1. Alfred Charles Kinsey: The first major figure in American Sexology By: LeeAnn Mizgalski

2. Alfred Kinsey  Born in Hoboken, New Jersey on June 23rd, 1894 to Alfred Seguine Kinsey and Sarah Ann Charles.  Mother was very sweet, overpowered by his Father's strong personality  Poor, conflicting relationship with Father  First 10 years of life full of disease, left him weak, skinny, and bullied  Poor social life, few friends, kept to himself  Girls found him attractive  Family was extremely poor  Belonged to a very strict group of Methodists  3 services on Sundays  No work, relaxation, or entertainment... only praying allowed  Kinsey's father was the most strict, & unforgiving of all  Projected his morality onto the community  Stay away from temptation at all costs

3. Kinsey, Cont.  Sister Mildred, and brother Robert  Success in school gave him confidence  Never dated in High School, although extremely good looking  Father made sure Kinsey was ignorant to sex, girls, and any form of intercourse was forbidden  Nudity forbidden in the household  Joined Boy Scouts  Enjoyed the outdoors  Spent summers working at camps  Became a leader and taught nature, counselled young boys questions about sex & masturbation  Solution: Pray

4. Kinsey, Cont.  Interested in Biology, but Father wanted him to study Engineering  Attended Steven's Institute for Engineering for two years  Stood up to his father and entered Bowdoin College to study Biology  Graduated with high honours (magna cum laude)  Scholarship to Bussy Institute at Harvard  Graduated with a Phd in 1919  No signs of emotional attachment to anyone throughout these years  Dedicated himself to collecting and researching the Gall Wasp  Almost completely unresearched  Collected thousands and was very successful  Offered a job as assistant professor of Zoology at Indiana University  On faculty with B.F. Skinner

5. Prok and Mac  Met Clara Bracken MacMillen in October of 1920, the only daughter of two teachers from Ft Wayne, IN  First woman he "dated"  Took her on expeditions, camps,  Awkward, inexperienced  Asked her to marry him, at first rejected because she already had another proposal, but later accepted.  He wrote to an old biology professor his expression of love:  "The girl is a graduate student working in Chemistry at Indiana University. She is a very brilliant scholar; is one of the best athletes in the place. She knows the birds better than I do, knows the flowers and trees etc., is a capable hiker and camper, a champion swimmer. We are to spend the major part of June hiking in the wildest country in the White Mountains."  So romantic.

6. Kinsey's Family  3 children, Anne, Joan, and Bruce  First son Donald died of childhood diabetes before his 5th birthday  Mac realized that work always came first to Kinsey  Spent majority of time studying, researching  Always teaching, little lectures to his kids throughout the day  Openly supported nudity in the house (very liberal idea at the time)  Openly talked about sex  Video

7. Sexual Ignorance in America  Sex was never talked about  Virtually no education other than total abstinence  Ignorance, confusion, terror, GUILT  College girls in the 1930's didn't know how babies were born  Often thought kissing made you pregnant  Study of High School boys, age 12-18 in 1939:  91% didn't know what virgin meant  96% didn't know the word "masturbation"  71% knew nothing about menstruation  19% knew a baby had to have a mother, but none realized a man was required.  27% didn't know the word "intercourse"  Astoundingly misinformed

8. Role of Religion  Original Sin = knowledge of sex  All sex is sinful unless between a man and a wife for the purpose of having children  Anything seen as abnormal was considered pathological  Religion instilled fear into its followers  Anything sexual is wrong; masturbation, nocturnal emission, sexual thoughts  Semen as a life source: Losing an ounce of semen is equivalent to losing 40 ounces of blood. Expelling this "precious fluid" is killing yourself.  Video

9. Kinsey's History of "Homosexuality"  Ultimately, it is agreed upon that Kinsey was Bisexual (According to the Kinsey scale, he was a 3)  Because his father prohibited contact with girls as he was growing up, Kinsey found comfort in the male friendships made during boy scouts.  Accounts of one "romantic" friendship with a boy named Kenneth Hand  Unlikely anything sexual happened in this friendship  Kinsey's first graduate student, Ralph Voris was "the second great love of his life"  Still doesn't necessarily mean that they were lovers  Corresponded mostly through letters

10. Guilt  Kinsey's father instilled this fear and ignorance into his children  Kinsey would punish himself for his "sinful" thoughts by shoving objects into his urethra, such as pipe cleaners, pencils, and toothbrushes. Continued on through adulthood.  Circumcised himself without anesthesia  "He could neither forget nor forgive his fathers stern and guilt inducing morality, nor the agony it had caused him for so long. The most basic force behind his sex research was deeply personal and extremely simple and it lies here: that no one else should have to suffer as he had suffered."

