Talk:Kinsey Reports/Archive 1

Archive 1

Suggested Refactor

I think there's some work needed on this page and the one in Alfred Kinsey himself.

Specifically, the details of the controversy should all go into one place. My suggestion is either an article on their own, or a section of this article.

I'd favour a separate article. At present the material on the controversy completely overwhelms what little there is about what the reports actually say. The cynic in me notes that this is exactly the sort of result that lobbiests are paid to achieve.

I think some rearrangement of the material would also help in NPOVing it. The goal is to clearly describe the arguments without promoting either side. Quite a challenge.

Whatever their failings, the Kinsey reports continue to be among the most quoted documents in this whole area of research. Their supporters claim that this is because of the quality and quantity of data that they represent, rather than merely because of their place in history. So the article is important. Andrewa 20:36, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I think moving controversies to separate articles is generally not advisable because it can be interpreted as a weak NPOV violation. The facts speak for themselves.—Eloquence 23:41, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes, good point, and you've been doing this for longer than I have I think. That's just the sort of feedback I was after. I've now added a little more content about what the reports actually say, and hopefully put it a bit more clearly. Andrewa 05:56, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)

OK, that's done. The material I've removed will reappear in the articles linked to over the next few hours. Andrewa 01:32, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

---

"Based on his data and findings, others claimed that ... women enhance their prospects of satisfaction in marriage by masturbating previously. Neither claim was made by Kinsey, but both were (and continue to be) attributed to him."

Including by us further up the page! Which is correct? -- sannse (talk) 21:04, 23 April 2004 (UTC)

Overlap with Alfred Kinsey article

There is currently far too much overlap between this article and the article on Alfred Kinsey. Specifically, the personal attacks against Kinsey are minutely documented in both articles. Rather than obsessing over all the claims and counterclaims, we should offer a concise summary of why the Kinsey Reports were controversial. In place of the pedantic mudslinging, we should offer at least a tiny bit of substance about the reports themselves (of which there is currently none). Kaldari 21:47, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

They're quite big books. Thoroughly fascinating and odd reading. I was looking for 'graffiti' in the index, and found the subject heading 'guinea pig' adjacent to it. The main detraction I've seen in academic work is mostly just a change in social science methodology over the years. Particularly with respect to his sampling technique. Part of the extremity and oddness of some of the findings reflects who he was interviewing, i.e., not a balanced cross-section of the population.Limegreen 1 July 2005 04:24 (UTC)

Yes, but of course who can say what a "balanced" cross-section actually would consist of? More to the point though, I think Kinsey himself was very unsatisfied with the inadequacy of the sample group. Not necessarily its composition per se, but its size. Because he only completed 12,000 interviews, rather than his goal of 100,000, he never considered the Kinsey Reports to be anything more than preliminary findings. Of course if you compare the Kinsey Reports to sex studies done prior to it, the methodologies of the earlier ones are laughable: sample groups of a few hundred consisting entirely of college students! Kaldari 1 July 2005 04:34 (UTC)

He certainly did open up a whole new field, and I don't dispute that. In the process of having a bit of a fix of the Reisman page this afternoon, I discovered that the American Statistical Association, with no lesser people than Tukey being pretty unhappy with it in 1948. It's not the size of your sample, it's how you get them. And how you less representation from the people who don't get included. If you want to generalise to the population, you elect to use a random sampling technique, and try to ensure that if you have 20% of an ethnic group in the population at large, you have 20% (approx) in your sample. I have to emphasise that I'm not anti-Kinsey's research. It's pretty representative of some of the interesting research done in the social sciences that was still being done in the 70s. I guess what I'm saying is that I substantially agree with you. I've been shocked in the last few days to discover the amount of NPOV in psychological topics which I had only previously associated with political ones!!!

FWIW, I'm amazed at how much has been made of the ideological critique, and how little has been made of the academic critique. It needs more of the latter, and less of the former.Limegreen 1 July 2005 08:17 (UTC)

I certainly agree. The ideological critiques are, for the most part, little more than political mudslinging from the usual suspects. This article would certainly be better suited to feature serious critiques of his scientific methodology. Although any such critiques should be careful to emphasize that Kinsey's methodologies were actually rather robust for the time. Of course statistical methods have been significantly refined in the last 50 years, but in the 1940s Kinsey was actually quite a pioneer at establishing any sort of viable methodology in sex research. It should also be noted that Kinsey made a substantial effort to have a diversified sample pool and to control for as many variables as possible, although any such study would obviously be faced with innumerable demographic variables. For example, Kinsey conducted sample interviews in all 50 states (in both urban and rural locales), and controlled for gender, age, education level, and religious background consistently thoughout the study. Kinsey was also careful to limit the conclusions drawn from the data. For example, he refused to make any conclusions about the relationship between race and sexuality since he didn't consider his data in that area to be statistically robust enough. As I said before, he considered the Kinsey Reports to be "preliminary data". In most instances, it was other people, not Kinsey or the Reports themselves, that drew overbroad conclusions from the data. In many ways, Kinsey was his own best critic, although certainly not above the criticism of others, such as Tukey. As you probably know, however, statistics are something more of an artform than a science in many ways. It's always possible to challenge someone's statistical methods, no matter how thorough they are, simply due to the relative impossibility of controlling for all variables. I imagine in many cases such "scientific" attacks were just as politically motivated as those of the religious ilk. That said, I definitely think they should be given adequate coverage in the article, and perhaps appropriate rebuttal if such rebuttals exist. Kaldari 16:16, 1 July 2005 (UTC)

