Alfred Chalres Kinsey

Tonight I watched the movie "Kinsey" for an assignment in my Human Sexuality and Sexual Dysfuction class. For those of you are not familiar with the movie or who he is, you can check out his bio at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Kinsey. Bascially he was a zoologist at Indiana University who ended up becoming a sexologist who did research on many things related to sex that were considered taboo, or worse - immoral - at the time. He had to privately fund his research, yet produced many books, including The Kinsey Reports: Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (and in another later book, Female).

One aspect of the movie that came up very little was the influence on love on sex and, I suppose, the influence of sex on love. When asked, Kinsey said, "Love is not measurable." I don't disagree that the point of his study was on sex and the measurable aspects of sex, but doing a study about sex without considering love is like doing a study about fish without considering water: you can count fish, categorize them, put the fish under a microscope and cut in open to tell me how they work, but if you can't tell me why they live in water and how the water affects them, then I would say there are certain limitations on the published report. That is not to say that his reports aren't accurate or complete (in their own right) or wonderful for science, I'm just saying that you have to take it - like all research and findings - with a grain of salt, or at least with a certain understanding of what was attempting to be accomplished in the first place.

Kinsey did bring one "revolutionary" idea to the mainstream public: people are not necessarily completely 100% heterosexual or homosexual. Based on actual past experience, many people are somewhere else along a continuum. Kinsey wrote,

"Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.
While emphasising the continuity of the gradations between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual histories, it has seemed desirable to develop some sort of classification which could be based on the relative amounts of heterosexual and homosexual experience or response in each history... An individual may be assigned a position on this scale, for each period in his life.... A seven-point scale comes nearer to showing the many gradations that actually exist." (Kinsey, et al. (1948). pp. 639, 656)

See more about the "Kinsey Scale" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale.

He also metioned that many of the sexual acts that humans did that were considered immoral or taboo back in the 1950's were not any different than what other animal species did. I'll let you decide how you want to interpret/accept that.

I've always found it amazing how little sex is talked about in society yet how it is (or can be) such a major part of our lives. Many single people spend a lot of their free time searching for a mate. I'm sure companionship is very important, but I don't know many people who are single and looking for a completely platonic relationship. Similarly, based on my experiences and training, sex (or lack of) is often a point of contention in marriages.

That being said, I hope that this entry makes you feel uncomfortable - that means you're growing.