Alfred Kinsey, as described in the film “Kinsey” by Bill Condon and research articles, was an openness man determined to discover and reveal the truth behind the sexual behaviors of the American population. Moreover, he challenged beliefs regarding human sexuality. Being knowledgeable about sex was viewed as something immoral; a topic only a physician was to talk about simply because they knew body parts. In fact, people had no idea what masturbation meant or what being “normal” during sexual activity was. Even though, Kinsey’s scientific research was conducted within the United States, still his findings became a worldwide source of information. Yet, today many controversies arise as a result of his scientific research.
Kinsey was born on June 23, 1894 in Hoboken, NJ. Once he graduated from high school with the highest honors, he enrolled as a biology student at Harvard University. He became a gall wasps expert and after identifying a few new species, in 1919, Kinsey received his doctor of science degree. Kinsey soon became a member of Indiana University faculty. In 1924, he married, Clara Mcmillen, one of his students at the same university.
The film “Kinsey” released in 2004 based on Kinsey’s life seems to be determined to shock the audience. In 1938, according to the film his proposal of teaching a “marriage” course gets accepted and is only offered to teachers, seniors, and married students. Not surprisingly, his students feared to talk about sex, in fact, they didn’t know much at all. Ultimately, he begins to hand out questionnaires that students are encouraged to fill out concerning their sexual behavior because of no previously recorded research. However, many students failed to respond and Kinsey decided to conduct i...
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...ital sexuality, orgasmic experiences, and masturbation practices. His findings uncovered the large difference between social attitudes and what people actually did. As a result, the Rockefeller foundation ended his funding. Kinsey’s health worsened because of no more fundings, people’s attacks, and the thought of his organization in the future. Another of Kinsey’s major accomplishments was a library located at Indiana University filled with sexual research.
The scientific study of human sexual behavior conducted by Alfred Kinsey led to a sexual revolution. Globally, people were able to open up about the topic and use it as a source of information. “Kinsey” allowed the audience to obtain a better grasp about conducting scientific study and his personal life. Even though his research methods have been called upon question and controversy, he changed people’s lives.
At the beginning of the 1900s, there was a “sexual revolution” in New York City. During this time, sexual acts and desires were not hidden, but instead they were openl...
Alfred Kinsey was an American biologist and sexologist who founded the institute for sex research at Indiana University. Kinsey’s founded the research of human sexuality, the research dealt with male and female sexual behavior, which provoked a lot of controversy in the 1940s and 1950s. One contribution that Kinsey did is that his reports on his research contributed to the sexual revolution because his findings brought the era to a more relaxed attitude towards sexual behavior. Another contribution that Kinsey brought to light is women’s sexuality. Before Kinsey, there only a little bit of research done on women’s sexuality and by performing the research Kinsey showed women as sexual being and brought to light the idea that sex and sexuality
The 19th-Century was a period in which the expression of sexuality and sexual compulsion was firmly repressed. Charles E. Rosenberg explores the typical behaviors of the sexes, and how they related to the expression, or repression, of sexuality in “Sexuality, Class and Role in 19th-Century America.” Medical and biological literature tended to adopt very sex-negative attitudes, condemning sexual desires and activity. This literature was often ambivalent and self-contradicting. Initially, people viewed sex as a normal human behavior: they believed sexual excess was bad, but thought it was natural and necessary after puberty because horniness left unsatisfied and untreated could cause disease. However, in the 1830s, the previous sex-neutral attitude was quickly replaced by a harsher, more negative view of sexuality. “Quacks,” or charlatans, tried to instill people with a crippling fear of sex by warning them of
The years between 1890 and 1930 witnessed fundamental changes in sexual mores and practices, the reorientation of marriage toward companionate relationships, the emergence of distinct sexual taxonomies, and a shift from Victorian silence about the body and sexuality to the emergence of a new psychological language about sex. Despite the prevailing social attitude of sexual repression in the Victorian era, the movement towards sexual emancipation began towards the end of the nineteenth century and brought with it profound shifts in the attitudes towards women’s sexuality, homosexuality, pre-marital sexuality and the freedom of sexual expression. New norms of pleasure exposed a rhetoric of regulatory conceptual frameworks posited by “sexologists” who delivered psycho-medicalized sexuality to the masses of largely uninformed readers, thirsty for information and explanation. Men and women, reading the work of sex theorists such as Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud had different views on sex than had their parents before them. Victorian sexual counterculture contributed to the awareness of radical change that became the social matrix of sexual liberalism. Sexual liberation, then, can be seen as an outgrowth of a process which witnessed the significant loss of power by the values of early nineteenth century moral tradition, and the rise of a more socially and sexually permissive society. Tolerant attitudes of greater sexual freedom and experimentation spread, and were captured in the concept of modernization.
Masters and Johnson were a pioneering team in the field of human sexuality, both in the domains of research and therapy. William Howell Masters, a gynecologist, was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1915. Virginia Eshelman Johnson, a psychologist, was born in Springfield, Montana in 1925. To fully appreciate their contribution, it is necessary to see their work in historic context. In 1948, Alfred C. Kinsey and his co-workers, responding to a request by female students at Indiana University for more information on human sexual behavior, published the book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. They followed this five years later with Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. These books began a revolution in social awareness of and public attention given to human sexuality. At the time, public morality severely restricted open discussion of sexuality as a human characteristic, and specific sexual practices, especially sexual behaviors that did not lead to procreation. Kinsey's books, which among other things reported findings on the frequency of various sexual practices including homosexuality, caused a furor. Some people felt that the study of sexual behavior would undermine the family structure and damage American society. It was in this climate - one of incipient efforts to break through the denial of human sexuality and considerable resistance to these efforts - that Masters and Johnson began their work. Their primary contribution has been to help define sexuality as a healthy human trait and the experience of great pleasure and deep intimacy during sex as socially acceptable goals. As a physician interested in the nature of sexuality and the sexual experience, William Masters wanted to conduct research that would lead to an objective understanding of these topics. In 1957, he hired Virgina Johnson as a research assistant to begin this research issue. Together they developed polygraph-like instruments that were designed to measure human sexual response. Using these tools, Masters and Johnson initiated a project that ultimately included direct laboratory observation and measurement of 700 men and women while they were having intercourse or masturbating. Based on the data collected in this study, they co-authored the book Human Sexual Response in 1966. In this book, they identify and describe four phases in the human sexual response cycle : excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. By this point in time, the generally repressive attitude toward sexuality was beginning to lift and the book found a ready audience.
