Abstract
This chapter examines the works of Alfred Charles Kinsey, and William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson in the development of sexual science in the twentieth century. It analyses the way in which Kinsey utilised statistics and the concept of averages in his research on human sexuality. It argues that sexual appetite conditioned how statistical data was used in the Kinsey studies. The Kinsey team mobilised questions of “how much?” and “how often?” to produce graphs on which sexual appetite could be counted and mapped. Turning to the work of Masters and Johnson and the use of techniques of observation and measurement in the creation of norms of sexual behaviour, the chapter explores how the researchers further opened sexual activity to scientific investigation. Their work cemented norms of sexual appetite, presenting both the necessity of perfecting techniques to achieve pleasure and the norm to which individuals should aspire. This chapter thus contends that the works of Kinsey, and Masters and Johnson were important for reifying concepts of averages and norms, and for developing techniques for the measurement of sexual appetite.
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- 1.
The Eugene Register-Guard, “Normal Sexual Behavior? No Such Thing Scientists,” The Eugene Register-Guard, January 2, 1950, 2A.
- 2.
Donna J. Drucker, “’A Most Interesting Chapter in the History of Science’: Intellectual Reponses to Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” History of the Human Sciences 25, no. 1 (2012): 84.
- 3.
For a detailed historical study of the concept of normal, see Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens, Normality: A Critical Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
- 4.
Janice Irvine, Disorders of Desire: Sexuality and Gender in Modern American Sexology (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005), 22.
- 5.
Kinsey has been criticised for his lack of inclusion of racial and ethnic diversity in terms of both researchers (male, heterosexual and white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) and his research subjects. See Irvine, Disorders of Desire, 25.
- 6.
John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, 3rd ed (New York: Harper & Row, 2012 [1988]), 241.
- 7.
Ibid., 223–225.
- 8.
Ibid., 242–243.
- 9.
Theodore Hendrik Van de Velde, Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique (London: William Heinemann, 1940 [1926]), 2.
- 10.
Katharine Bement Davis, Factors in the Sex Life of Twenty-Two Hundred Women (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1929). See also chapter four in Jennifer Terry, An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1999).
- 11.
Terry, An American Obsession, 131.
- 12.
Ibid., 134.
- 13.
See chapters eight and nine in Davis, Factors in the Sex Life.
- 14.
Terry, An American Obsession, 129.
- 15.
Gilbert V. Hamilton, A Research in Marriage (New York: Lear, 1948 [1929]), 129, 137, 197.
- 16.
Examples include Erin G. Carlston, “‘A Finer Differentiation’: Female Homosexuality and the American Medical Community, 1926–1940,” in Science and Homosexualities, ed. Vernon A. Rosario (New York: Routledge, 1997), 177–196, Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012 [1991]), and Terry, An American Obsession.
- 17.
Terry, An American Obsession, 181.
- 18.
Ibid., 217.
- 19.
George William Henry, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns (New York: Paul Hoeber & Sons, 1941).
- 20.
Terry, An American Obsession, 297.
- 21.
For an account of Kinsey’s intellectual trajectory to the study of sexuality, see chapters six and seven in Vern L. Bullough, Science in the Bedroom: A History of Sex Research (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
- 22.
Drucker, “Intellectual Responses to Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” 79.
- 23.
Vern L. Bullough, “Sex Will Never Be the Same: The Contributions of Alfred C. Kinsey,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 33, no. 3 (2004): 277.
- 24.
D’Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 285.
- 25.
Irvine also notes that “Kinsey was an essentialist for whom ‘natural’ equaled good.” Irvine, Disorders of Desire, 27.
- 26.
Alfred C. Kinsey “Biological Aspects of Some Social Problems,” quoted in James H. Jones, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 307.
- 27.
Jones, Alfred C. Kinsey, 307.
- 28.
Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy and Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Philadelphia and London: W.B. Saunders Company, 1948), 10–11.
- 29.
Ibid., 11.
- 30.
Chris Waters, “Sexology,” in Palgrave Advances in the Modern History of Sexuality, eds. H. G. Cocks and Matt Houlbrook (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 49.
- 31.
Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 246.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Ibid., 247.
- 34.
Paul H. Gebhard and Alan B. Johnson, The Kinsey Data: Marginal Tabulations of the 1938–1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for Sex Research (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1979), 11.
- 35.
Theories of psychoanalysis dominated the field of psychiatry in the United States until the late-twentieth century. The psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler was particularly critical of Kinsey’s findings and interpretation. Bergler notably rebuked Kinsey and the studies for attempting to normalise homosexuality. See Edmund Bergler, Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? (New York: Hill and Wang, 1956) and “The Myth of a New National Disease: Homosexuality and the Kinsey Report,” The Psychiatric Quarterly 22, no. 1–4 (1948): 66–88.
- 36.
Miriam G. Reumann, American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity in the Kinsey Reports (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 27.
- 37.
