Allegations about Childhood data in the 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
Allegations against Alfred Kinsey and his research on children's sexual responses, as reported in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, were first made in 1981 by Dr. Judith Reisman. She subsequently enlarged on these ideas in a book written jointly with Edward Eichel and published in 1990 (
Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud). When The Kinsey Institute responded, Reisman filed suit in 1991 against The Kinsey Institute, then director June Reinisch, and Indiana University, alleging defamation of character and slander.
In September 1993, Reisman's lawyer withdrew from the case, and in June 1994 the court dismissed Reisman's case with prejudice (which means that Reisman is prohibited from refiling the suit).
Below is a reiteration of these accusations, recently reported, and the Institute's response.
The act of encouraging pedophiles to rape innocent babies and toddlers in the names of "science" offends. The act of protecting them from prosecution offends. The act of falsifying research findings which, in turn, open the floodgates for the sexual abuse of children, offends. (from Dr. Laura's (Schlesinger) website)
- This would be a cause of great concern if it were true. Kinsey was not a pedophile in any shape or form. He did not carry out experiments on children; he did not hire, collaborate, or persuade people to carry out experiments on children. He did not falsify research findings and there is absolutely no evidence that his research "opened flood gates for the sexual abuse of children." Kinsey did talk to thousands of people about their sex lives, and some of the behaviors that they disclosed, including abuse of children, were illegal. In fact, many sexual behaviors, even those between married adults, were illegal in the 1940's and 1950's. Without confidentiality, it would have been impossible to investigate the very private lives of Americans then, and even now.
Where did Kinsey's information about children's sexual responses come from?
- Kinsey clearly stated in his male volume the sources of information about children's sexual responses. The bulk of this information was obtained from adults recalling their own childhoods. Some was from parents who had observed their children, some from teachers who had observed children interacting or behaving sexually, and Kinsey stated that there were nine men who he had interviewed who had sexual experiences with children who had told him about how the children had responded and reacted. We believe that one of those men was the source of the data listed in the book.
In a British documentary, a woman says she was sexually abused by her father and grandfather, and that her father justified it as doing research for Alfred Kinsey by filling out questionnaires.
- We have no reason to doubt that this woman was sexually abused. However, Kinsey did not ask people to fill out questionnaires. It is conceivable that this woman's father or grandfather wrote to Kinsey, as many people have done. Following that documentary, we checked through Kinsey's correspondence and could not find any that would match this story. We do know that there have been people who have used Kinsey's name to justify what they do sexually, even recently.
Kinsey used a Nazi SS officer from Germany as one of his key contributors
- In Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Kinsey invited people to write to him about their sex lives. In 1955, a German wrote to him and told him about his sexual experiences with children. Kinsey, in his reply, was non-judgmental, as usual. He did however point out how strongly society condemned such behavior. Kinsey never made use of the information from this man. He also had no idea that this man had been a Nazi ten years earlier.... To suggest that Kinsey had something to do with Nazi torture of children is a bizarre fabrication.
Allegations and Controversy, 1995-1998
More Controversy about Childhood data
Soon after John Bancroft, M.D., assumed the directorship of The Kinsey Institute in 1995, he was called upon to respond to an allegation by the Family Research Council (FRC) about data on pre-adolescent orgasm that the late Dr. Alfred Kinsey had included 50 years ago in Chapter 5, "Early Sexual Growth and Activity," of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (W.B. Saunders, 1948).
In the fall of 1995, Rep. Steve Stockman, Galveston, Texas, took up the FRC allegation, circulating a letter on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, in which he asked for support for a bill he had introduced to investigate Dr. Kinsey's research.
Stockman alleged that this data was derived from federally funded sexual molestation of children (the so-called "Children of Table 34"). Although Stockman's staff were invited to put any questions to The Kinsey Institute and Indiana University, they declined. Stockman held a press conference December 7, 1995, calling for a congressional hearing. No hearing was held and the bill died. Stockman was defeated in the 1996 election.
In 1997, Concerned Women for America referred to this allegation in a press release with a renewed call for a Congressional investigation. In January 1998, Indiana State Representative Woody Burton submitted a House Concurrent Resolution to the Indiana General Assembly regarding Kinsey. In August 1998, a British television station produced a program based heavily on these allegations.
Other public statements on Alfred Kinsey and controversy issued by The Kinsey Institute and Indiana University
- _______________________________
The development and publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female: "The Kinsey Reports" of 1948 and 1953
Alfred C. Kinsey and his staff
Releasing the Female volume in 1953
When Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey arrived in Bloomington in 1920, he had no idea that he would become a world-famous authority on human sexual behavior. As a professor at Indiana University, Kinsey taught biology courses and collected specimens for his study of a small insect called the gall wasp.
In 1938, he was asked to coordinate a course on marriage-it was taught by a half-dozen members of the IU faculty, but Kinsey's lectures on the biological aspects of married life were by far the most popular with the students. When students asked Dr. Kinsey for further information about sexual behavior, he realized that there was "a gap in our knowledge" of this most basic human activity. Convinced that sex research was an important and long neglected field of study, Kinsey began to collect research data through sexual history interviews.
The first publication to feature the results of Kinsey's research was Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which appeared in January 1948. Kinsey and IU President Herman B Wells had agreed the previous year to create the Institute for Sex Research as a private institution affiliated with Indiana University (the institute was renamed The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction in 1982). The male volume surprised everyone when it quickly became a bestseller, and Dr. Kinsey's name suddenly became synonymous with sex in the minds of many Americans.
