The Kinsey Report at 60
It was on this date, 5 January in 1948, that W.B. Saunders Co., a medical-textbook publisher in Philadelphia, published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, by Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin. The cover price was $6.50. Exceeding all expectations, The Kinsey Report was a sensation, going through at least 11 printings and selling over 200,000 copies in its first year. The Report became a New York Times #1 best-seller on 23 May 1948. The book made Kinsey a celebrity; he appeared on the cover of Time Magazine on 24 August 1953, immediately preceding the publication of his Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.
Last November I read Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. It was difficult to find a copy to read. None on the shelves anywhere in my county's library system, none new at bookstores or even at the Kinsey Institute, and the book is currently out of print. Happily I located a reasonably priced used copy that turned out to be the first edition from 1948, albeit the 11th printing. For my purposes it was quite a find.
The book is pretty amazing to read. I've seen it described as dry and academic–I found it anything but. One's expectation is that such material will be, but I found Kinsey's writing unexpectedly lively in amidst all the statistics and tables and graphs. I also felt that I got a strong sense of Kinsey's opinions and interpretations, although those never clouded the straightforward and uncolored presentation of the voluminous results.
Even more interesting, I felt, was reading this book 60 years later, after it has become such an icon of our culture. I knew how much of it was going to be misinterpreted and misrepresented for years to come, and most of those points were the ones that Kinsey himself thought would be the most controversial, too. You could tell from the careful presentation he made of some of the results, as though he was slowing down for sharp curves.
There were, I noted, only two place in the 700-page text where he used boldface type. The first was when he was discussing the number of men who, over their lifetime, have some sort of sexual experience outside their marriage (i.e., they have an orgasm through either extramarital intercourse or a homosexual experience). The second was when he was discussing the incidence of homosexual experiences.
This latter, by the way, is worth seeing as he originally wrote it. People go back and forth endlessly about how Kinsey said that 10% of the population was gay, but he said no such thing. As I read the book for myself–and long before I got to the chapter with those statistics–I knew that to be the case. Kinsey would never have said something so hopelessly imprecise as "10% of the population is gay". I invite you to read my book note, in which I quote the relevant section, and see for yourself. It's quite an eye opener. (In fact, I quote both boldface-usage examples.)
Reading the book was research, believe it or not. My friend and sometimes editor Ron Suresha put out a call for submissions last year for an anthology to mark the 60th anniversary of the publication of The Report, and I responded with a suggestion for a fiction story. We worked together on some ideas, I refined my story proposal, and it was accepted for inclusion.
The story, called "Between Red Covers", is a fictionalized biography of one copy of The Report, one that's bought by a character named Charlie in 1948 and signed by Kinsey in a brief encounter they have following a public lecture by Kinsey. The book survives Charlie's death, a closed-door Senate hearing about homosexuality and communism, the radical sixties, a library protest in the 70s, and passes through a few other hands before ending up as a gift for Charlie's son, Roger Lee, some 50 years after Charlie's untimely death.
When I wrote the story I was stoked with Kinsey and I finished the 7,000-word draft (my longest story in the last 10 years) in my shortest time ever (3 days). Part of my inspiration was the fact that my used copy of the book was published when Charlie's copy was published, and I felt in very close touch with the subject of my story. Writing it was quite an experience. As it turns out, mine will be the only fiction in this anthology, which is scheduled for publication in October, 2008 as a special double issue of The Journal of Bisexuality. The title is The Kinsey Report at Sixty: A Retrospective Anthology. You can read the prepublication announcement, with planned contents, at Ron's blog.
As it also turned out, by the time I'd finished the draft the story had no explicit sex scenes in it, nor did it have any overtly gay characters. It seemed odd to me, but that was what came out. Okay, there are a few incidental characters whom I knew to be gay, but they sure weren't as out as my usual cast of characters. Without really intending to, I've gone mainstream!
In fact, reading The Report as background for the writing was quite an experience, surely one of the more significant books I've read in some time. I don't know that I can completely recommend it to everyone–life is short, and there are lots of books to read–but I found it profoundly life-altering to have experienced the book first-hand.
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Sunday, 6 January 2008 at 17.53
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"Kinsey would never have said something so hopelessly imprecise as "10% of the population is gay"."
Okay, I read the book note (nicely done). I don't see what is so "hopelessly imprecise". It seems close enough for casual discourse.
on Sunday, 6 January 2008 at 22.33
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Kinsey was all about quantifying and statistics. Surveying how people had approached the subject before him, he decided to study sexual behavior in a quantifiable way, basically by counting orgasms and noting in what situations they occurred, i.e., "sexual outlets". "Orgasms in homosexual situations" was something he could measure; "being gay" was not.
"10% of the population is gay" is just not a quantification that would have come from his results, and you see that pretty quickly if you start reading the Report. You've seen, now, how differently he presented his statistics on the incidence of the homosexual outlet, telling how many, how often, and over what periods of time such outlets occurred. I found it quite a contrast to the 10% figure, which in retrospect seemed to me terribly imprecise and a result that Kinsey himself never would have written.
Whether it's good enough for casual use–that's harder to say. I wouldn't object, but much more importance seems invested in this imprecise, popular version than it is able to bear under any scrutiny or further discussion. It also is true that "Kinsey never said 10% of the population is gay", as some detractors love pointing out, although I think saying that's just as misleading as the imprecise statistic.
Maybe this is a simpler answer: there seems to be no "simple discourse" when it comes to discussing this topic.
Thanks for the compliment, by the way, and for reading the book note.
on Monday, 7 January 2008 at 01.32
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Congratulations on having your story become part of the anthology. 7,000 words. Whew!
Kinsey's landmark work went a notable way toward helping Americans accept sexuality as something that can be studied and discussed in intelligent, realistic terms. So, the anniversary of its publishing really is significant.
As far as quantifying the number of homosexuals, there's no way he would have had confidence in accurate survey results in 1948. Too many people were scared to death of being tagged as homosexual. Back then, being a known homosexual too often meant ruin, not just for the person but for his family. Being a suspected one could lead to being blackmailed.