually due to gonorrhea, syphilis, filarial disease, or tuberculosis.… Traumatic orchitis [is] orchitis following trauma, vas ligation, or surgical manipulation, without evidence of previous disease, believed to be due to an infectious process resulting from lowered resistance of the injured tissues to bacteria.”74
9-74. Dorland’s Medical Dictionary, W.B. Saunders, Philadelphia, 1981, page 933.
Kinsey’s orchitis followed the “trauma” of Kinsey's compulsive genital self-mutilation, causing “injured tissues,” lowering Kinsey’s resistance to “bacteria,” a compromised immune system and his death from orchitis. In the same way, Kinsey’s reported pneumonia and heart condition could have logically resulted from advanced syphilis or other venereal diseases.
Indiana University’s biographical publicity about Kinsey says nothing about his “orchitis,” or any other medical condition that could have resulted from sexual disorder or venereal disease.
The Indianapolis Star, whose editorial page masthead carries Abraham Lincoln’s dictum, “Let the people know the facts and the country will be saved,” commented on James Jones lengthy article about Kinsey in The New Yorker magazine for September 1, 1997: “Kinsey gave the world a distorted—some would say sick—view of human sexuality. And what ought to enrage Hoosier taxpayers is that their money helped him do it. For years, the institute received about $500,000.00 annually from Indiana University. The funding was cut in half in 1993, largely at the behest of some university trustees. Political commentator Patrick Buchanan, never one to mince words, once called Kinsey “America’s original dirty old man.” The New Yorker article suggests Buchanan may be uncomfortably close to the truth.”75
9-75. Editorial Board, “The Kinsey Legacy,” The Indianapolis Star, August 26, 1997.
The press was devastated with news of his illness. The “sexual revolution” faced a potentially serious setback were it widely known that the theoretical father of the movement had died from an advanced stage of sadosexual autoerotic (masturbatory) activity. The National Review commented on Kinsey’s untimely demise:
“As for Kinsey’s own quest for personal liberation, it ended in pain and squalor: he developed a massive pelvic infection as the result of his masochistic practices, almost certainly hastening his death at the age of 62. Growing up at the turn of the century, he had been exposed to countless tracts warning that masturbation led to insanity and death. In his case, they may have been onto something.”76
9-76. Terry Teachout, “What the Doctor Saw,” National Review, October 13, 1997, p. 69.
CHAPTER 5
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male1 included 23 chapters of supposedly scientific data and analysis. Perhaps the most baleful was Chapter 5, “Early Sexual Growth and Activity,” where Kinsey claimed to show that the tiniest of infants have the “capacity”2 for orgasm. He contended that his data confirmed that sexual activity is natural to the human “animal” from birth, and that human children are therefore unharmed by sexual activity even from birth. Prior to Kinsey, sexual information (“sex education”) focused on marriage, sexual hygiene (venereal disease) and family living, and was widely recognized as the responsibility of parents or legal guardians. After Kinsey, this crucial responsibility was gradually transferred to school teachers.
1. Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, W.B. Saunders, Philadelphia, 1948, is Male volume in each chapter citation section; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin and Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, W.B. Saunders, Philadelphia, 1948, is Female volume in each citation section.
2. The handwritten notations by the Kinsey Institute representative were made on a copy of a proposed book chapter, from the paper given by Reisman (Bat-Ada) at the 5th World Congress of Sexology in Jerusalem, 1981. There were several titles, but the one at issue was “‘The Empirical Study and Statistical Procedures’ on ‘Child Sexuality’ Undertaken by the Institute for Sex Research and Dr. Alfred Kinsey: A Critical Analysis of Child Sexual Experimentation.’’ The document was obtained during a deposition of Kinsey Institute Director June Reinisch on December 7, 1993.
The Kinsey team gave the impression that they had clearly established--for the first time--the orgasmic potential of infants and children (Male Report, p. 175). From interviews with young children and adults, and observations by “parents” and “other subjects,” they additionally concluded that genital play and exploration among very young children were commoner than believed (Male Report, p. 163). However, according to Kinsey, the inhibitory effect of “social values” came into play early on in children's lives, with culturally acquired reactions to “the mysterious,” “the forbidden” and “the socially dangerous” (Male Report, p. 164).
That preadolescent sex play did not continue unabated in many children was considered a product of “cultural restraints” and “community attitudes.” However, “lower social level boys,” freer of such restraints, had a better chance of continuing sexual activity without a break, more like the “pre-adolescent sex play in the anthropoids, [which] is abundant and continues into adult performance (Bingham 1928)” (Male Report, pp. 167, 174).
The interviews and sex experiments were, in Kinsey's opinion, “an important substantiation of the Freudian view of sexuality as a component that is present in the human animal from earliest infancy ... “ (Male Report, p. 180). But Kinsey believed he had disproved Freud's theory of a sexually latent period in adolescence: “[The data do not] show any necessity for a sexually latent or dormant period in the late adolescent years, except as such inactivity results from parental or social repressions of the growing child“ [Male Report, p. 180].
