Considered some of the most influential scientific books of the century, the Kinsey Reports sold almost 1 million copies and were translated to 13 languages.Īccording to Discover Magazine, Kinsey’s research found that 37 per cent of men had been in a same-sex experience by the age of 45, while 13 per cent of women had had a same-sex encounter. Together with Sexual Behavior of the Human Female (1953), the two books became collectively known as the Kinsey Reports. The Kinsey Scale is a visual representation of the research findings that Kinsey and company published in Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948). Kinsey (white shirt) working with his staff on the final phases of his book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Behavior (Getty) Armed with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Kinsey and his team pored over hundreds and thousands of sex histories to study sexual relationships and sexual behaviour in the human world.ĭr. At this point, he began teaching sexual education classes to graduate, senior, and married students, where he would also hand out questionnaires for his research on sexual histories.īy 1947, Kinsey established the Institute for Sex Research (now known as the Kinsey Institute). It wasn’t until the early 1930s that Kinsey became interested in the study of sexuality. Prior to his work on human sexual behaviour, Kinsey spent 20 years as an entomologist, collecting and identifying dozens of species of gall wasps. But over 70 years later, does Kinsey’s work still hold up? Is the Kinsey scale still a reliable representation of the spectrum of sexual orientation? Or has it become a relic of the past?ĭr Alfred Charles Kinsey was an American biologist and professor at Indiana University. Kinsey’s highly controversial work ushered in a new era of studies on sexuality, thus earning him the title of “father of sexology”. Also known as the Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale, the seven-point scale was created to represent the team’s findings from years of research – that human sexuality was not as black and white as it was originally thought to be. In 1948, American biologist Dr Kinsey and associates Wardell Pomeroy and Clyde Martin developed the Kinsey Scale. In a way, we have Dr Alfred Kinsey to thank for that. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably heard the phrase “sexuality is a spectrum”.