Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All Things

Where are you on the Kinsey scale? As a young woman, on a sleepover, did you ever give your girlfriend eyelash kisses all over her body? As a young boy, did you ever have a Platonic crush on a male friend? If you did, you might rate a 1 on the Kinsey scale which goes from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual). Being a 0 or a 6 makes you somewhat abnormal or as Kinsey would say rare. You see, terms like normal and abnormal are moral terms and not scientific ones. Average and rare are the terms Kinsey would use.

This is a very sympathetic, balanced and humane biography of a man who had a huge effect on our understanding of human sexuality. I enjoyed reading this excellent book not only because it deals with my show more favorite subject, but also because it is well written.

It seems most of the reactions to Kinsey break out along ideological lines - the negative responses are mainly from conservative monotheists and surprisingly Freudian psychoanalysts because Kinsey thoroughly trashed the evidential basis of much of Freud's understanding of human sexuality.

The author begins where Kinsey's life begins and explores his early childhood and rearing as a conservative bible-believing Methodist up through his death as a 59 year old atheist bisexual researcher of human sexuality who had become the most notorious man in America and probably the world.

Although Kinsey engaged in homosexual sex later in life, the author points out that his one early love 'affair' as a young man was most likely purely Platonic. He pursues his development and mainly focuses on his research for his two main books on male and female sexuality.

I liked how the author continually pointed out the philosophical underpinnings of his thought:

1) Evolution is a fact and should inform all our thinking,

2) Humans are animals and exist on a continuum with other animals,

3) There are no Platonic essences in the natural world. There is no such thing as a homosexual or heterosexual. There are only human animals who engage in homosexual or heterosexual sex acts. There is an infinite variety of animals within each species – hence no essence. No two humans are alike. No two humans like the same kind of sex or amount of sex. As Max Stirner once wrote, ‘The I cannot be generalized.’
Before studying human sexuality, Kinsey made a name for himself from studying Gull Wasps. He measured over a million specimens, cataloging them according to 28 different attributes and found that there were no two alike.

4) Normality and abnormality are purely statistical concepts. 'Normal' should be called average and 'abnormal' such be called rare.

5) Christianity and its sexual mores has done tremendous damage to Westerners.

6) Our sex laws should be reformed to reflect that normality is not a moral norm but a statistical concept.

A balanced biography of a twentieth century pioneer who forever changed our world. show less

An excellent, detailed biography of Alfred Kinsey. Probably not for the idly curious.