ShortHand: Kinky Sex in '50s America - The Kinsey Scale

Summary

RedHanded: ShortHand - Kinky Sex in '50s America – The Kinsey Scale

Episode Date: March 20, 2026
Theme Overview:
This lively ShortHand episode dives into the taboo-smashing work of Alfred Kinsey, the 1940s-50s American biologist whose research on sexuality forever changed how people thought and talked about sex in the U.S. and beyond. The hosts trace the history of sex research from repressed religious roots through the Kinsey Reports and the development of the famous Kinsey Scale. The conversation is candid, irreverent, and fact-packed, blending humor with insightful commentary on the evolution of sexual science—and how it's shaped today's understanding of sexuality.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Sex, Shame, and Suppression (02:36–04:30)

• Historical context: In much of the world, open discussions of sex were stifled by religion and social norms, confining love and sex strictly to heterosexual marriages. Sexuality was shrouded in shame, making scientific study almost non-existent.
• Quote:

  “For as long as there has been sex, there has been sexuality. … But as the major religions spread, the critics got louder and love came to be strictly confined to happen between a man and a woman.” — C, (01:30–02:00)

• Key figures:
  • Karl Heinrich Ulrichs—pioneered academic exploration of homosexuality; published volumes on “manly love,” was forced into exile for his openness and research (04:30–05:55).
  • Magnus Hirschfeld—founded the first sexology institute in Berlin, which was later destroyed by Nazis (05:55–07:19).

2. Alfred Kinsey: From Gall Wasps to America's Sexologist (07:19–10:29)

• Background: Raised in a repressive Methodist family, Kinsey overcame illness and a strict upbringing to study biology. He spent 20 years obsessively collecting and studying gall wasps (07:19–10:29).
• Transition: His fascination with biological diversity paved the way for his approach to sexual diversity.
• Quote:

  “Now, you, my friend, my learned friend, do not need to know anything about what a gall wasp is. But Kinsey absolutely fucking loved them.” — C, (08:52)

3. The Birth of Sexual Science in the U.S. (10:29–13:07)

• Marriage studies: Kinsey was approached to teach a new course on marriage studies, sparking his realization that reliable data on human sexuality was almost non-existent (10:29–12:04).
• Quote:

  “They came to me as a biologist because they wanted the answers to allow them to judge their own lives in accordance with facts.” — A, (11:14)

4. Kinsey's Revolutionary Research Methods (13:32–18:01)

• Data collection: Kinsey and his "Inner Circle" collected sexual histories from thousands, using a coded, confidential questionnaire covering everything from first kisses to sexual encounters with animals.
• Methods: The team conducted interviews up to six hours long, prioritizing confidentiality. Respondents were referred to only by number; their names were kept separately (16:12–18:47).
• Memorable moment:

  “We just assumed that the person had done everything. So we might ask, when was the first time you had sex with any other animal? The funny thing is, we’d pick up more than you would have anticipated, mainly pet dogs and stuff like that.” — C quoting Paul Gebhard, Inner Circle member (19:02)

5. Public Scandal and Scientific Rigor (18:47–20:41)

• Social backlash: Kinsey faced public outrage and media scandal, but Indiana University defended him and his work (15:52–16:12).
• Defense: Kinsey doubled down, founding the Institute for Sex Research to safeguard his data and protect anonymity.
• Impact: When the Kinsey Report was published, it became an instant bestseller, stunning the nation (20:41–21:16).

6. Culture, Pop, and The Kinsey Report (21:16–23:18)

• Mainstream influence: Kinsey’s research impacted culture, including musicals and pop songs. Example: the song "Too Darn Hot" from Kiss Me Kate references the Kinsey Report (21:33–22:18).
• Quote:

  “According to the Kinsey Report, every average man, you know, much prefers to play his favourite sport when the temperature is low…” — C, (22:02)

7. Groundbreaking Sexual Findings (26:51–29:01)

• Male sexuality shockers:
  • 90% of men reported masturbation
  • 85% had premarital sex
  • 40% had extramarital affairs
  • 37% engaged in sex acts to orgasm with another man
  • 10% exclusively homosexual for at least three years
  • 4% exclusively homosexual their whole lives
• Binary no more: Most men who had same-sex encounters still identified as straight, challenging binary labels.
• Quote:

  “Most scandalous of all… 37% of men interviewed admitted to having engaged in a sex act to orgasm with another man. … But most of those men still considered themselves to be heterosexual…” — A, (27:00–27:45)

8. The Kinsey Scale Unveiled (28:15–29:42)

• Description: A new seven-point scale (zero=exclusively heterosexual; six=exclusively homosexual; X=no sexual contact) replaced the binary view of sexuality.
• Kinsey on social change:

  “One’s own decision as to what one should do in regard to one’s own life must take into account a great deal more than the scientific data that bear on the subject. One needs to take into account something of the religious background… The scientist applies only a particular segment of the data…” — Kinsey, as quoted by C, (29:03)

9. Critiques & The Female Report (29:42–32:22)

• Push for inclusivity: Critics challenged Kinsey's male focus; he responded with Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953, based on nearly 6,000 interviews.
• Female sexuality findings:
  • 50% of women had sex before marriage
  • 25% of married women had extramarital sex
  • Over half had masturbated
  • 43% had engaged in oral sex
  • Most didn’t orgasm from intercourse alone
• Quote:

  “And of course, the majority of women did not orgasm from intercourse alone. Some men still don’t know that.” — C, (31:15)

10. Kinsey's Own Sexuality & The Limits of Science (32:22–36:32)

• Personal revelations: Kinsey himself was likely a "four" on his own scale and, with his wife, practiced free love within his inner circle.
• Secrecy & Surveillance: Under heavy criticism, Kinsey filmed volunteers having sex for physiological studies—secretive, even controversial by today’s standards.
• Public backlash: Funding was cut, and Congressional inquiries targeted his institute. McCarthy called sex research a "communist tool” (33:38–34:23).
• Kinsey’s legacy:
  • Died in 1956, leaving behind nearly a million copies of his reports sold, 18,000 surveys, and an enormous culture shift.
  • He is remembered as “the architect of the sexual revolution” (34:23–35:21).

11. Modern Perspectives & The Kinsey Institute Today (35:21–37:13)

• Limitations: The Kinsey scale conflates attraction and behavior and treats homosexuality/heterosexuality as opposites. Modern tools like the Klein Grid and Storm Sexuality Axis are more nuanced.
• Institute’s ongoing work: Continues research on AIDS, sex education, and the impact of COVID-19, aiming to deepen knowledge about sexuality.
• Quote:

  “Sexuality is still largely a mystery. Even the leaders of today’s Kinsey Institute say that we still know basically next to nothing about it.” — A, (36:32)

• Hosts’ closing philosophy:

  “If there’s consent there and you feel like everyone in that situation is a-okay and able to give consent, go fucking nuts. It’s none of my bloody business.” — A, (37:19)
  “Go forth and fuck each other, is my advice to you.” — C, (37:08)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “In the beginning, there was sex, the original sin. And as such, Christian society spent a lot of mental energy trying not to think about it, lest you be smited.” — C, (03:26)
• “Kinsey wanted to bone up on all the world's research on human sexuality so that he could answer his students questions…” — A, (11:14)
• “Confidentiality was the highest priority… The code is passed from director to director.” — C, (18:01)
• “Dr. Sex… Next up on Good Morning America, we've got Dr. Sex to talk to you all about why you shouldn't touch your dog.” — A, (21:23)
• “The philosophy of the inner circle seemed to settle on a pretty good bottom line. Whatever you want to do, as long as there is mutual consent, is a-okay.” — C, (32:52)
• “Kinsey’s mission, what he called bringing light into darkness, carries on.” — A, (36:32)

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Important Timestamps

• Kinsey becomes biology professor: 07:19–08:52
• First marriage course sparks sexual research: 10:29–12:04
• Birth of wide-scale sex research: 16:12–18:47
• Kinsey Report shocks the public: 20:41–21:16
• The Kinsey Scale explained: 28:15–29:01
• The sequel: Female sexuality report: 30:28–32:22
• Kinsey’s free love & personal practices revealed: 32:22–33:38
• Modern sexuality science developments: 35:21–36:32

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Conclusion / Hosts’ Final Thoughts

The hosts celebrate Kinsey’s courage and the progress his research sparked, while acknowledging how much more nuance, understanding, and research is needed in sexual science. “If there’s consent… go fucking nuts.”