Can I just point something out

This article discusses all the meta stuff about the reports, but doesn't actually substantively say what was in them. This strikes me as an information deficit that needs correcting. ~~~~ 2 July 2005 15:32 (UTC)

I don't think anyone would disagree with you. Please feel free to add some actual substance to this article. Kaldari 2 July 2005 20:30 (UTC)

I only photocopied the few pages relevant to my work, which are only a tiny (and not particularly interesting) subset of the massive whole. I should point out, however, that the findings of my own research (conducted in a different country 50 years later), and those of others, broadly confirm Kinsey's findings. However, graffiti is not at all the core of the reports, so not really worth mentioning..... Limegreen 00:22, 3 July 2005 (UTC)

Content in need of verification

Moved here from Bisexuality:

Some studies, notably Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), have indicated that the majority of people appear to be at least somewhat bisexual. (Kinsey was himself bisexual.) The studies report that most people have some attraction to either sex, although usually one sex is preferred. According to some (falsely attributed to Kinsey), only about 5-10% of the population can be considered to be fully heterosexual or homosexual. On the other hand, an even smaller minority can be considered truly bisexual, that is, having no distinct preference for one gender or the other.

I'm holding off on putting this in the article until its accuracy can be confirmed. Anyone? -- Beland 05:09, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Sounds roughly accurate, although I haven't read Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. We need to get rid of the weasel term though: "According to some". This paragraph seems pretty useful to have in the Bisexuality article though. I would encourage the editors to reintergrate some of it back into that article rather than remove it entirely. Kaldari 17:37, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I have integrated the material from Bisexuality into this article (in the new Findings section). Kaldari 23:14, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Contradictions

The first line tells us that the work is "controversal", the last part tells us it is generally accepted. Both can't be right. Given the arguments presented in the article, I'm removing the word "controversal", as the controversy seems to have been taken care of.

--Scot W. Stevenson 00:59, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Clarification

"Criticism principally revolved around the perceived over-representation of some groups in the sample: 25% were, or had been, prison inmates, and 5% were male prostitutes." The phrase "perceived over-representation" makes it sound as if there was in fact no over-representation. Unless someone is willing to argue that 25% of the general population was made up of current and former inmates, or 5% of male prostitutes, I think "percieved" should probably be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jamesg (talk • contribs) 07:54, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Context and significance

I have an edit in mind, but I don't have a full feel for how true it is...

CURRENTLY: "Many of Kinsey's conclusions, while radical for the time, are now generally accepted."

SUGGESTED: "Kinsey's conclusions, while radical for the time, slowly gained generally acceptance over the following decades."

The edit removes the "now? when was that?" problem. Also it should lead to a listing of what was accepted, and what was not (or has not yet). I really think that "Many of" is playing fast and loose with something that should be specified and cited -- it isn't encyclopedic. (Yes, I know, don't complain about work that hasn't been done yet, ... do it. So maybe these are to-do notes for myself. ;-) ) --Charles Gaudette 20:48, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we should list those conclusions that are now accepted. Because it seems to me that Kinsey was enormously influential a generation after his research, but that his findings are now increasingly being questioned or replaced. For example, the idea of sexuality as fluid has taken quite a lot of hits from biological research in the past decade or so. DanB†DanD 22:22, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

What "conclusion" are we talking about. Supporters, in defence of Kinsely, claimed that Kinsely never explcitly claim that his sampling subjects are representative of U.S. population. If he never made like of "radical" claim such as 10% of American are homosexual, what kind of radical conclusion did he make? Is it that "deviant" sexual behaviours exist? Duh, read Frued. Plus, this kind of sampling procedure are, by definition, faulty unless being verified by by other source. Problems is so well know and obvious to anyone who done statistics that I wonder what kind of Kinsely finding are accepted by whom. In fact, most modern academic would argue that any studies based on this type of sampling method are useless from the outset. If I collected sampling from people who are willing to talk for hours about chess, then, what is the likelihood of me getting test subjects who never played chess? Modern polling method correct this kind of bias, firstly, by making randomly approach to potential samples and, secondly, by repeatedly verifing the correlation of their sample with other statistical sources (e.g. voting intention can be verified after the event, diet habit can be indirectly verified from supermarket). Either Kinsely didn't make any radical claim, in which case, his conclusion (chess player talk about chess) is useless or Kinsely did make radical claim, in which case, his conclusions are erroneous. Vapour

http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/= not a reliable source

Come on some of people have to admit that the site might be just a tad biased. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.185.18.126 (talk) 23:17, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Kinsey-Male.jpg

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BetacommandBot 21:03, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

content?

