-
4. Ordering Human Sexuality
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
88 4 Ordering Human Sexuality Sufficiently patient and prolonged observation may be expected to disclose, in time, various natural lines of cleavage within the total psychodynamic set-up of the individual, and when enough [people] are studied in the spirit we or our successors shall come to know what particular types of events—both inner and outer—characteristically occur in recognizable constellation and sequence patterns. —Gilbert V. Hamilton, A Research in Marriage Kinsey brought into his worldview for studying human sexual behavior a complex mix of ideas from his entomological research, teaching life and human sciences, and teaching and organizing the marriage course. Those ideas oftentimes coexisted uneasily. He approached the more in-depth phase of human sex research using ideas and beliefs from previous research synthesized into his own view. He favored using multiple positions in a heterosexual encounter to improve the chances of orgasm for both participants, allowing children to explore their sexual bodies and feelings with little to no adult supervision, and the idea that premarital sexual experimentation was good. He thought birth control was a good idea, and that sublimation did not work. Premarital sexual experience and/or comprehensive sex education without prejudice equaled better marital sex. Regular sex equaled marital happiness. Masturbation was popular among women and nearly universal among men. On the flip side, adultery was likely, especially husbands straying from their wives. Also, rape was a problem with which he decided not to deal directly or comprehensively, and he collected and used data from admitted and convicted sex offenders. Studying human sexual- Ordering Human Sexuality 89 ity had opened a new cultural, academic, and intellectual world to Kinsey, and while some of his views on those issues solidified early in his sex research career, on others he stayed amenable to change. Kinsey’s developing perspectives on these complicated sex-related matters derived from his comprehensive reading, his contacts with individuals engaging in an increasingly wide range of sexual behaviors, and his planning to capture their wide range of experiences in forms that would allow for statistical manipulation , analysis, and publication. After Kinsey gave up the marriage course in September 1940, he was able to devote the bulk of his research time to gathering sex histories, refining his interview questionnaire and interviewing technique, and figuring out patterns in his data. In this period, he developed his interview method, the basis of its standardized and memorized questionnaire, and his methods of recording interview data. He also decided on an approach to collecting data, and a statistical method that would generate data to answer the many questions that his new research field had raised for him. He likewise adopted a form of technology, punched-card machines, that would transform the ways he manipulated data. When all of the mechanisms for the practical aspects of the research were in place, Kinsey and his growing staff could proceed more efficiently through interviews and data analysis. Even with the intellectual, mathematical, and mechanical tools for research in place by 1941, the completed Male volume, with its examination of more than five thousand interviews with white American men, remained seven years in the future. This chapter outlines the three parts of Kinsey’s sex research apparatus: the sex history interview content, the interview method, and method of securing interviewees; his adoption of a statistical methodology and perspective on sampling; and his enthusiastic acceptance and implementation of punched-card machinery. Each aspect of this research apparatus provided the groundwork to support the project as a whole, and together they formed the content and shape of the Male and Female volumes. Through the adoption of methodologies and machines, and trial-and-error in the first years of interviewing, Kinsey settled on methods that suited both his research questions about the nature of human sexual behavior and his research subjects. Punched-card machines made the analysis of mass data possible, and marked Kinsey’s sex research as distinct from that of his interview- and letter-based forerunners in the field. The use of such labor-intensive infrastructure also made Kinsey’s results difficult for other scientists to replicate. Kinsey’s methods of classification and organization, and use of the accompanying punched-card machinery, separated his work from his predecessors and formed the two volumes’ encyclopedia-like scope as compendia of detailed information. [18.216.121.55] Project MUSE (2024-04-20 13:01 GMT) 90 Ordering Human Sexuality The Sex History Interview Kinsey likely found a number of his sources for the content...