Note that the use of quantification and statistics led some commentators to fault the Kinsey’s reports for not attending to contexts of intimacy, love and committed partnership. See Drucker, “Intellectual Responses to Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.”
- 38.
However, this was a feature of both volumes. See for example, Kinsey et al., Male, 199 and 237.
- 39.
Kinsey et al., Male, 199 (emphasis added).
- 40.
Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin and Paul H. Gerbhard. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Philadelphia and London: W.B. Saunders Company), 510.
- 41.
“Males,” Kinsey wrote, “do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual … Not all things are black not all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories … The living world is a continuum in act and every one of its aspects.” Kinsey et al., Male, 639.
- 42.
Ibid., 54–55.
- 43.
Bullough, Science in the Bedroom, 175.
- 44.
Kinsey et al., Male, 71.
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
Donna J. Drucker, “Keying Desire: Alfred Kinsey’s Use of Punched-Card Machines for Sex Research,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 22, no. 1 (2013): 109.
- 47.
Michael Power, “Counting, Control and Calculation: Reflections on Measuring and Management,” Human Relations 57, no. 6 (2004): 766. See also, Marc Trabsky, Law and the Dead: Technology, Relations and Institutions (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).
- 48.
Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, volume 1, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1978), 140.
- 49.
Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité 1: La volonté de savoir (France: Gallimard, 1976), 184.
- 50.
Peter Cryle, “The Average and the Normal in Nineteenth-Century French Discourse,” Psychology & Sexuality, 1, no. 3 (2010): 217.
- 51.
Theodore M. Porter, “Making Things Quantitative,” Science in Context 7, no. 3 (1994): 389. See also Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995).
- 52.
Kinsey et al., Male, 121.
- 53.
Ibid., 20.
- 54.
Ibid.
- 55.
Ibid., 21.
- 56.
Kinsey et al., Male, 199. See also Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin and Paul H. Gerhard, Concepts of Normality and Abnormality in Sexual Behavior (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1949).
- 57.
Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 89.
- 58.
Gebhard and Johnson, The Kinsey Data, 11.
- 59.
Ibid.
- 60.
Rose, Inventing Our Selves, 89.
- 61.
Porter, “Making Things Quantitative,” 400.
- 62.
Nikolas Rose, “Calculable Minds and Manageable Individuals,” History of the Human Sciences 1, no. 2 (1988): 185.
- 63.
Drucker, “Keying Desire,” 113.
- 64.
Kinsey et al., Male, 7.
- 65.
Ibid.
- 66.
Donna J. Drucker, “Male Sexuality and Alfred Kinsey’s 0–6 Scale: Toward ‘A Sound Understanding of the Realities of Sex’,” Journal of Homosexuality 57, no. 9 (2010): 1106.
- 67.
Ian Hacking, “Kinds of People: Moving Targets,” Proceedings of the British Academy 151 (2007): 285–318.
- 68.
Ibid., 305–309.
- 69.
Igo, The Averaged American, 261.
- 70.
Ibid., 264 (emphasis original).
- 71.
Ibid., 303–304.
- 72.
Kinsey et al., Male, 638.
- 73.
Jonathan Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality (New York: Dutton, 1995), 97.
- 74.
Gebhard and Johnson, The Kinsey Data, 146.
- 75.
Ibid., 302.
- 76.
William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, Human Sexual Response (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966), 3.
- 77.
Ibid.
- 78.
Thomas Maier, Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 97.
- 79.
See for example, Van de Velde, Ideal Marriage, and Félix Roubaud, Traité de l’impuissance et de la stérilité chez l’homme et la femme comprenant l’exposition des moyens recommandés pour y remédier (Paris: J B Ballière, 1855).
- 80.
Irvine, Disorders of Desire, 54.
- 81.
Bullough, Science in the Bedroom, 110. See Robert Latou Dickinson and Lura Beam, The Single Woman: A Medical Study in Sex Education (Philadelphia: The Williams & Wilkins Company, 1934), 144.
- 82.
For example, George Chauncey Jr, “From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: The Changing Medical Conceptualization of Female ‘Deviance’, ” in Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, eds. Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 87–117, Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, and Terry, An American Obsession.
- 83.
Jane Gerhard, Desiring Revolution: Second-Wave Feminism and the Rewriting of American Sexual Thought, 1920 to 1982 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 52.
- 84.
Irvine, Disorders of Desire, 65.
- 85.
Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response, 45.
- 86.
Irvine, Disorders of Desire, 65. This is further apparent in their later works, see William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, The Pleasure Bond: A New Look at Sexuality and Commitment (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), Homosexuality in Perspective (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979) and Heterosexuality (New York: Harper Collins, 1994).
- 87.
William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, Human Sexual Inadequacy (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), v.
- 88.
Irvine, Disorders of Desire, 66.
- 89.
Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response, 4–5.
- 90.
Anna Leeming and Paul Brown, “An Eclectic or Integrative Approach to Sex Therapy?” Sexual and Marital Therapy 7, no. 3 (1992): 285.