I came to this page looking for the content of the reports. All I have found are some notes on methodology, then some accusations of child abuse. Why are the reports famous? What did they show? This should be the main topic of the article.

Indeed, Kinsey's hardly my area, but regarding this article as an article in general, I must say, it seems to me that any page on a piece of scholarship 80% of which page is consumed by attention to the negative opinions of the political opponents of the author and virtually none of which is concerned with the academic and statistical content of said scholarship itself is inherently broken beyond repair and simply needs to be thrown away and redone. This page bears no relationship in form or content to the useful summary of an academic study. --Yst 17:06, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Judith Reisman (here and in the linked article dedicated to her specifically) seems to be presented as a legitimate critic, yet her website does not appear to contain anything of scientific merit: erotoxins sound very 'new age' and plucked out of the air and the core reason for her stance, as cited on her own website, is that Kinsey's results cannot be true because she does not want to believe that they could be. It seems likely that she is a 'moral majority'-style crusader who is not interested in facts if they contradict the belief system with which she was raised.

As a former biologist, I find her style very reminiscent of 'Creation Science', full of fallacies and flaws, influential to some in oratory style, yet short on content. Like 'Creation Scientists' who are often engineers, etc, rather than biologists, Reisman appears to have no academic qualifications in this field, and given the content of her website, is not even a good 'communicator' in any sense of the word, despite having a PhD in that (more of a manipulator, in my opinion). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.211.6 (talk) 00:19, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Clyde E Martin

Is there any reason why Clyde E martin is not specifically referenced - he is clearly the third author. He also has an (admittedly scant) page which could be referred to.GeoffGC (talk) 11:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I would say go for it. Clyde Martin's article could also use some work. -- Banjeboi 23:52, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Merge of content from Kinsey Scale

I merged the entire Kinsey Scale article to Kinsey Reports. The article was very short, there was little more than a colorful table to indicate what it is. This information is better conveyed in the context of the whole of the Reports. Feedback is welcome. Whatever404 (talk) 01:33, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Currently the article explains the Kinsey scale three times one after the other. I think that two explanations would be more than enough. TomyDuby (talk) 04:22, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Looks just like a joke

There is no number telling me how many people were tested. Those percents are invalid just by not having a amount of people who participated. Also are invalid by not giving other numbers like deviations, mean ...

Also are invalid by presuming perfect substitution of 10 billion of people by not having at least more than at least 5 bilion. I do not know of anybody in my neighbourhood who was asked that question. Welcome to statistics ;).

Also I guess You normally don't say such things to anybody, somebody might have identified You. And even if he was wrong You might be hurt. Assuming that a normal / average person does not want to be hurt.

The other side is who were those people anyway? Random wall-mart customers?

It makes me sad what people publish these days and it gets recognized as science. Or maybe I am wrong and this man/men had a deep discussion and study of those people. 84.16.123.194 (talk) 13:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Indeed I think you may be mistaken here. The actual content here may belie that this research was pioneering and there were thousands of interviews on matters of personal sexual activity at a time when the subject was taboo. -- Banjeboi 13:45, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Removed

“ Critics, however, can point to the results of a survey of 3,321 American males in their 20's and 30's by Billy, et al was published in the March/April 1993 issue of the Alan Guttmacher Institute publication Family Planning Perspective found that only 2.3% reported any homosexual contacts in the previous 10 years, and only 1.1% exclusively engaged in homosexual sex during the same time period. ”

I've removed the above as it seems dubious and needs proper sourcing. That is, I believe the study took place and the institute is fine; however their focus is on managing predgnancies and family planning so it's hardly surprising that the male population they encounter may have dramatically lower homosexual experiences. If we could look at the posting it could clear this up. -- Banjeboi 20:16, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Benjiboi, you have deceptively edit-warred this comment from the discussion page so I am placing this discussion page under protection. I am also restoring all comments you have edit-warred. As for the statement that straight people who have children have less homosexual experiences than gay men who have children, that's your bias towards both gay men and straight people with children, and has no basis in research. The point that they were trying to make through this research is that if you questioned the "normal" population, as Kinsey purported to have done - in other words, a sample of the population that did not include an overrepresentation of prostitutes, pimps, sex offenders and pedophiles - the kinds of experiences that Kinsey claimed were normal and widespread would drop dramatically. They were trying to show that the only way Kinsey was able to cook the numbers was because of his overrepresentation of prostitutes, pimps, sex offenders and pedophiles. What Kinsey did is the equivalent of a researcher pretending to interview the general public about murder, but instead visiting jails and questioning mostly convicted murderers about murdering people, passing these murderers off as a representative sample of the general public, and subsequently claiming that, hey!, murder is actually more common and widespread amongst the general public than you would think. The man was a fraud.MichaelZoe (talk) 21:40, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

