Alfred KinseyAlfred Charles Kinsey was a biologist and the first major sexologist born on June 23, 1894 in New Jersey. He took an early interest in Biology and Entomology much to the dismay of his overly religious and controlling father, who insisted that he study engineering as opposed to biology. This worked for two years until Kinsey left the Stevens Institute of Technology and enrolled in Bowdoin College in Maine to study biology. He and his father never reconciled, not even when Kinsey graduated with high honours in 1916 from the university would his father attend the graduation ceremony. After receiving a doctorate for his applied biological studies at Harvard University, he became a professor at Indiana University. In 1938, he decided to make a career move to focus on the biology of sexual stimulation, the mechanics of intercourse and the techniques of contraception. He himself was a married man with four children but considered himself to be bisexual, allegedly having an agreement with his wife that they would have an open marriage. He focused on studying the mating practices of gall wasps and from there developed a scale that measures homosexuality ranging from 0 to 6, with 0 being exclusively heterosexual and 6 being exclusively homosexual. He was later able to relate this to human sexuality and the growing popularity of his research allowed him to found the Institute of Sex Research at Indiana University in 1947.
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The Kinsey ReportsBetween 1948 and 1953, Alfred Kinsey published two books on human sexual behaviour titled "Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male" and "Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female" These books mainly focused on the diversity of sexual orientations for both men and women, this is where the common statistic stating that an estimated 10% of the general population are homosexuals. The data for these reports were taken from thousands of interviews from people in the general public, interviews that were conducted by Kinsey's research team rather than using pre-collected data. Though a large portion of the books were focused on the concept of sexual orientation, it also talked about sexual behaviours in relationships including extramarital sex and sex before marriage. Both books were extremely controversial at the time of their respective publishings, mainly because the topics covered in the reports challenged peoples beliefs about sexuality set in society as they extensively covered homosexuality. Despite this, the books were incredibly successful and sold over 750,000 copies and was translated into thirteen different languages. There were many reports following the publication of the books that were either full of high praise for the progressiveness of Kinsey's research or full of outrage at the notion of acceptance for people with homosexual tendency's.
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The Kinsey ScaleKinsey himself also made a point of saying that sexuality is prone to change over time, and that there are differences in physical sexuality and psychological sexuality. In his research, Kinsey also stated that he did not approve of using such terms of 'heterosexual' and 'homosexual' to describes one's sexuality. Along with the two reports that were published, Kinsey created a scale that has since become known as the 'Kinsey Scale', which describes the 7 degrees sexual orientation according to Kinsey's research:
0 - Exclusively heterosexual 1 - Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual 2 - Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual 3 - Equally heterosexual and homosexual 4 - Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual 5 - Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual 6 - Exclusively homosexual X - No socio-sexual contacts or reaction |
"Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexuals and homosexuals. The world is not divided into sheep and goats" |