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For listeners:
This episode offers a witty, accessible look at the roots of sexual science, with plenty of historical context, data, and irreverent humor—a perfect entry point to the story of how one man (and his inner circle) transformed America’s attitudes toward sex, identity, and desire.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[C]

Hello, hello and welcome to sex Town. Population everybody, all the time.

[A]

Yes, I mean, you're quite right. What a way to kickstart January Dry. Jan not here. No, it's a wet and wild one.

[C]

Positively moist. Jan Sexy, sexy times this. You know what? I was going to tell you a fact, but I'm going to save it for later. For as long as there has been sex, there has been sexuality. From the ancient Greeks to Japan and China, from Mesopotamia to Papua New guinea, homosexuality and bisexuality spring up across the ancient world. But as the major religion spread, the critics got louder and love came to be strictly confined to happen between a man and a woman. At the same time, sex itself became more and more taboo, more sinful and shameful and unspoken. Because of that shame, science didn't want to touch sex at all. And the only ideas that anyone had about sex were those swimming around in their own filthy minds that they didn't tell anyone about. That is, until one former zoologist held up a mirror to a buttoned up 1940s America and reflected for the first time the whole beautiful prism of human sexuality.

[A]

He interviewed thousands of normal Americans about their sexual histories, and the results revealed incredible truths about the way people really got jiggy with it. As he put it in 1948's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male the living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. His findings defined in a scientific, dispassionate way not just gay, straight and bi, but also all the spaces in between for the first time in history. And he also dared suggest that women like sex too.

[C]

Pause.

[A]

He showed exactly what America was up to in between the sheets, and with whom. And that was just the beginning. His name was Alfred Charles Kinsey. This is the sexy shorthand.

[C]

In the beginning, there was sex, the original sin. And as such, Christian society spent a lot of mental energy trying not to think about it, lest you be smited. Until the 1800s, what was known about sex and what was acceptable was all decided from on high by a very few very unsexy religious and legal authorities, many of whom had never had sex themselves. It all focused on copulation within the context of marriage. And it was not for fun. In the mid 19th century, physicians, psychiatrists and criminologists started to dip their toes into sexual research. But even that was mostly just to define sexual disease and deviancy. Homosexuality was classified either as a mental illness or a damnable sin. But this way of thinking couldn't last forever. After the Reformation, writers like Casanova and the Marquis de Sade charted their newfound sexual freedoms. And then in the mid-1800s, people wanted to be seen.

[A]

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was a high ranking lawyer and assistant judge from Hanover, Northwest Germany. He was also an openly gay man, thought by some as the first person in history to publicly come out. He released a 12 volume book called Research on the Riddle of Manly. Research on the Riddle of Man Manly Love. And I had to say that a couple of times because I couldn't help but laugh. Man, manly, Man Manly.

[C]

My name is Man Manly.

[A]

I live in Manly. And this came out, this 12 volume book series came out between 1864 and 1879. It was the first academic volume to investigate homosexuality. Now, Mr. Carl here swiftly lost his job and was forced to flee his home state for fear of imprisonment. He wrote that any research up to that point had been biased, not to mention contemptuous. And by publishing these findings, I have initiated a scientific discussion based on facts. It was immensely influential and kick started a load of other thinkers and their own research papers, all investigating their own theories on sexuality. It even inspired the world's first gay rights movement. In Berlin in the last few years of the 19th century.

[C]

There was even from 1919 to 1933, an early private sexology research institute in Ber called I have to get into character. Oh, don't make me run. I'm too full of chocolate.

[A]

It's the tuning fork of the German accent.

[C]

Das Institut fur Sex in Weissenschaft Just

[A]

you guys, the Germans and the French particularly you just make it too easy.