11. Let's talk about Sex!  VD skyrocketed: at the end of the 1930's 500,000 new cases of Syphilis reported a year, 700,000 cases of Gonorrhea  There was a desperate need for education  1938 was the start of Kinsey's Marriage Course at IU  Open only to married or engaged students, seniors, faculty and their wives  First lecture had nearly 100 students  First four lectures covered topics such as: reproductive anatomy (complete with pictures), functions, contraception, techniques, harmlessness of masturbation, wet dreams  Talking about all this in a society where the word "sex" is barely mentionable.  "Could hear a pin drop"  At the end of each lecture, he asked students to give their sex histories  By the summer of 1938, it was the most successful series of lectures ever run at IU  Video

12. Beginning Research  Many students came to Kinsey with simple questions about sexual behavior, that no one had explored yet.  "No one knew precisely what people did and therefore everyone was anxious or guilty about whatever they did."  Trained research associates to help take sex histories to unlock this information  Clyde Martin  Wardell Pomeroy  Paul Gebhard

13. Taking Sex Histories  Between February and June of that same year, Kinsey took over 280 sex histories  Private and confidential interviews with subjects  Goal is to be neutral and unbiased in order to facilitate honest answers  Each interview was recorded on one sheet of paper divided into 287 squares  Each little square or part of a square answered a different question  Coded in order to be entirely confidential  One page could hold the equivalent of 20 pages of information  In June, Kinsey traveled to Chicago in search of homosexuals to give their sex histories  Over time, Kinsey and his research associates collected more than 18,000 sexual histories

14. Kinsey Scale, developed 1939  Kinsey was amazed at how often homosexual acts showed up in the sex histories; 1/3 of heterosexual histories has homosexual acts and nice versa  Kinsey developed his Heterosexual-Homosexual rating scale  Scale from 0, meaning exclusively heterosexual, to 6, meaning exclusively homosexual.  Like Freud, he believed everyone was bisexual  1939, hired undergraduate student Clyde Martin

15. Clyde Martin  Undergraduate at Indiana University, would have dropped out if Kinsey hadn't employed him.  Within the next two years, Kinsey fell in love  This affair lasted about three to four years  Kinsey was open about everything with Mac from the start  Not sure if she genuinely shared his beliefs or if he had to persuade her  Martin asked what Mac would say if he asked her to have sex with him  Mac was delighted  Led to open relationships in members of his team (for those who were willing)

16. The Kinsey Reports  Kinsey obtained funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to further study human sexuality  5300 white males and 5940 white females  Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948  Sold more than 200,000 copies  Best seller in the U.S. and became an international sensation as well  Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953  Also a best seller  Sold even faster than the Male report  185,000 copies two weeks after it came out  Kinsey was featured on the August 24th 1953 issue of Time Magazine  Mixed Reactions  Findings caused horror, shock, and outrage, as well as gratitude and admiration

17. Controversy  1940, opposition to the marriage course was at its peak  Dr. Thurman Rice (previous "health" professor) publicly attacked Kinsey in his lectures  Studied pre-adolescent orgasms, wasn't questioned until nearly 40 years later  Interviewing of pedophiles  Some say he advocated for abuse of pre-adolescents for science, the Kinsey Institute denies these allegations  http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/about/controversy2.html  Some say he skewed results, focused too heavily on homosexuality

18. Death  In 1954, The Rockefeller Foundation ended Kinsey's funding  They had to consider public opinion; too much negative feedback that they did not want to be associated with  From then on, diligently searched for funding  Stress, anxiety slowly wearing on Kinsey  Heart attacks, rising blood pressure  Died August 25th 1956, age 62

19.  The Kinsey Institute for Research of Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (1947) is still at Indiana University  Kinsey's life has been depicted in plays, TV shows, and movies since 1953  Movie, "Kinsey" made in 2004, received two golden globe nominations  Most importantly, his research sparked great change in social and cultural values in the United States

20. Discussion  Kinsey openly talked about sex with his children, he was also often naked around his children. Do you think open communication between parents and children in this way should be a social norm? How would you choose to educate your children about sex?  How do you think Kinsey (and Kinsey's behaviors) would be greeted in today's society?