discussion page placed under protection

I request administatory intervention against Benjiboi's edit-warring on this article. He has edit-warred the entire Criticism section of this article out of existence, then edit-warred against another Wikipedia user (not me) who tried to salvage some of the content from the original Criticism section that Benjiboi had maliciously deleted under the pretence of "clean up". He has also maliciously and deceptively edited this discussion page so as to delete my comments warning him about his malicious edit-warring. I am restoring my comments and placing the discussion page under protection. Administrators, please do something against this vandal. I am getting to work to restore the Criticism section that is now lost due to the vandalism. MichaelZoe (talk) 21:40, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, take a chill pill, drink a beer, smoke a spliff or whatever....You are new here, when you have these disputes you can talk about them here and reach consensus, if your view can be supported great, if not it shouldn't be here. Edit waring and attacking such as you are doing now clouds your arguement. Ask why the sections are being removed it might help...Hell In A Bucket (talk) 00:46, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Statistics: Selective Presentation and Contrasts?

I don't see any more or less POV in the Criticism section than elsewhere.

My concern is that there appears to be erratic if not selective presentation of stats.

For example, the Orientation section mentions ratings of 3 and then "5 or 6" but not 4. An NPOV presentation of info about the scale would indicate % for EVERY category -- neither excluding any, nor lumping any together.

Another example: Duberman's rebuttal is cited in regard to "white, college-educated males" (describing himself?) with contrasting stats only for "those less educated" -- complete absence of stats for other permutations such as black college-educated.

Most of the other stats cited have incomplete contrast, suggesting an indirect POV bias to highlight Kinsey's revelations about the homosexuality-heterosexuatlity spectrum (which were salutary, but have far more text than his other findings).

BTW, were Kinsey's studies really universal? Would it have been more accurate for him to have replaced "human" in the titles with "American"? Martindo (talk) 03:33, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Criticism section by their very nature tend to be POV, this is why it's usually best to integrate criticism into context. Agree with your stats assessment; this article is used variously to support various views. -- Banjeboi 11:41, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

A very good reference for methodological questions : "With enough cases, why do you need statistics? Revisiting Kinsey's methodology", Journal of Sex Research, May, 1998 by Julia A. Ericksen [1].I've read it but I cannot summarize it, i'm not native english speaking, as you can see. But it's a good job to do to. There are very interesting analyses about the representativenes of the sample, the way Kinsey wanted to work and the mistakes he made. It's not against him or in his favour. There are only answers about : how did he work, why did he work like that, and what can we say now about his intentions, his methods and the results.Cordially--Noel Olivier (talk) 09:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Benjiboi, you have deceptively edit-warred this comment from the discussion page so I am placing this discussion page under protection. I am also restoring all comments you have edit-warred. No, it's NOT best practice to stuff away criticism into other sections just because you want to create the illusion that the reception of the research did not include any criticism. The reason why Benjiboi is urging you to integrate Criticism into other sections is so that it ends up disrupting the flow of the article, thus eventually justifying deletion of all criticism. He is staging a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the Criticism entry warns: Negative criticism that is integrated into the article should not disrupt the article or section's flow. For example a section entitled "Early success" should not contain one paragraph describing the success of the topic and three paragraphs qualifying or denying that success. This is often why separate criticism sections are created.. The Kinsey research provoked so much legitimate criticism that a separate criticism section is fully justified.MichaelZoe (talk) 21:40, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

different definitions and methodologies

From what I know of Kinsey's studies and subsequent studies such as Edward Laumann's, the difference in results comes from using more restricted definitions. So if you define homosexuality more narrowly than Kinsey you are going to get fewer homosexuals. A man who does not or has never had sex with another man but is strongly sexually attracted to men still experiences homosexual attraction, yet if only his acts are counted then he's not going to show up in statistics on homosexuality. There are plenty of bisexual men who have only had sex with women. It may be useful for the article to point out that methodology and definitions may be responsible for the contrasting results. 121.73.7.84 (talk) 04:37, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

10% gay?