[C]

So das Institute for Sexual Weissenschaft was founded by someone called Magnus Hirschfeld, who'd been campaigning for LGBT rights and tolerance since 1897. The institute pioneered research into gender and sexuality as well as offering sex counseling and treatment for STDs. It had a vast library on same sex, love and eroticism. But unfortunately, it was going to get a lot worse before it all got better. The sodomy law outlawing homosexuality stayed firm across the German Empire. And before long, it was used by the Nazis to target gay men. The institute's entire library was destroyed. In fact, some of the most famous images of Nazi book burnings come from the destruction of that very library. Elsewhere, some sex research did continue, but it was considered way too steamy to mention in any serious academic circles. Until there was Alfred Charles Kinsey.

[A]

Kinsey was born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1894. And the America that he was born into was not a sexy place. Guilt was the name of the game. Homosexuality was, of course illegal, but so was premarital sex. And in many states, oral sex was a prisonable offence, even between married couples. Kinsey's family were Methodists, and even in the church his dad was seen as particularly devout. Sundays were for prayer only, and sex and temptation, well, they were pure evil. Kinsey's early life was defined by a series of health complications in a very 1894 vibe of him. He had rickets, rheumatic fever and even typhoid. And obviously all of this came mainly from his poor inner city upbringing and a lack of exposure to, well, sunlight. So when the family moved out of the inner city and the young boy discovered a love for the natural world, all his prayers were answered at once. Despite his curved spine and weak heart, he set out on long camping and hiking expeditions and his health actually improved. Against his father's wishes, Kinsey went off to get a degree in biology and psychology, followed by a doctorate in biology from Harvard. Kinsey joined Indiana University in 1920 as an assistant professor of zoology. And then he did what any self respecting biologist would do. He studied gall wasps for 20 years.

[C]

Now, you, my friend, my learned friend, do not need to know anything about what a gall wasp is. But Kinsey absolutely fucking loved them.

[A]

I'm looking it up. It sounds terrifying. Oh, no.

[C]

Oh, what do they look like?

[A]

Just not good. What is this Big Apple situation?

[C]

Oh, wow.

[A]

Okay, I don't know.

[C]

Is it pretending to be an apple?

[A]

Possibly. It just says oak apple gall wasp. On the Wildlife Trust, we've learned nothing. It doesn't matter. This is not that episode because this is definitely not sexy.

[C]

No. But there are two things that we do need to know about gall wasps. Number one, every single gall wasp is remarkably different. And Kinsey was fascinated by the diversity of animal traits in evolutionary biology. And that interest is very crucial in what happened next. The second thing we need to know is Kinsey, perhaps inspired by his indoorsy childhood, really liked collecting things. He would eventually build up a collection of more than 7.5 million wasp specimens, which he gathered from across the US and parts of Mexico. The collection is still around today at the American Museum of Natural History. So if you want to bore yourself to death, you can go and look at it. Kinsey was listed as a starred scientist in American Men of science in 1937, and he gained a very esteemed, if pretty boring, academic reputation. Okay, we've done the wasp bit. The wasps are gone. And now we get to talk about the sex fit baby.

[A]

By the end of the 30s, there was a rising nationwide demand from women's societies to introduce a course on marriage studies. These courses would take in the legal, sociological, economic, psychological, religious, and biological sides of marriage. In 1938, the Indiana University association of Women Students petitioned the school to introduce one. It was restricted, however, to married or engaged students.

[C]

Imagine showing off after being married for 10 years, being, oh, my God, I've been doing it all wrong. This is so embarrassing. I don't know anything.

[A]

I also love the idea that it's like, oh, my God, what sort of a single person would want to take this marriage studies course? Maybe they want to find out if it's for them.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

And they're just like, no, you're banned. I say, I can't wrap my head around what these people are thinking. I can't wrap my head around what we're thinking in this day and age. So I'm just confused. So Kinsey was popular. That's what you need to know. And he knew his stuff when it came to biology. So he was invited to coordinate the new course, as he would later put it to the Today show. They came to me as a biologist because they wanted the answers to allow them to judge their own lives in accordance with facts. Kinsey wanted to bone up on all the world's research on human sexuality so that he could answer his students questions when they eventually came to his course. But much to his surprise, there was nothing out there.