The child sex experiments reported by Kinsey were a key to “proving” this. Such experiments had never been done before, and quoting Moore (1943), Kinsey pointed out: “the memory of the adult [does not] reach back to those early years so that he can tell us whether or not it is really true that in infancy and early childhood he experienced specific sexual excitement, and that this was repressed and became latent, as Freud maintained” (Male Report, p. 181). So Kinsey claimed to have established two things: 1) the beginnings of erotic sexuality in infancy, and 2) the myth of Freud's latency period, except as a function of social repression. With his child sex data, Kinsey had debunked the popular view that “although the child is capable of a tender personal love, it is of a non-erotic character and has nothing to do with the beginnings of sexuality” (Male Report, p. 181).
The Kinsey team's research data-from the memories of adult males and the memories or records of pedophiles' experiments on male children--are largely homosexual data. Kinsey clearly believed that enjoyment of such activities was also hindered by the prevailing “social taboos.” He held that “younger pre-adolescents” needed the help of older “more experienced persons” to “discover masturbatory techniques that are sexually effective.” Without such assistance, “younger adolescents” attempting “homosexual play” were limited to “contacts [that] are still very incidental and casual and without any recognition of the emotional possibilities of such experience”: “Among younger pre-adolescents the manual contacts are still very incidental and casual and without any recognition of the emotional possibilities of such experience. Only a small portion of the cases leads to the sort of manipulation which does effect arousal and possibly orgasm in the partner. Manual manipulation is more likely to become so specific if the relation is had with a somewhat older boy, or with an adult. Without help from more experienced persons, many pre-adolescents take a good many years to discover masturbatory techniques that are sexually effective.” (Male Report, p. 170). (This, incidentally, is a rare Kinsey reference to “emotion” in sexual activity.)
Kinsey clearly perceived masturbation of children by adults as preparation for adult homosexual relationships. He conjectured that if children could learn elaborate enough masturbation techniques-preferably from experienced adults-the “incidental” and “casual” type of sexual exploration that is common among adolescents could be turned into a truly homosexual experience. Kinsey termed this an “emotional possibility.” Without such training, children were likely to pass on from incidental experiences to exclusive heterosexual relationships.
Kinsey felt that social conditioning inhibited older males from such involvement: “The anatomy and functional capacities of male genitalia interest the younger boy to a degree that is not appreciated by older males who have become heterosexually conditioned and who are continuously on the defensive against reactions which might be interpreted as homosexual” (Male Report, p. 168).
A repressive society, in Kinsey's view, was responsible for the inhibition of the full expression of all types of sexual activity in “the human animal.” This view achieved fuller expression in his 1953 Female Report, where, readers will notice, Kinsey took pains to express the harmlessness, and even benefits, to female children of sexual contact with adults.
Kinsey’s philosophy of early childhood sexual development became the standard for today’s graphic sex instruction materials in many, of not most, American public, private, and parochial schools, usually camouflaged by such euphemistic captions as sex education, AIDS prevention or awareness, family life, health, hygiene, home economics, physical education, even “abstinence” education.3 Public health data confirm that as Kinseyan-based sex education has metastasized, levels of sexual disease and dysfunction have rocketed upward.
3. SIECUS, Sexuality in Man, Scribners, New York, 1970, pp. 6-7.
Kinsey asserted that “Erotic arousal could… be subjected to precise instrumental measurement if objectivity among scientists and public respect for scientific research allowed such laboratory investigation.”4 It is reasonable to assume that he meant what he wrote. He and his team did, in fact, conduct what he called “scientific research” on children involving the “precise instrumental measurement” of what he interpreted as “erotic arousal” in infants, toddlers and children. Whether “public respect” is due his “laboratory investigation” is for you, the reader, to judge.
4. Male, p. 157.
His research was indeed groundbreaking. Prior to Kinsey, no child developmental specialists suggested that children were either sexual from birth or that they benefited from early sexual activity. One education professional, Mary Shivanandan, summarized the “developmental theories of the 20th century” as they relate to children, recalling that while Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) had argued that children were “polymorphus perverse” at birth, psychosocial identity was the childhood goal, with children going through various “stages” in their development, including the wholly asexual “latency” stage, on their way to maturity. Similarly, psychoanalyst Eric Erikson (1902-1994) stressed the child’s goals of trust, autonomy, industry, identity and spiritual development.
Cognitive theorists Jean Piaget (1896-1980), Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987), and Albert Bandura (1925- ) focused on mutual cooperation, moral thinking, and social learning as the child’s major objectives. Humanists Carl Rogers (1902-1987) and Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) stressed the child’s drive toward “self-actualization” as the motivating purpose. Learning theorist B.F. Skinner viewed the child’s chief end as learning reason and obedience. And maturational theorists Arnold Gesell (1880-1961) and Robert Havighurst (1900-1991) cited “normal” development and task achievement as childhood goals.
Alfred Kinsey alone argued that sexual satisfaction was a childhood goal.5
5. Mary Shivanandan, “Childhood and Educational Development” in Foundations for Family-Life Education, Educational Guidance Institute, Inc. Arlington, VA., 1991.
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