This article suggests that "Parts of the Kinsey Reports regarding diversity in sexual orientations are frequently used to support the common estimate of 10% for homosexuality in the general population. However, the findings are not as absolute, and Kinsey himself avoided and disapproved of using terms like homosexual or heterosexual to describe individuals"

That doesn't properly explain the issue. Kinsey actually never wrote that 10% of men are gay or tried to suggest that; it's not that the "findings are not as absolute", but that Kinsey NEVER said anything LIKE that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirp (talk • contribs) 06:14, 2 April 2010 (UTC) An aside to the issue of homosexuality: In the film "Kinsey" there is mention of J.Edgar Hoover of the F.B.I. asking Kinsey for ways to find Homosexuals in the State Dept. This raises the issues of Govt. invasion of privacy, persecution of minorities, human rights, legislation, over lap of cultural and social prejudice versus science.Too broad to be covered directly in the article, but perhaps will be shown in links to relevant subjects in wikipedia. The discussion of sexuality is inevitably controversial and strains the rules of NPOV required in wikipedia.Ern Malleyscrub (talk) 23:52, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Criticism section

This content should be integrated elsewhere as is invites POV issues as is. -- Banjeboi 20:18, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Benjiboi, you have deceptively edit-warred this comment from the discussion page so I am placing this discussion page under protection. I am also restoring all comments you have edit-warred. There is nothing wrong with the Criticism section. Benjeboi is untrustworthy and has an agenda. Over the past months the sex-radical/sex-positive movement has been edit-warring all over Wikipedia, vandalizing and deleting Criticism sections of entries sex-radical/sex-positive figure-heads left and right. Criticism sections that included painstakingly collected examples of reception obtained fully legitimate academic journals. Banjeboi himself recently defended an edit-warring vandal who deleted the entire Criticism section of another article about a Kinsey student. That Criticism section included a quote from Dr. Judith Reisman, the Kinsey critic quoted in the Criticism section that Banjeboi is now targeting for deletion. Banjeboy is targeting this article because it too incorporates the criticism of Dr. Judith Reisman. Banjeboi wants to create the illusion that Kinsey and his students have no critics. Also, watch out for Banjeboi's bunch trying to start another edit-war in this article (and other Kinsey-related articles) ike they are doing elsewhere on Wikipedia. I am deleting the stupid banner, I am placing this article and you on my watch-list in case you start another edit-war, or if you attempt to defend someone else edit-warring another Criticism section out of existence. MichaelZoe (talk) 21:40, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Why is there no criticism section? Kinsey's reports are heavily criticised for being overly simplistic, and distorted by his own sexual perversities. Furthermore at most they represent the sexual mores of Americans in the 1940's and 50's. Very different from the rest of the world today.124.197.15.138 (talk) 04:46, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

It is weird that there's no direct reference to Susan Brinkmann and Judith Reisman's attack on the reports, these were well known critiques. They use the word 'debunk'. The article is not balanced, surely some criticism would help readers ?! Incidentally, the user Banjeboi has been banned indefinitely. GerixAu (talk) 06:49, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Reference for 1954 American Statistical Association Report

I've added a reference for the 1954 American Statistical Association Report on the Kinsey 1948 book. This 1954 book was edited by several foundational statisticians, three of whom have their own Wiki pages.Ajschorschiii (talk) 04:18, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

" the general population" not in source

• Article: Their conclusion, to Gebhard's surprise he claimed, was that none of Kinsey's original estimates were significantly affected by this bias: that is, the prison population, male prostitutes, and those who willingly participated in discussion of previously taboo sexual topics had the same statistical tendency as the general population. The results were summarized by historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist Martin Duberman, "Instead of Kinsey's 37% (men who had at least one homosexual experience), Gebhard and Johnson came up with 36.4%; the 10% figure (men who were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55"), with prison inmates excluded, came to 9.9% for white, college-educated males and 12.7% for those with less education."

• Source: to his own surprise -- found that Kinsey's original estimates held: Instead of Kinsey's 37 percent, Gebhard and Johnson came up with 36.4 percent; the 10 percent figure (with prison inmates excluded) came to 9.9 percent for white, college-educated males and 12.7 percent for those with less education. And as for the call for a "random sample," a team of independent statisticians studying Kinsey's procedures had concluded as far back as 1953 that the unique problems inherent in sex research precluded the possibility of obtaining a true random sample, and that Kinsey's interviewing technique had been "extraordinarily skillful." They characterized Kinsey's work overall as "a monumental endeavor."

Doesn't support the statement about general population anywhere. And "statistical tendency" is open to interpretation. It only shows that the volunteers didn't differ in their sexual interests from the prisoners and prostitutes. DS Belgium (talk) 17:26, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Was added by: (diff) (hist) . . ‎; May 13, 2010 01:18:23 . . Subversive.sound (talk) (grammar; added X-asexual to Kinsey Scale) DS Belgium (talk) 17:31, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