[B]

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[A]

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[C]

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[C]

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[C]

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[A]

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[C]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. The little research that there was on human sexuality was based on very teeny tiny samples or massively presupposed ideas and values. And it struck Kinsey as a scientist, a man of the fact. How is it that we know so much about the sexual behaviors of every other animal on the planet, but when it comes to ourselves, we don't know a thing? He saw what he'd refer to as a gap in our knowledge, and his scientific sexy spidey sense kicked in.

[A]

Is Kinsey a sexy man?

[C]

I think quite famously not Kinsey.

[A]

I mean, he's not. He's not. Like, there's some pictures where he's not totally ugly. Apparently, Liam Neeson played him.

[C]

I can believe that.

[A]

Yeah, I can see that Liam Neeson is the Hollywood version of him. Yeah. All right, fine.

[C]

Cool.

[A]

Continue. Now that we've got that out of the way.

[C]

And Kinsey, Liam Neeson or not, saw a chance to use a morally neutral, detached, scientific approach to illuminate people's sexual habits. First, he started quizzing his students about their sex lives, which sounds like someone needed a safeguarding officer. And then he explored the anonymized results in seminars and in lectures. The student responses to the classes, whatever we may think, were overwhelmingly positive. But local citizens, parents and churches obviously were aghast. Indiana University was A publicly funded university in a super conservative state. An article in the Indianapolis Star attempted to stir up a scandal. All the bullshit that you would expect about corroding values and perverting the youth.

[A]

It's so weird. It's basically a sex course for married people. Yeah, and they're like you're perverting everybody. It's not like he's going around gyrating in people's faces while he reads them

[C]

pornography like, like the Somerset Kim.

[A]

Like I don't, I mean I get it. We can't look back on this time through modern day lenses and be so shocked by what they were doing. But the fact that they did sanitize it to every possible extent. Like they didn't even allow non engaged people to come to this course, but still people are outraged. It's wild.

[C]

Luckily though, something that we don't see very much of these days. The university defended Kinsey and they gave him a choice. He could either continue teaching his marriage course or go full time on his sexual research project. And Alfred Kinsey chose sex.

[A]

So the first step was to expand the research. He started collecting sex histories from people across Bloomington, then the whole state and soon the whole country. Data loving Kinsey set a goal to collect data from 100,000 people. He set out to interview everyone from farmhands, secretaries, housewives, prison inmates and sex workers. He even got a fat grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. He put together a crack team of research assistants, psychologists and anthropologists who he referred to as the inner circle. Don't do that, Kinsey. That's how you're going to get called some sort of pervert. Don't do that.

[C]

I bet the Rockefellers are fucking filthy as well.

[A]

Call it the outer circle, if anything, call it the incredibly transparent circle, the

[C]

very inclusive orb of light and knowledge.

[A]

And Kinsey trained each one of the members of his inner circle on how to conduct his questionnaire. It contained over 300 questions on every aspect of human sexual behaviour. First kiss, first masturbation, age at puberty, etc. Etc. Each one corresponded to a square on the answer sheet and the interviewer would mark down the answer using a code only known to Kinsey and his inner circle. Look, there's immediately flaws here. Look, I know they don't have the magical world of Typeform that we have today where you can obviously do an anonymized online survey, but obviously immediately the research is going to be flawed. Because if you're having a person sit in front of you and be like, so what age did you first Masturbate and then just with a pen and a clipboard, with their hand hovering over a circle to colour in. Obviously the data is going to be skewed, but I appreciate that he tried at all.

