YOU are a sick man. You head for the doctor. One of your symptoms is a
pronounced bend in your penis. (Skip the next two sentences if you鈥檙e a nervous
man.) The doctor invites you to place your penis on the table. He picks up a
heavy book and smashes it down to straighten the penile shaft.
The date is just after the First World War. Gonorrhoea is widespread in the
US and the dangers of sex can be avoided only by a prescription of virginity
followed by marriage.
It鈥檚 against this background that Alfred Kinsey launched his determined
assault on the belief that ignorance鈥攚idely confused with
innocence鈥攚as the safest course for everyone. In Sex鈥擳he Measure
of All Things: A Life of Alfred C. Kinsey (Chatto & Windus, 拢20,
ISBN 1856196046) Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy examines Kinsey鈥檚 life.
Advertisement
Kinsey鈥檚 shaky grasp of the basic principles of statistics forced him down an
extraordinary route: he collected as much information as possible because he
could not understand how to sample data. First, he hunted gall wasps by the
thousand (he was a biologist), then human sexual behaviour. He 鈥渃ollected鈥�
penises: his correspondents would measure anyone who鈥檇 let them and send Alfred
their results.
He did introduce training for interviewers (more thorough than
today鈥檚鈥攊t could take a year to train) and coded responses to guarantee
anonymity. He surveyed every kind of sexual behaviour he came across. He showed
how widespread homosexuality was, that virginity until marriage led to an
inhibited sex life, that practice did lead to satisfaction.
Worth reading? Yes, but not at a sitting. Kinsey鈥檚 merciless collector mind
has infected Gathorne-Hardy; you鈥檒l occasionally long for less. Those gall wasps. . .