diff DS Belgium (talk) 17:34, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more. By definition everyone who participated in Kinsey's surveys were "those who willingly participated in discussion of previously taboo sexual topics", prisoner, prostitute or not. What the reanalysis shows is that the prison and male prostitute component weren't greatly different to the rest, but it does not mean it's the same as the general population. Then there is the problem that surveys of sexuality conducted since Kinsey have shown a much smaller proportion of the population that is either gay, bisexual, or who has had homosexual experiences. This is despite the fact that sex, including homosexuality, is far less taboo than it was in 1948. Some of it, I suspect, is the difficulty in finding a truly representative sample willing to discuss this in 1948, and some is, no doubt, down to a mismatch between the Kinsey scale and the attempt to shoehorn his results in to the LGBT vs "straight" identifications we seem obsessed with these days. His main positive impact, scientifically, was to begin a serious study of a previously taboo subject, and attempt a rational, statistically based analysis. I suspect he did the best he could, although you could question some of his ethics, and certainly the validity of relying on child molesters to say whether or not children could experience orgasm and sexual desire! But the problem is that his work is now seen as unquestioning "gospel truth" for a certain political groupings. Hence attacking, or defending, Kinsey's work is much more than a scientific analysis, or acknowledging that research has come along way, and representative samples are easier to come by now. It is, rather, totally dependent upon ones view of the LGBT rights movement. The LGBT rights movement enshrines Kinsey's work as "holy writ" and continually quotes it, ignoring more recent data. This is because the closest any subsequent study has come to the claimed "10% of the population is gay" line is half that figure. This is important for any advocacy group as they need to show as many people as possible are intimately connected with a particular issue, and hence there is a sizable constituency for any legislator backing such change, or backlash to opposing it. If it were to transpire the gay population was only 1-4% of the population (as some later studies indicate) it would be much harder to lobby for change. Interestingly, many gay activists would reject the Kinsey Scale (which is what these figures really refer to) as it implicitly implies sexual orientation is, to some degree, able to be chosen. Likewise it is in the interest of opponents of the LGBT lobby to discredit Kinsey, as it discredits this "10% figure" that is supposedly based on his work. It is a case of politics trumping science. My own take is that Kinsey did do some morally dubious, and scientifically questionable, research - basically taking pedophiles self-serving word on child sexuality, and on other cases had difficulty trying to get representative samples due to few people being willing to discuss such things. It is small wonder if his statistical results were skewed. The point is that he opened up a whole new area of research into human behavior, and developed techniques to investigate what many regard as deeply personal, and perhaps shameful, aspects of their lives. But his research is hardly the last word or proven for all time. He should be seen as a pioneer, not the last word. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.161.78.193 (talk) 06:37, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

... Human Female (1953) Published Reviews

• • at UNZ.org - Periodicals, Books, and Authors
• The American Scholar, Winter 1954, pp. 106-109
• The Saturday Review, September 5, 1953, p. 21
• The New Yorker, September 19, 1953, pp. 109-110
• The New Republic, November 9, 1953, pp. 17-18
• Encounter, March 1954, pp. 69-75
• The Nation, October 10, 1953, pp. 294-295
• The Saturday Review, September 26, 1953, p. 21

Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 19:31, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

... Human Male (1948) Published Reviews

• • at UNZ.org - Periodicals, Books, and Authors
• The New Yorker, January 3, 1948, pp. 60-62
• Politics, Winter 1948, pp. 52-55 - PDF
• The New Republic, February 9, 1948, pp. 26-30
• The Saturday Review, March 13, 1948, p. 17 - PDF
• The Saturday Review, March 13, 1948, p. 19 - PDF
• The Saturday Review, March 13, 1948, p. 19 - PDF
• The Saturday Review, March 13, 1948, pp. 34-35 - PDF
• The Hudson Review, Spring 1948, pp. 136-142
• The Nation, May 1, 1948, p. 471
• The American Mercury, May 1948, pp. 623-629 - PDF
• The Harpers Monthly, June 1948, pp. 553-556

Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 19:31, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

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"See also"

Someone plunked this into this section:

• In a 1955 hearing before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, Inspector Roy E. Blick of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia testified that he had seized a pornographic film titled The Kinsey Report.

This is not a 'see also': the way it's presented it's not even clear what you are supposed to see (the man himself? the film (no link, does it even exist?) the committee?) Beyond the title for a film about which we know nothing verifiable what is the relevance? Having read the two pages (that's presumably the "see also"), I see nothing of any relevance whatsoever that can be added to the article that wouldn't be synthesis without a supporting secondary source. As it's not a see also either, it simply doesn't belong in the article.ZarhanFastfire (talk) 07:26, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

For some reason I'd thought there were other works called The Kinsey Report and had expected to find a disambiguation page here (and when a work of the same or a similar title is notable enough to have its own article it's the sort of thing you would place in {{See also}}.) But I have no objection to deleting mention of it from this article. ▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 14:54, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

References

Clyde Martin

I've added Clyde Martin to the list of authors. He is listed as one on the cover currently in the article (a primary source of course) and his article lists him as one of the authors as well. Although the reference given there is a broken external link, it should still be verifiable. Andrewa (talk) 17:39, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation funding of the report should be mentioned 50.101.9.97 (talk) 17:26, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

OMG his sample wasn't random!! --welcome to psychology

Seriously, why are these presented as valid criticisms? I think they would be better termed as caveats, caveats which apply to lots of psychological research besides Kinsey's. Does anyone really think it is possible to obtain a random sample on a sex survey? I do this kind of thing for a living and let me tell you, you are lucky to get 50% response rate on a 5 item survey on something like water quality. Kinsey's work was and is phenomenal and is as scientific as anything is in psychology, his results are hardly more "controversial" in the field than evolution is in biology.