[C]

Confidentiality was the highest priority of Kinsey and the Inner Circle, and it was the only shot they had to ensure honest answers. Respondents would be recorded only by number and their names were filed separately. So he tries. It's just not foolproof. All the answer sheets and their corresponding names are still filed at the Institute today and the code is passed from director to director. It's thought to include sexual Histories by A. H. Auden, Jack Kerouac. I'm surprised he even bothered not be like, this is my name and this is everything I've ever done. Oh, wait, he did. It's called on the Road. William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gore Vidal and Marlon Brando. Even so, the interviewer had to memorise the entire questionnaire and sessions with interviewees could last up to six hours.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[C]

The questionnaire took about six months to learn, not least because tone was all important. Anthropologist and member of the Inner Circle, Paul Gebhard said, we'd never use the phrase, did you ever?

[A]

Because we're not playing a college drinking game.

[C]

We just assumed that the person had done everything. So we might ask, when was the first time you had sex with any other animal? The funny thing is, we'd pick up more than you would have anticipated, mainly pet dogs and stuff like that. Lovely. As the interviews went on, two things became very obvious. Firstly, the variation was so wide that any idea of normal was meaningless. And secondly, society as a whole had absolutely no idea about sex at all.

[A]

It's because they had no sex education. They were all fucking mad dogs. That's what they learned. Someone please give these people some sex education. But this whole thing, this whole project, it was raunchy and dangerous ground to be treading. The Indianapolis Star was ramping up its own campaign against Kinsey, and increasingly, public institutions were crying out for this whole thing to be shut down because they're all getting outed as a bunch of dog fuckers. So maybe with the fate of Magnus Hirschfeld's German sex library in the back of his mind, Kinsey grew worried about his work. So in 1947, he set up the Institute for Sex Research. There he could guarantee absolute confidentiality to respondents and protect the research from outside forces. Kinsey sold his entire library of research materials to the institute for $1. And a year later, he released his findings to a rather stunned public in Two months.

[C]

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male sold more than 200,000 copies and became a New York Times bestseller. Which, for a weighty academic tome full of data tables and dry scientific analysis, is pretty fucking good.

[A]

The closest to sexy sex they've got that, they're like, quick, buy it. Just imagine some man sat somewhere just touching himself while holding this open.

[C]

And he's got it inside a copy of the King James Bible.

[A]

And he's also holding it the wrong way around, like he's looking at a center page from Playboy. Oh, my God.

[C]

And boring it may have been, but it did make Kinsey a household name and he earned the nickname Dr. Sex.

[A]

Nice.

[C]

He also.

[A]

Next up on Good Morning America, we've got Dr. Sex to talk to you all about why you shouldn't touch your dog.

[C]

And this is where I'm gonna tell you my fact.

[A]

Oh.

[C]

I first became aware of the Kinsey Report because of a musical. So there was a time where musicals would be written around one song. So like Anything Goes, for example. Anything Goes. The song is written and then they make a musical around it to promote it. Right. The song It's Too Darn Hot from Kiss Me Kate is about the Kinsey Report and Kiss Me Kate was built around it.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And basically the theme of the song is that no one has sex when it's too hot.

[A]

They're also from the Kinsey Report.

[C]

Yes. According to the Kinsey Report, every average man, you know, much prefers to play his favourite sport when the temperature is low, but when the thermometer goes way up and the weather is sizzling hot. Can't remember the next bit, but no one's having sex, basically. Is the theme interesting for a musical?

[A]

Interesting.

[C]

In which I performed as a 13 year old? I think so.

[A]

Interesting. I wonder if the data corresponds to that with the number of births of babies happening, not falling directly, 10 months after peak summer seasons. Interesting. Let's find out what is the lowest birth month?

[C]

Oh, that's a good one.

[A]

Lowest birth month. Okay. A heat map shared online reveals the two months in which most people in the UK are born and also the three months that are the rarest. Would you like to guess, Hannah?

[C]

I think September, October, November are the most popular.

[A]

September and July are the most popular.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

And would you like to guess the least popular? 3 months. This is strictly UK.

[C]

I feel like nobody is born in. I don't know anyone who's May or June.

[A]

Oh, no, I've got loads of Juneers. Got loads of Juneers. It's November, December, January Interesting. Yeah, there you go. Which would possibly correspond with the summer.