- 91.
Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response, 11–12.
- 92.
For an account of Ulysses in action, see Maier, Masters of Sex, 100.
- 93.
They note: “The sensitivity of the rectum to stimulation was adjudged essentially equal between the two sexes by gross clinical observation. It must be remembered, however, that material of homosexual content has not been included in this review.” Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response, 200.
- 94.
“The clitoris is a unique organ in the total human anatomy. Its express purpose is to serve both as receptor and transformer of sensual stimuli… No such organ exists within the anatomic structure of the human male.” Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response, 45.
- 95.
Ibid., 138.
- 96.
Ibid., 127.
- 97.
Ibid., 311.
- 98.
Ibid., 5.
- 99.
Leonore Tiefer, “Historical, Scientific, Clinical and Feminist Criticisms of ‘The Human Sexual Response Cycle’ Model,” Annual Review of Sex Research 2, no. 1 (1991): 4.
- 100.
Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response, 313.
- 101.
Ibid., 315.
- 102.
Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Inadequacy, 12.
- 103.
Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response, 4.
- 104.
Ibid., 31.
- 105.
Ibid., 21.
- 106.
Ibid.
- 107.
Donna J. Drucker, The Machines of Sex Research: Technology and the Politics of Identity, 1945–1985 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 58.
- 108.
When asked about future research into homosexuality, Masters replied that they hoped “to move into some concept of sexual reversal for those who wish it.” Playboy Magazine, “Playboy Interview: Masters and Johnson,” Playboy Magazine 15, no. 5 (May 1968): 202.
- 109.
Playboy, “Playboy interview: Masters and Johnson,” 80. See also Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response, 58. The claims on penile penetration and female orgasm were criticised by several researchers. See Shere Hite, The Hite Report: A National Study of Female Sexuality (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1976), Alix Shulman, “Organs and Orgasms,” in Women in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness, eds. Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran (New York: Signet Books, 1972), 296, and Elisabeth Anne Lloyd, The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
- 110.
Drucker, The Machines of Sex Research, 46.
- 111.
Lisa Cartwright, Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 24.
- 112.
Annemarie Jagose, Orgasmology (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), 170 (emphasis original).
- 113.
Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Vintage Books, 1994 [1973]), 95 (emphasis original).
- 114.
Jagose, Orgasmology, 169–174.
- 115.
Lorraine Datson and Peter Gallison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007), 17.
- 116.
Cartwright, Screening the Body, 27.
- 117.
The male and female sexual response cycles appear on page 5 of Human Sexual Response. See also pages 35 and 175 for electrocardiograms and a graph of the “vaginal environment and seminal-fluid content” on page 93.
- 118.
Drucker, The Machines of Sex Research, 47.
- 119.
Cartwright, Screening the Body, xiii.
- 120.
Drucker, The Machines of Sex Research, 47.
- 121.
Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, trans. Carolyn R Fawcett (New York: Zone Books, 1991 [1943/1966]), 239. See also Cryle and Stephens, Normality.
- 122.
Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, 107–108.
- 123.
Jagose, Orgasmology, 174.
- 124.
Ibid., 174.
- 125.
Kinsey et al., Female, 91.
- 126.
Ibid.
- 127.
Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, 155.
- 128.
Ibid., 177.
- 129.
Ibid., 175.
- 130.
Ibid., 239.
- 131.
The word “normal” was used to refer to schools devoted to the training of teachers, les écoles normales. The term appeared in the Dictionnaire de l’académie française in 1832. See Caroline Warman, “From Pre-normal to Abnormal: The Emergence of a Concept in Late Eighteenth-Century France,” Psychology & Sexuality 1, no. 3 (2010): 200–213 and, Peter Cryle and Lisa Downing, “Introduction: The Natural and the Normal in the History of Sexuality,” Psychology & Sexuality 1, no. 3 (2010): 191–199.
- 132.
Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, (1866–1877), Tome onzième (Paris: Administration du Grand Dictionnaire Universel, 1874), 1096.
- 133.
Ibid.
- 134.
Elizabeth Stephens, “Normal,” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1, no. 1–2 (2014): 143. See also Cryle and Stephens, Normality.
- 135.
Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, 143.
- 136.
Ibid., 152.
- 137.
Cryle and Stephens, Normality, 343.
- 138.
Robyn Wiegman and Elizabeth A. Wilson, “Introduction: Antinormativity’s Queer Conventions,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 26, no. 1 (2015): 15.
- 139.
Janet Halley, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 121.
- 140.
Cryle and Stephens, Normality.
- 141.
Stephens, “Normal,” 143.
- 142.
Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Inadequacy, x. See also 316–350.
- 143.
Kinsey et al., Female, 9.
- 144.
Ibid., 11.
- 145.
Leonore Tiefer, Sex is Not a Natural Act and Other Essays (New York: Westview Press, 2004).
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Flore, J. (2020). Measuring Sex. In: A Genealogy of Appetite in the Sexual Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39423-3_4
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