The reason I am writing this paper is to share the information I attained about human sexuality by learning about sexuality in a college setting and by exploring my sexuality through personal experiences. I do not consider myself to have experienced much exposure to sexual behavior but I do have a cultural bias to what I consider a heavy amount of exposure because the North American culture is considered more promiscuous and sexually active than other cultures.
It was not until Kinsey et al. (1953) developed the Kinsey Scale to measure sexual orientation that the notion of sexual fluidity began to be considered in Western cultures. It consisted of a seven-category continuum based on two indicators: sexual fantasy and sexual experience. Both fantasy and experimental measures were found to have similar result, and many agreed this form of measurement was better than one consisting of only a few discrete variables (Ellis, Burke, & Ames, 1987).
In the article “An Anthropological Look at Human Sexuality” the authors, Patrick Gray and Linda Wolfe speak about how societies look at human sexuality. The core concept of anthology is the idea of culture, the systems of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors people acquire as a member of society. The authors give an in depth analysis on how human sexuality is looked at in all different situations.
While alleged sex addictions have existed for many years, they have only recently been accepted as valid excuses for sexual deviancy. Attitudes toward sex addiction in the past offer a stark contrast to how it is viewed today, as the constantly medicalizing society insists on putting everything under the technical microscope. Sex addiction is commonly associated with a person’s inability to control his sexual behavior, implying an abnormally high sex drive and obsession with sex which have negative effects on his personal life (MedicineNet 2007, 1). Rather than breaking down the science behind the disorder, a customary practice in today’s medicalized society, older attitudes towards sex addiction placed it under the same light as alcoholism, where a lack of control and unwillin...
Milstein, Susan A. Taking Sides Clashing Views in Human Sexuality. Ed. William J. Taverner and Ryan W. McKee. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.
I had the opportunity to watch the movie “Kinsey.” In the process of watching this movie, I had different reactions when some scenes were presented. First of all, in the movie it showed that Kinsey’s father who was the preacher of a church was close minded about the topic of sex. However, I felt that this movie generalized that all pastors or preachers are close minded to talk about topics that refer to sex. In my experience, my pastor is very open to talk about sex, he would teach teenagers about what sex is about and he would talk to couple about that topic openly. However, it is true that keeping teenagers from sexual encounters before marriage is one of the goals preachers have.
Jacques Balthazart, in the book, Biology of Homosexuality, examines the historical and cultural context in which homosexuality is expressed and attempts to dissect homosexual behavior and cognition from a biological perspective. He explains that there are behaviors in human sexuality that exhibit greater diversity than the sexual behavior of other animals. This exertion may lead one to conclude that human sexuality, as a result of its biological and emotional components, is more complex than the sexuality of other species. (Balthazart, p.4)
James Harrison, who was a scientist, doctor, and society, started coming up with the resolution that there are some ways of treating the abnormality. Scientists and doctors started to conduct various kinds of abhorrence and aggressive therapies. It was implied that doctors even tried to castrate, but in conclusion none of the experiments were seem to be able to transmute sexual orientation of the people involved. The report by Alfred Kinsey in 1948, in his book “Being Homosexual”, was commented by Richard Isay, verbalizing that Kinsey and his co-workers for many years tried to find patients who had been indoctrinated from homosexuality to heterosexuality during many therapies. Inadvertently for them none of the cases gave an expected result. With these words he acknowledged that the statement that medicine is not the answer, which in its turn supports that homosexuality is not a mental condition, but genitival feature as many other above mentioned facts claim. Later on Hooper and Bruno Klopfer were performing and confirming tests to determine who would be homosexual. They notionally theorized that they would be able to differentiate homosexuals from heterosexuals by denotes of the Rorschach test. But as it turned out none of the test they were designing could genuinely reach the needed effect. The heterosexuals and homosexuals were interchangeable, demonstrating an
One of the earliest proposed definitions of asexuality came from the famed Alfred Kinsey in 1948, who called it “a lack of sexual behavior associated with a lack of sexual response to erotic stimuli” (Houdenhove, “Asexuality” 1). Later re-definitions include “a lack of sexual behavior associated with a lack of sexual desire” in 1977, “a lack of sexual orientation” in 1980, “a lack of sexual behavior” in 1993, and “a lack of sexual desire or excitement” in 2007 (Houdenhove, “Asexuality” 1; Yule 1). It was not until 2016 that researchers recommending using the definition that asexuals had been using to define themselves (which had also undergone some modifications), describing asexuality as “a lack of sexual attraction” (Houdenhove, “Asexuality” 1). It is interesting to note that all of these definitions define asexuality as “a lack of ______”, as it implies that there is something that asexuals are missing and that they are not complete, but the currently used definition at least describes the phenomenon in a way that is satisfactory to almost all who discuss asexuality.