I just watched the movie about him (which according to the Institute took as many liberties as you’d expect a film to but was generally correct [his interview with his father probably being the single biggest fiction]). I’ve read articles on his research but I’ve never read the reports themselves. I know that he has many enemies among the Christian right (discussed in wikipedia’s article on him that range from ad-hom attacks to more serious sounding methodology critiques). I know that his scale (0= exclusively hetero, 6 = exclusively homo, the vast majority falling in between) is still controversial, as are his tabulations of data from a serial child molester about child sexuality.
Overall, how respected is Kinsey’s work today? What is it’s greatest legacy? Do you feel that Kinsey had anything to do with the Sexual Revolution of the 50s through 70s (or do you credit that mainly to other social changes [WW2, the pill, etc.])? Do you believe that most people fall between 1 and 5 on his scale? Is Kinsey still considered reliable?
Would appreciate any recommended reading as well.
My sense is that modern, serious sociologists and anthropologists who study human sexuality regard Kinsey much as modern psychologists regard Freud.
That is, if you ask a modern psychologist about Freud, you’ll probably hear a lot of strained, left-handed compliments, followed by an acknowledgement that a lot of Fredu’s major theories were utterly idiotic and off the mark. . Similarly, serious researchers aat the Kinsey Institute will probably start by praising Kinsey to the skies as a giant who made serious scientific study of sex a reality… followed by an acknowledgement that Kinsey himself was a weirdo and a piss-poor scientist.
Kinsey, like Freud, deserves some credit for creating a field of endeavor, and making study of formerly taboo subjects possible. But his own work, like Freud’s, deserves little respect.
Basically, in so many of his findings, no one since has been able to duplicate his numbers — or even come close. Kinsey didn’t like sampling, and preferred doing whole-group surveys of various groups. That choice, and his choice of groups, have weakened his findings.