Alfred Kinsey began his research on human sexuality alone, but he soon realized that the project was too immense for one person to handle. By 1942, Kinsey had set a goal to collect 100,000 interviews, and as each session lasted at least an hour, he clearly could not do it all himself. However, only a few other people would ever be trained to conduct interviews, partly because of the months of work required to learn Kinsey's method of interviewing. Clyde Martin, Wardell Pomeroy, and Paul Gebhard were the primary researchers hired by Kinsey to assist with the project.
Martin's first job with Dr. Kinsey was tending his garden, but by 1940 the Indiana University undergrad had become the professor's research assistant. He was responsible for computing and statistical analysis of the data produced by the sexual history interviews.
Pomeroy was an Indiana University graduate who was working as a clinical psychologist in South Bend when Kinsey asked him to join the research team in 1943. He was the first person trained by Kinsey to conduct sexual history interviews. Following Kinsey's death in 1956, Pomeroy served as director of field research until 1963.
Gebhard joined the research staff in 1946. A Harvard-trained anthropologist, he conducted interviews and also devised the classification scheme for the Institute's extensive collection of photographs. After Kinsey's death, Gebhard became executive director of the Institute, a position he held until 1982.
Although the primary authors of the books were men, several women on the Institute staff contributed to the book. Jean Brown, Cornelia Christenson, Dorothy Collins, Hedwig Leser, and Eleanor Roehr were all acknowledged as research assistants on the book's title page. Alice Field was a sex researcher, criminologist, and social scientist in New York; as a research associate for the female volume she provided assistance with legal questions
K-Day: A Media Event
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male sold more than 200,000 copies when it was published in 1948. Kinsey and his publisher knew the new book on women would likely create a sensation as well. Journalists frequently asked Kinsey when his findings about American women would be revealed. It was clear that the publication of this book would be widely covered in the press, and Kinsey was concerned that misinformation about the research would appear in print before the book was ready.
In the summer of 1953, several months before the release of the book, Kinsey invited selected journalists to come to Bloomington for a preview of the contents of the female volume. He decided that this would be the best way to control the expected onslaught of media attention directed at this scientific report on women's sexual behavior. Several four-day sessions were held for about 60 magazine writers and newspaper reporters from the United States, England, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Australia.
Participants were required to sign a contract in which they agreed to write stories no longer than 5,000 words that would be submitted to Kinsey prior to publication to be checked for factual errors. They also had to agree that their stories would not appear in print until August 20, 1953, a day that became known as "K-Day." No photographs could be taken during the press briefings. Instead, the reporters could purchase staff photographer Bill Dellenback's portraits of Kinsey and his Institute colleagues to illustrate their articles.
Female volume publication
When K-Day finally arrived on August 20, 1953, many people rushed to their newsstands to find out what Dr. Kinsey and his colleagues had discovered about the sexual activities of American women. It was undoubtedly a popular topic of discussion at the workplace and at home-although many agreed with Kinsey's scientific findings, there were also plenty of people who argued that the statistics couldn't be accurate because "good" women would not have engaged in such activities, and if they had, they would not have revealed their experiences to Dr. Kinsey.
Five national magazines hit the stands on K-Day-Collier's, Time, Life, Woman's Home Companion, and Newsweek. Redbook and McCall's appeared the following day. Articles about the book as well as the media frenzy it was creating were published in newspapers around the country and the world, from the Bloomington Herald-Telephone, the Indiana Daily Student, and the Indianapolis Star to the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the London Sunday Dispatch.
On September 14, 1953 the wait was over, as copies of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female went on sale at bookstores around the country. Published by W.B. Saunders, a Philadelphia company that specialized in medical texts, the hardcover book sold for $8.00. This was a high price, but the book quickly made it to the bestseller list.
As expected, the public reaction ranged from admiration and gratitude to horror and disgust. Letters to the editor praised and denounced the book-even members of the clergy differed widely in their opinions, some saying that Kinsey's work would benefit humanity because increased knowledge of our sexual natures could only improve people's lives, while others called the research ungodly and amoral. Reverend Billy Graham declared that Dr. Kinsey "certainly could not have interviewed any of the millions of born-again Christian women in this country who put the highest price on virtue, decency and modesty."
Both Kinsey and President Wells received numerous letters from former IU students, parents, and the general public. Many people wrote to thank Kinsey for his work and to commend Wells for supporting the research, while others complained about the validity of the study and pledged to withdraw all support for the university as long as Dr. Kinsey remained on the faculty.
International Media Response
In 1948, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was a bestseller in the U.S. and quickly become an international sensation. The book was translated and published in Germany, Sweden, France and elsewhere. Although both the male and female volumes used data collected from interviews with American men and women, the rest of the world was fascinated by the findings of the Kinsey Reports.
Interest in Kinsey's statistics on female sexual behavior was widespread by 1953. Journalists from Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, and England were among those who visited Bloomington that summer to be briefed on the contents of the upcoming book. Numerous international papers covered the story before and after the publication of the first American edition of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in September.
A London tabloid called The People conducted its own survey of more than 1,000 women between the ages of 18 and 50 and found "indications that British women are much more moral, more conventional, and more faithful to the marriage bond than the American women of the Kinsey Report." The paper implied that its data, obtained via an anonymous questionnaire given to randomly-selected women, was more reliable than Kinsey's, because the latter's subjects were volunteers and "therefore the type who were likely to boast about their sexual excesses or abnormalities."
Facebook
Twitter