"Kinsey's own sexual behavior has been subject of more scrutiny than that of perhaps any other researcher."

- why? I dunno.

---

Conservative groups were trying to find evidence of "abnormal" sexual behavior, to argue that his primary interest was promoting this kind of behavior in the mainstream. "He's a pervert, so he's trying to make us all perverts", the logic goes. Don't look at me - read Reisman's work for a good example of that kind of propaganda. This is NPOV though -- that his sexual behavior has been examined to a very large extent is a fact. -- user:Eloquence

I guess it's similar to the scrutiny that a religious reformer would get: if you criticize the sins of society, society will look for ways to shut you up by calling you a hypocrite. But an ad hominem attack doesn't affect the soundness of a person's reasoning (not in my eyes, anyway). --Ed Poor

Are you saying that since all psychology satisitics are so biase, any rubbish is good as any? I disagree. Sampling of voting intention, for example, can be verified after the polling day. So not all sampling have to be rubbish. It's an another example of political incorrectness gone wrong when a valid academic criticism is accused of right leaning bias. Kinsely opened himself up for accusation of bias because he did something which is obviously faulty from the ouset. Vapour

There's a difference though: Kinsey wasn't a hypocrite, those who scrutinized his sexual behavior appealed to societal prejudices. The religious fundamentalist who preaches the evils of sex and then winds up in bed with a prostitute is a hypocrite. That doesn't make him wrong (to claim so would indeed be ad hominem) but it may make him less trustworthy. -- user:Eloquence

Perhaps I didn't make my point clear. I agree that someone who preaches one thing and does another is a hypocrite, and I have found that calling someone a hypocrite is often an effective way of getting people to dismiss what he says. My analogy may have gone too far, because I meant that Kinsey's opponents may have been trying to discredit him ad hominem by trying to dig up dirt on him. If he had been shown to be gay or a pedophile, I surmise, his opponents would have exposed him hoping that his research would be dismissed as self-serving.

Anyway, I'm not so interested in Kinsey's character as I am in his research methods: does his research tell us anything about American sexual practices? --Ed Poor

The intent of the attacks on Kinsey may have been to smear him as a paedophile, but even once it was accepted that he was not, the suggestion that he had used data made available to him by paedophiles through their criminal acts left an issue congnate to that of the use of data from Nazi medical experiments. In practice, this juxtaposition exposed apparent hypocrisy on both sides of the divide. -- Alan Peakall 17:45 Nov 29, 2002 (UTC)

Kinsey was rarely attacked on personal grounds in his heyday. Great emphasis was placed on his extensive, boring research on gall wasps to reassure the public that this was no weirdo, but a serious scientist who, having exhausted gall wasps, had simply moved on to another species to study. It is only recently that it has come to light that the Kinsey coterie were swingers, that Kinsey encouraged his wife to participate (pimped her, you might say), that he was a masochistic bisexual who had had gradually gone from a 6 to a 1 or whatever his scale about sexual preferences was, that the "research" on orgasms in infants and children was performed by pedophiles, etc.etc.etc. This all appeared in a serious work of scholarship that was excerpted in The New Yorker, hardly a hotbed of rightwing propaganda. For some non-rightwing examples, check out this link to Clean Sheets Erotica Magazine or this survey from Knitting Circle: Gay and Lesbian Studies. It seems natural that righwingers too should be taking this point up. I believe he was a hypocrite, however important his scholarship may have been. Deal with it. It is disingenuous to pretend there was no connection between his behavior (which he kept secret) and his research. Ortolan88

I am sorry my phrasing above was misleading. I meant even were it accepted that he was not (a paedophile). I accept that it may be the case that he was (I am not disinclined to deal with it), but the hypocrisy that I was referring to on the pro-Kinsey side was that of those who protested that Kinsey was subject to smears of guilt by association while reserving to themselves the right to assert a progressive identity by expressing moral outrage at the use of data from Nazi medical experiments. -- Alan Peakall.

