Good afternoon telarium-ga!
I have done a bit of reading on Alfred Kinsey and would like to
present you with the answer to your question, ?What was the legacy of
Alfred Kinsey's work??
First, a brief background on Mr. Kinsey.
Kinsey was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1894. His father, a
teacher, was a devout Methodist who regarded singing and dancing as
ungodly activities and who enforced a strong sense of guilt about
adolescent sexual urges upon his children. As Kinsey got older, he
became strongly anti-religion, considering it a root cause of sexual
repression and therefore human misery. He remained a virgin until 27,
when he married Clara McMillen.
Alfred Kinsley attended Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine from 1914 to
1916, graduating magna cum laude with a B.S. in biology and
psychology. He received his Sc.D. in biology from Harvard University
in September 1919, and came to Indiana University as an assistant
professor of zoology in August 1920.
Sex studies started to interest Kinsey, when he taught a sex education
course to Indiana undergraduates. In 1938, Kinsey took over
coordination of the new marriage course at Indiana University, and
soon after began gathering case histories of sexual behavior. He is
often credited as the first researcher to use science to address
sexual behavior. But Kinsey?s goal was to radically redefine what was
considered normal and abnormal behavior. Kinsey and his staff
collected over 18,000 interviews, and published Sexual Behavior in the
Human Male in 1948 and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953. He
died in 1956 at the age of 62.
Sources:
The Kinsey Institute
(http://www.indiana.edu/~kinsey/about/kinseybio.html )
The Kinsery Whitewash
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,146685,00.html )
Fairfax Digital
(http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/12/1100227565498.html?oneclick=true)
The Biography Channel
(http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/new_site/biography.php?id=755&showgroup= )
Alfred Kinsley, through his research and writings, tried to persuade
the world that sex was good, and that tolerance for sexual variation
was acceptable. He wrote: ?What is right for one individual may be
wrong for the next; and what is sin and abomination to one may be a
worthwhile part of the next individual?s life.? He preached "free
sex" and "sex without consequences?.
He interviewed single and married straights, gays, lesbians,
incarcerated rapists and sex criminals. Before his published works,
Americans assumed that sex occurred only between married couples,
behind closed doors and only after marriage had occurred. His
research blew the lid off that. In fact, he discovered:
More than 90% of American males masturbated
85% had had premarital intercourse
70% had patronized a prostitute at least once in their lives
almost 60% had had oral sex
30% to 45% had had extramarital intercourse.
37% of American males had had at least one homosexual encounter
Additionally:
more than 90% of females had indulged in sexual petting
66% had dreamt about sex
62% had engaged in masturbation
50% had had premarital sex
26% had had extramarital sexual encounters.
Kinsey used these numbers to argue that women were no less sexual than
men. He further stated that a satisfying sex life was essential to
marital bliss, and that women who had had sex before marriage were
more likely to have happy, sexually satisfying marriages than those
who had not.
Sources:
The American Experience
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kinsey/peopleevents/e_male.html )
A Look at Kinsey
(http://www.townhall.com/columnists/johnleo/jl20041115.shtml )
Because of Kinsley?s research, the American Law Institute's Model
Penal Code, published in 1955, embraced the right of consenting adults
to engage in homosexual and anal sex. As the code was adopted by state
after state, the old crime of sodomy ceased to exist. In 2003, the
U.S. Supreme Court dealt the final blow to the country's few remaining
sodomy laws, overturning Texas's prohibition of homosexual sex in its
landmark ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.
Source: The American Experience
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kinsey/peopleevents/e_after.html )
Many researchers followed in his foot-steps, like William Masters and
Virginia Johnson. Their research coincided with the sexual revolution
of the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which hippies expounded on the
benefits of free love and implored people to "make love, not war."
Although Kinsey expelled the belief that sex should only occur behind
close doors and only as part of a marital union, his research sadly
became something of the standard for sexual behavior, putting the
human race in harms way.
A few statistics found that
..before Alfred C. Kinsey?s books (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
[1948] and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female [1953]) inspired the
?sexual revolution,? just two sexually transmitted diseases?syphilis
and gonorrhea, both easily treated?were relatively common in the
United States. Now public health physicians regularly treat patients
for a range of STDs that numbers more than two dozen (some of them
potentially deadly). Now, nearly one in four Americans has an
incurable STD.
Before Kinsey?s ?sexual revolution? no one had even heard of AIDS.
Between 1981 (during the midst of the ?sexual revolution,? when AIDS
was discovered) and 2003, AIDS killed 20 million people.
Before Kinsey?s ?revolution,? among girls who had their 16th birthday
in 1950-1952, 6.6 percent reported being sexually experienced. Now,
about half of all high-school-age young people (male and female)
report being sexually experienced.
In 1960, as Kinsey?s ?sexual revolution? was just beginning, the
birthrate for unmarried women was 21.6 per 1,000. By 1990, the
birthrate for unmarried women was 43.8 per 1,000 (and that does not
account for abortion deaths, a procedure which, of course, was illegal
and very uncommon before Kinsey?s ?revolution?).
Source: Family.org
(http://www.family.org/focusoverfifty/articles/a0034116.cfm )
[The US has] had a 418% increase in reported forcible rape from 1960 to 1999,
From 1960 to 1999, we've had a 400% increase in out-of-wedlock births.
Each year, we contract 70,000 new cases of syphilis, 650,000 cases of
gonorrhea, 64,000 cases of AIDS, 3,000,000 cases of Chlamydia,
1,000,000 cases of genital herpes and 5,500,000 cases of human
papillomavirus.
Sixty-seven percent of our sex-abuse victims are now under the age of
18. Thirty-four percent are under age 12
Source: Kinsey's Flawed Research - Thomas A. Szyszkiewics
(http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/REALKINS.HTM )
The most controversial part of Kinsey?s research was his use of children.
??Even worse than Kinsey?s contrived science was the unspeakable harm
children endured as Kinsey?s associates gathered the data for Kinsey?s
books. John Gagnon, a close Kinsey research associate, said others
might describe as sex crimes the research Kinsey used for his books?in
her book Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences, Judith Reisman states that
pediatricians and health professionals ?confirm what most mothers and
fathers know quite well; children, especially young children, would
not voluntarily submit to these abuses.?
There is a rather long but in-depth essay posted on the internet about
Kinsley?s research. You can find it at
http://www.literatus.net/essay/KinseyReport.html
--------------------
Although Alfred Kinsey tried to leave the legacy of ?free love? and
?anything goes?, and although he opened the doors for a new sexual
frontier, it is my opinion after researching Alfred Kinsey, the true
legacy left was that Alfred Kinsey was a sexual psychopath whose data
was derived from an unrepresentative proportion of the population ?
mostly prison inmates and sex offenders, including pedophiles and his
own unusual sexual practices.
I would be happy to answer any additional questions you may have.
Please let me know if this answer is sufficient. Thank you!
Nenna-GA
Google Answers Researcher
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