Susan Martinuk, National Post, December 2, 2004
Let's talk about sex - that's the tag line for Kinsey, the recently-released bio-pic that revolves around one man's passion to study sex and his supposedly heroic struggle to tear down societal borders on every type of sexual expression.
Okay ... so let's talk about sex. Most specifically, let's talk about the sex that was either not mentioned in the film or was granted only an obscure allusion. As with many biographies, the real story about Kinsey lies in what isn't told to the audience.
Dr. Alfred Kinsey was a zoologist whose sexual curiosity led him from studying the morphology of gall wasps to becoming a supposed 'expert' on the American sex life. To dispel what he saw as wide-spread ignorance about sexuality, he carried out face-to-face interviews with thousands of individuals to determine every minute detail of their sexual histories. His conclusions were considered the first ever scientific studies of human sexuality and were published in two controversial volumes, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female (1953).
The erotic and liberating conclusions of his first book were devoured by the mainstream. In fact, many consider Kinsey to be the father of the sexual revolution that transpired in the following years and even Time magazine touted Kinsey's name as "an acceptable synonym for sex."
But Kinsey's popular support was not shared by the scientific community, which had serious criticisms about his research methodology, or lack thereof. Over the years, numerous scientists and groups such as The American Statistical Association, The US National Research Council, and The Lancet journal have exposed most of Kinsey's research as fraudulent and empirically worthless. Some colleagues (including Paul Gebhard, who is depicted in the film) now admit that the data was improperly attained and evaluated.
To prove that sexual activity covered a broad range, Kinsey sought out groups that participated in specific sexual acts such as prisoners, sex offenders, pedophiles, prostitutes and homosexuals. He then wrongly extrapolated the data obtained from these specific subsets to the general population.
Despite these blatant errors and the fact that his theories have never been proven nor his data replicated, Kinsey's research has had a lasting impact on the sexual mores of society. According to Hollywood, that is his legacy.
But Kinsey did far more than that and his true legacy is his hideous attempt to use science to validate/justify pedophilia.
Key claims in his 1948 book (that are not mentioned in the movie) are that all children are sexual from birth and that sexual activity in children (including babies) is natural and healthy. According to Kinsey, if it weren't for religious oppression and draconian cultural taboos, the proper expression of a child's sexuality would be evident.
Kinsey came to this conclusion in two ways: One, by conducting unspeakable experiments on children and, two, by interviewing pedophiles on their experiences while raping children.
Kinsey wrote, "It's difficult to understand why a child, except for it's cultural conditioning, should be disturbed at having its genitalia touched... or disturbed at more specific sexual contacts."
That's not scientific research -- that's the intentional rape and sexual abuse of children. That's illegal. And his interpretation of children's reactions to his experiments as orgasms is remarkable on as a measure of his delusion.
The rest of the data came from pedophiles -- including one who is briefly shown in the movie. In other words, the data is based on the distorted perceptions of pedophiles who believed that the children they were raping actually enjoyed the activity! Gebhard says much of the data from pedophiles was taken "with a grain of salt," yet Kinsey still deceptively presented it as scientifically-obtained data.
The real story about Kinsey isn't what he did, it's how he did it. That's an important distinction, even if it was ignored by Hollywood. After all, if the movie told Kinsey's real story, it would be nothing but a horror flick about child molestation.
National Post 2004
Susan Martinuk is a Vancouver columnist; susanmartinuk@hotmail.com
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