# Was Alfred Kinsey a pedophile?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-alfred-kinsey-a-pedophile/254952>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 13, 2004, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-alfred-kinsey-a-pedophile/254952 "2004-07-13T20:22:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-alfred-kinsey-a-pedophile/254952/1 "2004-07-13T20:22:10Z")

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I was reading about _Kinsey_, the upcoming movie based on his life on AICN and was perusing [this talkback](http://aintitcool.com/tb_display.cgi?id=17944#784474) when I saw a number of allegations that Kinsey was had abused children that he was studying. Most of the people making the accusations seem like idiots and my cursory google search turned up a lot of right-wing websites making wild allegations but I couldn’t really find any substantive cite taht he was a pedophile or that he had sexually abused any children.

So what’s the straight dope? Is this all just smears and propaganda or is there anything to it?

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**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-alfred-kinsey-a-pedophile/254952/2 "2004-07-13T23:17:24Z")

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All the people Kinsey studied were adults, so pedophilia was not an issue. And there was never a serious contemporaneous allegation that Kinsey had sex with any of his subjects.

See [http://www.indiana.edu/~kinsey/about/contro-03.html](http://www.indiana.edu/~kinsey/about/contro-03.html)

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**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-alfred-kinsey-a-pedophile/254952/3 "2004-07-13T23:46:47Z")

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> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> All the people Kinsey studied were adults, so pedophilia was not an issue. And there was never a serious contemporaneous allegation that Kinsey had sex with any of his subjects.
> 
> See [http://www.indiana.edu/~kinsey/about/contro-03.html](http://www.indiana.edu/~kinsey/about/contro-03.html)

Thanks for that link, **RealityChuck**. It’s an excellent refutation.

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**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-alfred-kinsey-a-pedophile/254952/4 "2004-07-13T23:57:20Z")

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There’s a post somewhere in the board’s archives where I summarise the literature and controversy about Kinsey, but it seems to have _completely_ disappeared.

The film is based on Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy’s sympathetic biography _Sex: The Measure of All Things_ (Chatto&Windus, 1998). This was published after James Jones’ unsympathetic authorised one. Both trawl through Kinsey’s sex life in quite some - and appropriate - detail, coming to rather different conclusions. Yet neither suggests he was a pedophile.  
There has been the suggestion that he took evidence from a pedophile, without turning them in, but that’s another allegation entirely.

> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> And there was never a serious contemporaneous allegation that Kinsey had sex with any of his subjects.

Contemporaneously, no. Subsequently, yes, though not with children.