Corsets, threesomes and fleshy French thighs

A Kinsey Institute exhibition shows that female desires burn just as brightly as men's.

By David Bowman

Jan 23, 2004 | If your grandparents were American, they didn't talk about sex. Certainly their American parents never said a word about it. And because no one talked about sex, most citizens assumed that no one actually did it in America.

Then just before World War II, a biologist living in the middle of Indiana -- a guy who studied wasps (of all things!) -- conducted a university-funded survey of American sexuality that discovered that Americans did it all the time! He published half of his findings in 1948 with "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male." Alfred Kinsey had discovered that American men did it in bed, in parked cars, in the kitchen, and even out behind the barn.

A typical American man, say, Fred Astaire, did Ginger while standing up, lying upside down, and even back-to-back like a pair of wayward missionaries. Kinsey even discovered that sometimes Fred did it by himself. Although Fred seldom did it to dead people or children or animals, he probably experimented at least once or twice with another guy, say, Gene Kelly.

As radical as Kinsey's conclusions were, five years later America reeled when "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" was published. No American in 1953 had ever considered Ginger's sexual experience outside of Fred's. Kinsey revealed American women were as horny as the guys. He even began collecting the pictures to prove it.

Now half a century later, we can see his samples in "Feminine Persuasion: Art and Essays on Sexuality," the catalog of a Kinsey Institute erotic art show held last year at the School of Fine Art Galley at Indiana University in Bloomington. The subtitle of the book (published by Indiana University Press) really should specify female sexuality, because the work stresses the erotic vision of women artists. Photographs and painting depict lesbian sex, the erotic allure of pregnancy, a woman about to mount a cactus, as well as abstract sculptures that resemble those monstrous white beach balls that used to chase Patrick McGoohan on the TV show "The Prisoner."

Sandwiched between the women's work are male fantasies of female sexuality. Guy images include naked woman as cello, naked woman as masturbator, and naked woman as Marilyn Monroe.

I spoke to one of the curators/editors of "Feminine Persuasion," Catherine Johnson -- herself curator of art, artifacts, and photography at the Kinsey Institute -- about the place of such art in America's erotic life.

Is the Kinsey Institute an archive now or do you guys still do research?

We've been a functioning research institute since 1947.

Is there anyone there who remembers the founder, Alfred Kinsey?

Not on staff. Our former director Paul Gephardt [who retired in '82] is still around. He worked with Kinsey for about 10 years, so we do have a direct link.

Do you get a sense of what Kinsey was like?

We are in contact with his children. We talk to them about their impressions of their father. There are people on campus and in town who knew him. That is a fun thing about art exhibition openings because people who knew the Kinseys will come -- it's always interesting to speak to people who have firsthand memories.

Is he remembered fondly?

Yes. He was quite a dedicated researcher and a wonderful speaker. His lectures that he gave were renowned. His classes were popular.

Did he have a sense of humor about his work?

Ah, I don't think he had a huge sense of humor. No. He took his work very, very seriously -- that's the one comment that I've heard. He wasn't one to joke about sex. Whereas today, we all try to maintain a sense of humor because you have to.

In a nutshell can you say who Kinsey was and what he accomplished?

In a nutshell? Well, he was a biology professor who began studying human sexuality in 1938. He did that because he was teaching a class on marriage, teaching the biological aspects of marriage. Because he was an approachable instructor, students would ask questions about sex, about their own sexual lives, asking him what was normal sexual behavior ...

Was this a mixed-gender class?

Yes. You had to be an upperclassman; it was mainly for seniors and graduate students -- people about to launch themselves into the world and needed to know more about married life. Much of the class was devoted to economics, budgeting. There were talks by different people on the university faculty. But Kinsey was the one who oversaw the organization of the classes, and he taught the biology of marriage.

So these classes were not a cultural academic analysis of marriage. This was practical knowledge like home economics, because the assumption was that of course everyone was going to get married.

Right. It was an elective. If you assumed you weren't going to get married, you didn't need to take the class. Most of the students were engaged or they were already married. The thing was in 1938; there wasn't much known about sex. It wasn't discussed openly at all. There weren't any books. There hadn't been any major studies. No one knew what "normal" behavior was. There were a lot of things that were illegal, but people were probably still doing them -- things like oral sex.

Americans were all virgins before marriage -- true or false?

One reason Kinsey's book was so shocking when it came out was because it indicated that a high percentage of men were having sex before marriage. They were having sex outside of marriage with other partners. They were masturbating. A large number of men had some sort of homosexual encounter, even though it might only have been once. American men were much more sexually active than most people thought. When the female volume came out in 1953, it was even more shocking -- women were as sexually active as men. Especially in the 1950s, that was a conservative time.

It was bad timing for Kinsey. Wasn't he accused of being a Communist?

Yes. People argued that his research and his books were encouraging ungodly behavior by saying that all of these sexual behaviors were fairly normal just because a lot of people did them. He had enemies. Which is probably why he didn't have much of a sense of humor about his research. Of course, his books became bestsellers. Kinsey became a household name. I don't think he ever enjoyed being a celebrity. He was much more focused on his research.

It's hard to imagine being his wife.

His wife was quite a strong and interesting person in her own right. She was very involved with the Girl Scouts in town. Taught a lot of kids how to swim. They were both very much outdoors people. When they met, he was studying wasps. He studied gall wasps. They would go on gall wasp expeditions.

"Gull" as in seagull?

No. G-a-l-l. A gall is this round formation that forms on a tree when this wasp has laid its eggs. Kinsey collected about 5 million specimens.

So instead of "the birds and the bees," it was "the birds and the wasps."

By the time he taught the marriage class, he had written a major book on wasps and he was ready for a new research subject.

Did he reach any conclusions about the importance of sexual imagery?

He certainly looked into that quite a bit. His research showed that men were more likely to become aroused by visual material than women were. He was very enthusiastic about collecting erotic photographs that people had. He felt that images were really important for studying sexuality, but there weren't that many images around. There were only a few blue movies. Certainly no Internet. Even so, our documentary photograph collection is about 48,000 prints. It's been categorized into 40 different categories including "coitus" -- the word they chose to use for intercourse.

We probably have over 5,000 photographs of coitus. "Homosexual Male." "Homosexual Female." "Petting," which is a term you don't hear about anymore. These are photographs that are sexual, but not actually intercourse.

I'm old enough to remember that term -- that's what Laurie Powers and I did in the front seat of her Vega in high school.

The Petting collection is actually the part that gets the most requests. People will use these images in books.

Next Page: Did the authorities consider Kinsey's stuff to be pornography?

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