[C]

Well, I believe not really, but you know, whatever. Anyway, so. Despite starring in Broadway musicals, Kinsey also spoke at conferences around the world. He appeared on the COVID of Time and was consulted by governments on proposed legislation. Singer Martha Ray even released a satirical song called Ooh, Dr. Kinsey, which was banned from the radio, which meant it only got more popular.

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[A]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go

[C]

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[A]

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[C]

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[C]

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The book itself was a sensation and it's pretty easy to understand why.

[A]

And the book made the US public entirely Rethink Male Sexuality with only anecdotal evidence to go on, people had a pretty skewed idea of what went on between the nation's sheets. The report showed that 90% of men admitted to having masturbated, 85% to having premarital sex, and 40% had had extramarital affairs. Most scandalous of all, and remember that this is the late 40s, 37% of men interviewed admitted to having engaged in a sex act to orgasm with another man. That is much higher than I would have guessed, but most of those men still considered themselves to be heterosexual, and that finding is still pretty routine in more modern surveys of sexual behavior. But to the US public back then it was unthinkable and more findings that came out was that 10% of men had been more or less exclusively homosexual for the past three years at least, and 4% had been exclusively homosexual throughout their entire lives. With homosexuality at this point still outlawed in every state in America and still classed in the DSM as a mental health disorder, it was clear that something had to change. Because with these stats, same sex activity couldn't be considered as the deviant behaviour of a mentally ill few.

[C]

And perhaps the most famous and impactful section of all was the Heterosexual Homosexual Rating Scale, which we now call the Kinsey Scale. For the first time, instead of applying the binary distinction between straight and gay, the book introduced a seven point scale and the scale ranges from zero to six, with zero being exclusively heterosexual and six being exclusively homosexual. And there is a seventh category, X, referring to people with no socio sexual contacts or reactions at all. And although the social outcry was severe, Kinsey could always rely on his scientific rigour. And when the Today show asked him, are you trying to change our social evaluations of sexual matters? He had this to say.

[A]

One's own decision as to what one

[C]

should do in regard to one's own life must take into account a great deal more than the scientific data that bear on the subject. One needs to take into account something of the religious background of not only the country as a whole, but his own religious background, one decision as what one should do in his own behavior or in social policy. Let's take all of these things into account. The scientist applies only a particular segment of the data on which the decisions may ultimately be based.

[A]

There were also fair criticisms from academics, with calls to deepen some ideas. One core finding, that men's sexuality results mostly from their class and education level, for example, was challenged. And many said that Kinsey's background as a zoologist only made him so qualified. Gynecologists, obstetricians, marriage counsellors, birth control educators, sociologists, psychologists, artists, writers and journalists all got in touch with alternative evidence. The ball was rolling. A scientific conversation about sexual behaviour was finally taking place. And one particularly common criticism was right there in the title. Where was the discussion of female sexuality?

[C]

No one cares.

[A]

So Kinsey and the team hit the books on the sequel.

[C]

Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female came out in 1953. It was the height of the Cold War and much of society absolutely did not believe that female sexuality even existed. It had, as long as anyone could remember, been considered just a response to male sexual instincts based on 5,940 interviews. The second Kinsey report said differently. It read that 50% of all women had had sex before marriage, 25% of married women had extramarital sex, more than half of women had masturbated and 43% had engaged in oral sex, which, remember in some places was still illegal. And of course, the majority of women did not orgasm from intercourse alone. Some men still don't know that.

[A]

The Christians were appalled. The male part had ruffled feathers. But to suggest that women were sexual creatures too, with their own tastes and habits, well, that was beyond the pale. Once again, premarital intercourse, masturbation and homosexuality were considered without any moral judgment. Critics tried their best to discredit the report, saying that Kinsey must only have interviewed sex workers or women of Ill repute. Even though his appendix listed the many varied jobs and social positions of all of his interviews, Kinsey's critics badly wanted to paint him as some sort of societal menace or sexual ingrate. But Kinsey was a man of science. He had no advice or comment. He was just telling it like it was in public. He kept a super clean cut image. He showed himself as being a happily married man with smart, well adjusted kids who drank very little and hated smoking and loved gardening and classical music. And as watertight as the report was, that outward Persona wasn't quite accurate.

