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A review by konniecanread
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred C. Kinsey
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.5
Pretty good book. It's basically an extended paper, so it's not really readable, but it was super interesting nonetheless. It was also published in 1953, so a lot of it is outdated, in data as well as (sometimes) in methodology. Highlights were the methods section, where the authors basically come up with a complicated interviewing technique to get old people in the 50s to talk about sex, the totally amoral way of researching sex and relationships, especially considering the time of writing, and the incredibly breadth of topics they thought about.
Honestly, if you find Kinsey or his research cool, just watch the 2004 film. It gets across the main points and also isn't 824 pages of outdated scientific findings and methodological discussion.
I am surprised at how little progress we have made in thinking about sex in the last 75 years. Kinsey & co are already finding high rates of homosexuality, polyamory, and a wide breadth of sexual practices here, and are able to discuss these without any judgement. Today, these topics seem comparably controversial, and academics trying to describe them face the same challenges Kinsey did - there has been no study of this scope since then. Kinsey himself has been cancelled around once a year since he published this, and from all parts of the political spectrum. Sex is, like, pretty normal, and stuff. Can we relax about it?
Honestly, if you find Kinsey or his research cool, just watch the 2004 film. It gets across the main points and also isn't 824 pages of outdated scientific findings and methodological discussion.
I am surprised at how little progress we have made in thinking about sex in the last 75 years. Kinsey & co are already finding high rates of homosexuality, polyamory, and a wide breadth of sexual practices here, and are able to discuss these without any judgement. Today, these topics seem comparably controversial, and academics trying to describe them face the same challenges Kinsey did - there has been no study of this scope since then. Kinsey himself has been cancelled around once a year since he published this, and from all parts of the political spectrum. Sex is, like, pretty normal, and stuff. Can we relax about it?