Alfred Kinsey
Alfred Kinsey
Alfred Charles Kinseywas an American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and sexologist who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. He is best known for writing Sexual Behavior in the Human Maleand Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, also known as the Kinsey Reports, as well as the Kinsey scale. Kinsey's research on human sexuality, foundational to the field of sexology, provoked...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth23 June 1894
CityHoboken, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
We are recorders and reporters of the facts-not judges of the behavior we describe.
We are recorders and reporters of the facts - not judges of the behavior we describe.
Cheese crumbs spread before a pair of copulating rats will distract the female but not the male.
If all persons with any trace of homosexual history, or those who were predominantly homosexual, were eliminated from the population today, there is no reason for believing that the incidence of the homosexual in the next generation would be materially reduced. The homosexual has been a significant part of human sexual activity since the dawn of history, primarily because it is an expression of capacities that are basic in the human animal.
It is amazing to observe how many psychologists and psychiatrists have accepted this sort of propaganda, and have come to believe that homosexual males and females are discretely different from persons who respond to natural stimuli. Instead of using these terms as substantives which stand for persons, or even as adjectives to describe persons, they may better be used to describe the nature of the overt sexual relations, or of the stimuli to which an individual erotically responds.
Few males achieve any real freedom in their sexual relations even with their wives. Few males realise how badly inhibited they are on these matters.
The male's difficulties in his sexual relations after marriage include a lack of facility, of ease, or of suavity in establishing rapport in a sexual situation.
The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species.
We are the recorders and reporters of facts - not the judges of the behaviors we describe.
If biologists so often forget the most universal of all biologic principles [variation], it is not surprising that men and women in general expect their fellows to think and behave according to the pattern that may fit the law-maker, or the imaginary ideals for which the legislation was fashioned, but which are ill-shaped for all real individuals who try to live under them.
The heterosexuality or homosexuality of many individuals is not an all-or-none proposition.
The range of variation in the female far exceeds the range of variation in the male.
The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity.
It is ordinarily said that criminal law is designed to protect property and to protect persons, and if society's only interest in controlling sex behavior were to protect persons, then the criminal codes concerned with assault and battery should provide adequate protection. The fact that there is a body of sex laws which is apart from the laws protecting persons is evidence of their distinct function, namely that of protecting custom.