The Other Charlotte and I have been trashing Kinsey, Bill Condon’s flawed-hero biopic about sexologist Alfred C. Kinsey that the liberal critics are raving over–not because Kinsey contributed anything of value to sex science but because he happened to launch the Sexual Revolution in mores. (see TOC’s Kinsey–Even Funnier Than Farenheit 9/11 and my Kinsey–and Kinsey’s People, both posted on Dec. 3). Both TOC and I pointed out that even on the terms of Condon’s fawning flick, voyeur/auditeur Kinsey came across as less a scientist than a sex-obsessed bizarro.
Now comes Inky reader R.M. with a thoughtful response:
“[A]llow me to point out what I think is an error in criticizing Kinsey and his work. Namely, the ‘kinky Kinsey’ angle: Kinsey was a sado-masochistic bisexual voyeur and therefore….Well, therefore, what? Kinsey’s personal kinkiness is relevant to a discussion of his work only insofar as it exposes a) the bogusness of the Rockefeller [Institute]-funded hype which portrayed Kinsey as a staid, disinterested Man Of Science; b) the possible motives for Kinsey’s egregious manipulations of data.
“These are important, but ‘Kinsey is a perv and therefore not to be trusted’ is a classic (and invalid) ad hominem. It is important to remind the public that Kinsey’s methodology was disastrously flawed, and that the leading social scientists of that time immediately observed that Kinsey’s reports were statistically invalid–although just how invalid, and why, was not revealed until many years later. Yet despite these disclaimers, the ‘enlightened’ voices of the chattering classes were rapturous in their acclaim of Kinsey and his findings. It was this universal acclaim — part of a propaganda project funded by the Rockefeller Institute–which made Kinsey’s work so influential.
“As interesting as it might be to speculate on the perverse motives behind Kinsey’s ‘research,’ it is much more important to understand the motives of the Rockefellers in supporting him. Beginning in the 1930s, the Rockefellers were devotees–indeed, pioneers–of the population-control movement, and Kinsey’s work was funded as a part of that crusade. Because changing reproductive habits necessarily involved changing sexual habits, the Rockefellers funded Kinsey with the idea of developing some basic scientific knowledge of American sexual behavior. Of course, they got nothing of the kind–the advisors to the Rockefeller foundations were astute enough to understand that what Kinsey had done was not valid research. But they were also astute enough to see the value of Kinsey’s work in undermining traditional sexual morality. And because traditional morality (including modesty and reticence about sex) were obstacles to the population-control agenda, the Rockefellers were only too happy to ballyhoo Kinsey’s findings.”
You make some interesting points, R.M. True, if one’s purpose is to argue that Kinsey did lousy social science (and the evidence of that is overwhelming), it would be improper to raise the “ad hominem” argument that he was also a sex weirdo. But “Kinsey” the movie purports to be a biography–and in that genre the “homo” (no, that’s not a pun!) is what the story is about. Kinsey’s unusual sexual tastes and practices were and are highly germane.
As for the Rockefeller Institute, I don’t know whether it had a political agenda in funding Kinsey’s research. If you want to shrink the population, it makes sense, I suppose, to encourage people to have sex strictly for kinks instead of for making families–and TOC’s post today indicates that low-birthrate blue-state America is doing just that (see TOC’s David Brooks Has a Fertile Idea below). Nonetheless, Condon’s movie was about Kinsey, not the Rockefeller Institute, so it’s not surprising that the Institute’s motives were never clear in the movie.