Most of the dung-flinging against Kinsey comes from one person, Judith Reisman, who also believes that there's a huge homosexual conspiracy to turn children gay -- see article. What the propaganda against Kinsey has in common is this: a lot of funding from Christian-fundamentalist sources. Kinsey made absolutely clear in his book that the data came from men who had illegal sexual relationships with children. Where else should he have gotten the data from? Had he himself observed chilren's sexual behavior, the allegations would be even more furious. Child sexuality is one of western society's biggest taboos, and anyone who dares to violate it must be punished, if posthumously. From this it becomes understandable that a child who experiences orgasm must obviously have been "tortured", as some detractors have claimed. A child experiences orgasm? Unthinkable! --Eloquence

An Ad Hominem abusive against Kinsey does nothing at all to discredit his research. Even if he did every horrible act he's charged with that still doesn’t do a thing to make his research invalid. After all even Josef Mengele's work, though highly unethical, could contain useful research.--Matt 13:49, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Nothing to discredit his research? Using pedophiles to determine if children enjoy sex and experience orgasm? I've seen interviews with a man who had sex with his daughter, and he was quite adamant she "enjoyed it" and was a willing participant etc. Then she was interviewed, and said the opposite! Many pedophiles (like date rapists) insist their victims "enjoyed it" - it's self-serving. They have an obvious interest in exaggerating the "sexuality" of "children" and their ability to experience orgasm. If you cannot see this then you are blind. The fact that Kinsey went ahead and published this anyway, along with the rest of his work, does raise some questions about his data, as much of it is subjective. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.161.78.193 (talk) 05:45, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

A tad too late, but even Oprah Winfrey told live on TV that the two guys allegedly sexually abused by Michael Jackson claimed they have found pleasure in being abused by Michael and claimed to have lied in court about that because they loved Michael and wanted to protect him. Oprah's point: except for violent child sexual abusers, the child usually likes being sexually abused. And she said that's the very perverse part of it, that children instead of blowing the whistle, they love the person who abuses them, and get desperate if they cannot be close to him/her. Oprah confessed that when she was a child she loved the person who was sexually abusing her. That's right, she did not hate him for sexually abusing her, she loved him. Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-oprah-child-abuse-idUSKBN22N2XI or https://www.podgist.com/oprahs-supersoul-conversations/oprah-winfrey-presents-after-neverland/index.html or see Nuns Sexually Abused These Women For Years. Now Survivors Speak Out. on YouTube, wherein the victims (female) tell it felt good and loved the women who abused them. The victims were seduced and made to feel special, feel loved and free. Experts say that victims spill the beans about sexual abuse when they are 50+, while the statute of limitations cancels their legal remedies about age 26. Tgeorgescu (talk) 02:55, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

That was not Oprah's point whatsoever. And as for "liked being sexually abused"? No. The child has genitals. And if those genitals are sexually stimulated, pleasure can result. Child sexual abusers use this to act as though the child wanted it and/or consented. Little children's brains are not developed enough to understand what was done to them. Like I stated here, it's "often the case that when the victim becomes a late teenager or adult, they view the sexual activity as having been child sexual abuse because they did not have the cognitive ability to actually consent as a child. If they had been a late teenager or adult, they state that the sexual activity with the perpetrator would not have happened. So now, with the cognitive ability they didn't have as a child, they know that they were taken advantage of and it was victimization." Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 03:11, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I did not deny that. The girls abused by the nuns said they loved receiving gifts from them and living the privileges reserved to adults (e.g. drinking alcohol). Oprah's point in respect to them: they were bribed and seduced, they weren't raped with violence. Of course their mind was unripe. Tgeorgescu (talk) 03:18, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Your "02:55, 22 November 2020 (UTC)" post is all kinds of messed up. I do not think you understand the topics of pedophilia and child sexual abuse well, as should be clear by a discussion we once had at the Pedophilia talk page. I'm done replying to you in this section. I know that I'll just become more upset. This talk page should be archived. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 03:23, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Coming back to the accusation of Kinsey was a pedophile, his choice was clear: either accept the journal written by a pedophile or reject it. Kinsey did not encourage that pedophile to do "research", all "research" was already past time without any involvement from Kinsey. If Kinsey decided to turn the pedophile to prosecution, Kinsey's research would have been over. He promised keeping mum to all his respondents, pedophiles or not. In fact, the prosecution would not have wanted a single felon, but access to all the felons. And over 90% of the people interviewed by Kinsey were self-declared felons, according to the law of the land and time (practically any form of sex except for missionary position between the husband and his own wife was a severely punishable felony; while masturbation was something ascribed to mentally ill people in need of therapy). Compare this with war: war is highly immoral, but if no one fights for your country, your country is doomed. tgeorgescu (talk) 12:56, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Reisman's argument was Kinsey was the ideologue of the sexual revolution, and the sexual revolution led to widespread pedophilia. Well, that's empirically wrong. Pedophiles are the losers of the sexual revolution. We may even say they had a better position before the start of the sexual revolution. Many groups have won sexual liberties, but for pedophiles it turned from bad to worse. Source: Paternotte, David (2014). "16. Pedophilia, Homosexuality and Gay and Lesbian Activism". In Hekma, Gert; Giami, Alain (eds.). Sexual Revolutions. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 264. ISBN 978-1-137-32146-6. tgeorgescu (talk) 04:19, 9 October 2021 (UTC)