Why such different findings? Is it possible that after all the changes in American
culture since the 1950s—the birth control pill, the sexual revolution, feminism, gay
liberation, the legalization of abortion—we had actually become more sexually
conservative?
Not really. Kinsey did not draw a random sample of Americans to survey, as
NORC did. He drew “convenience” samples of groups he believed he could persuade
to take the survey. His respondents included a large number of college students, pris-
oners, psychiatric patients, and even his own personal friends. It is possible that they
had more variety in their sexual experiences to begin with.
The historical context of the study may also have determined the behavior. Many
of the men in his sample had been in the military during World War I and World War
II, when visiting a prostitute was a common form of recreation for soldiers and sailors
on leave. In the 1990s, a relatively small proportion of the men were veterans of
any war.
The same-sex behavior may have declined because, with the rise of gay libera-
tion, straight men were more sensitive to being labeled gay than their 1940s counter-
parts, so they were less likely to engage in recreational sex with each other. In the
same way, gay men were likely to “come out” at an early age and not experience so
much social pressure to sleep with women. So, paradoxically, sexual orientation and
behavior were more closely aligned in the 1990s than they had been in the 1940s.
Americans had been shocked by the high rates of variant sexual behaviors
reported by Kinsey; in the 1990s, they were equally shocked at the relatively low rates
of variant sexual behaviors found by the NORC study. Critics of both studies believed
that people would not tell the whole truth: Kinsey’s critics believe respondents would
omit instances of unconventional sexual behavior to make their life history sound
more “normal,” and the NORC study’s critics believe that they would invent instances
of unconventional sexual behavior because they were afraid of being labeled “prudes”
in an era of sexual liberation.
But the NORC researchers built in elaborate statistical checks to catch people
who were untruthful, and untruthful surveys were discarded from the analysis. It
appears, after all, that Americans are relatively modest and sexually conservative, hav-
ing their sexual experiences with committed partners “appropriate” to their age and
sexual orientation.
American Sexual Behavior
and Identities
You might not personally be a fan of any specific sexual behavior, but how do you
feel about people who are? Would you invite them to Thanksgiving dinner, or would
you refuse to shake their hands at a party? During the last 30 years, the General Social
Survey has asked a number of questions about attitudes toward various sexual behav-
iors, and while disapproval of interracial and same-sex relationships has declined con-
siderably, most attitudes have remained fairly stable. For instance, today about 95
percent of respondents state that sex between teenagers is “always wrong” or “almost
always wrong,” a percentage that has barely budged since 1972.
But such consistency in attitudes may be deceiving. For one thing, there is often
a wide gap between those moral positions we take with regard to other people’s behav-
iors and those we take with regard to our own behaviors. Many of the respondents
(all 18 or older) state that teenage sex is wrong, when they themselves engaged in it.
AMERICAN SEXUAL BEHAVIOR AND IDENTITIES 329