[C]

On his own scale, Kinsey was about a four. As you might have guessed, his interest in exposure to the extremes of human sexuality gave him a pretty libertarian approach to his own bedroom. Kinsey and his wife, Clara McMillan, known as Mac, partook in a culture of free love with the rest of the inner circle. I knew that was coming. I was gonna say, and their partners,

[A]

but you understand why that can't come out like immediately. It's gonna be like, wait, what?

[C]

The philosophy of the inner circle seemed to settle on a pretty good bottom line. Whatever you want to do, as long as there is mutual consent is a. Okay. Around five years into his research for the two reports, Kinsey also decided that he was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. The physiology of sex. So under extreme secrecy, volunteers would be led up to his attic to get freaky in front of a camera for later evaluation. I'd kill myself. I can't think of anything worse.

[A]

Also, it's just like, this is when you're starting to get like, okay, it's just you're deviating now. Like, do we need to film people having sex? It just feels like that's a slippery slope down the road of exploitation. That way beckons. Yeah.

[C]

At the time, this was all quite successfully kept behind closed doors. But still, the public pushback against the Kinsey report was building to a roar. A congressional inquiry was mounted into the tax exempt status of the foundation. That they'll always get you with the taxes. Senator Joseph McCarthy. Yes, as in that's McCarthy, had a very on brand opinion that sex research was a communist tool for undermining the American family. And eventually the Rockefeller foundation was forced to suspend their funding. In 1954, the institute suffered massive cutbacks and several planned projects came to a complete halt, including plans for studies into homosexuality, prison inmates and prostitution.

[A]

Alfred Kinsey died unexpectedly on 25 August 1956 of heart problems and pneumonia. He was just 62. He interviewed his last two subjects that same year, for the two Kinsey reports, the team had collected 18,000 surveys and Kinsey personally conducted almost 8,000 interviews himself. The records, like we said, are still housed in the Institute, still the largest collection in the world, which would have made Alfred Kinsey very happy indeed. Together, the two Kinsey Reports on female and male sexuality sold nearly a million copies and were translated into 13 languages. They undoubtedly changed the public perception of sexuality and are considered among the most influential scientific books of the 20th century. Kinsey has been described as the architect of the sexual revolution, ushering in a new age of acceptance and sexual freedom.

[C]

Today, of course, studies of sexual behavior have moved on somewhat. The Kinsey scale has been replaced with more nuanced descriptions of sexuality. Kinsey's method does have some weaknesses, like the fact that it directly conflates sexual behaviour with attraction, which in practice may not always be the case. For example, a man can be attracted to both sexes, but only engage in sexual behavior with women. The Kinsey scale also puts homosexuality and heterosexuality as opposites, the more homo, the less hetero, and vice versa. But more recent studies show that they are experienced entirely separately and are not contrary impulses. The Kinsey scale also doesn't account for a person's sexuality changing over time, as well as sexual attraction based on emotional connection. Nowadays There are over 200 scales that measure sexual orientation. The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid includes seven variables, including behavior, attraction and fantasies. The Storm Sexuality Axis plots sexuality on an X and Y axis, allowing for a much wider range of descriptions. Still, we wouldn't have started having these conversations if it weren't for the probing questions of Alfred Kinsey.

[A]

The Kinsey Institute is still going. It recently conducted studies on how the pandemic affected people's romantic and sexual lives. It ran a string of important seminars and conferences on AIDS during the 1980s crisis. It's debating the role of legislation in sex education and aims to define what constitutes healthy and unhealthy sexual practices. Sexuality is still largely a mystery. Even the leaders of today's Kinsey Institute say that we still know basically next to nothing about it. So Kinsey's mission, what he called bringing light into darkness, carries on.

[C]

There you go. Go forth and fuck each other, is my advice to you.

[A]

Yeah, I think, you know, following the inner circle's own philosophy.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

If there's consent there and you feel like everyone in that situation is a okay and able to give consent, go fucking nuts. It's none of my bloody business. And that's it.

[C]

Have fun. Bye bye.

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