Sociology Now, Census Update

Kinsey’s results were surprising, and his books caused enormous controversy.

What he exposed was a wide gulf between Americans’ professed morality and their

actual behaviors. Among his most shocking findings were:

1.The higher your socioeconomic class, the more sex you have. People at the time

believed that the working class was more sexually active and aware (“earthy”),

but Kinsey found that the middle class had sex more often and with a greater

variety of techniques and “outlets.”

2.The clients of prostitutes were not only college boys and soldiers on leave.

Seventy percent of men had visited a prostitute, with older men far more likely

to visit.

3.Women enjoy sex. The “common knowledge” of the era taught that women did

not enjoy sex and engaged in it only to please their husbands. However, women

were as interested in sex as men, and most had orgasms (although primarily

through masturbation).

4.Extramarital affairs are not extremely rare. Twenty-six percent of married women

and 50 percent of married men had had at least one extramarital partner.

But by far the most controversial finding concerned same-sex behavior. In the

1950s, it was assumed that homosexuality was a severe, and extremely rare, psychi-

atric disorder. Kinsey found a great deal of variation in practices, so much that he

classified his respondents along a seven-point continuum, from 0 (exclusively hetero-

sexual outlets) through 6 (exclusively same-sex outlets); his

scale is illustrated in Figure 10.3.

Kinsey found that about 5 percent of the men in his

sample were ranked at 6 (only same-sex experiences), 13

percent had more gay than heterosexual experiences, and

37 percent had had at least one same-sex experience to

orgasm in adulthood (adolescent “experimentation”

didn’t count). Only 45 percent of the adult men in the sam-

ple ranked at 0 (exclusively heterosexual behavior).

Among women, less than 3 percent were ranked at 6

(only same-sex experiences), and 13 percent had had at

least one same-sex experience to the point of orgasm.

However, 28 percent reported same-sex outlets that did

not lead to orgasm, so only 66 percent ranked at 0 (exclu-

sively heterosexual behavior).

The National Health and Social Life Study. In the early 1990s, a team of researchers at

the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago

undertook the most comprehensive study of sexual behavior in American history

(Laumann et al., 1994). Their findings were as controversial as Kinsey’s but in the

opposite direction: Instead of huge amounts of nonprocreative sexual activity, they

found much smaller amounts than Kinsey did.

Only 25 percent of men and 10 percent of women reported having had an extra-

marital affair—less than half of Kinsey’s percentages. The percentage of people with

exclusive same-sex experiences stayed the same, about 5 percent of men and less than

3 percent of women, but the percentage with both same-sex and heterosexual expe-

riences declined dramatically. It seemed that no one but gay men and lesbians was

having same-sex experiences anymore.

328 CHAPTER 10SEXUALITY

Exclusively heterosexual

Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual

Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual

Equally heterosexual and homosexual

Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual

Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual

Exclusively homosexual

Asexual

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 X

RATING DESCRIPTION

FIGURE 10.3The Kinsey Scale