The Kinsey Report – Part 1
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Hello and welcome to Conflicted, the history podcast where we talk about the struggles that shaped us, the tough questions that they pose, and why we should care about any of it.

Conflicted is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network, and as always, I'm your host, Zach Cornwell. You are listening to the first episode in a three-part series about a topic that has been on my list since I started Conflicted four years ago. In fact, I think it'll probably be one of the more challenging series we've ever done because it concerns one of the most controversial and contested subjects in modern life, sex.

Today, we're going to be exploring the work, life, and cultural impact of Dr. Alfred Kinsey. Often described as the father of the sexual revolution, Alfred Kinsey was an American biologist who authored a pioneering study on human sexuality in the late 1940s. Released in the form of two massive books, each focusing on male and female behavior, respectively, the study became known as the Kinsey Report.

And few scientific books have caused a bigger cultural stir than the Kinsey Report. In its time, it triggered a cyclone of controversy, uproar, and even a few congressional inquiries. But it also forever changed the way that Americans thought, talked, and legislated about sex.

Drawing on data from 18,000 interview subjects, Kinsey compiled an exhaustive report on the sex lives of ordinary Americans. In black and white, with tables and graphs and annotations, he showed that people were having more sex and different kinds of sex than what traditional Christian morality dictated. He shocked the nation.

And he did it by simply holding up a mirror. But arguably, the Kinsey Report's most important contribution to sexology, or the study of sex, is the idea that our sexual orientations fall onto a spectrum, or a continuum. Rather than being exclusively heterosexual, or exclusively homosexual, human beings tend to exhibit a mix of both, albeit with a strong preference to one side or the other, typically. And this idea, this spectrum, is commonly referred to as the Kinsey Scale.

Now, that underlying idea may sound fairly obvious to modern ears, but in its day, the Kinsey scale was a blasphemous salvo against prevailing orthodoxy. At the time, Victorian morality and puritanical attitudes still held sway over much of America, not only in people's homes, but also in the legal codes. And what Kinsey did, essentially, was use hard data to blow up the myths surrounding sex, which preempted a much larger cultural conversation that led to the sexual revolution,

increased access to contraception, and a greater tolerance for sexual minorities. All that said, Kinsey's legacy is a sharply contested one. And depending on who you are, his name might provoke admiration, disgust, or more likely, a blank stare. In the decades since his death, Kinsey's research has become a familiar battleground in larger culture wars. He's been called a genius, a pioneer, and a revolutionary. He's also been called a charlatan, a fraud, and a cultural terrorist.

Needless to say, Alfred Kinsey and his groundbreaking report is exactly the kind of topic that this show was made for, and I am very excited to share the story with you. Now, like I mentioned at the top, this series will be broken up into three episodes. Today's episode will explore Kinsey's background and the influences that guided him towards the study of sex. In the second episode, we'll learn about how Kinsey conducted his research and the way it began to creep into his personal life in unforeseen ways.

And finally, in part three, we'll talk about the massive cultural impact that the Kinsey Report had, and how it ultimately destroyed him. It's a story that is, in some ways, a tragedy. Even for those who deeply admire and respect his scientific contributions, Alfred Kinsey is an imperfect champion.

As both a human being and a scientist, Kinsey was deeply flawed. But the impact of his work was so great, so transformative, that it demands ongoing analysis and discussion. Because whether we realize it or not, we are living in a world that Kinsey helped build. Now, I realize that because of the sexual nature of the material, this topic will not be for everybody. Alfred Kinsey, after all, did not traffic in euphemisms or double talk, and neither will we. We're going to be talking about sex.

A lot. But if you can keep an open mind and keep the kids out of the room, I think you'll enjoy it. So, with all that said, let's jump right in. Welcome to the Kinsey Report, Part 1.

It's August 20th, 1953, and everyone in America is thinking about sex. From coast to coast, in beauty parlors and barber shops, in taxi cabs and train cars, in board meetings and break rooms, everyone in America is reading, talking, arguing about sex. And how could they not? On that bright Thursday morning in 1953, the topic of sex was splashed across the pages of every reputable newspaper in the country, from Ladies Home Journal to Time Magazine.

A few years earlier, most publications wouldn't even print the word sex. God forbid words like orgasm, or masturbation, or clitoris. But things had changed, and they had changed largely because of one man. A mild-mannered, middle-aged biology professor from Indiana University named Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

That is K-I-N-S-E-Y Kinsey. Five years earlier, most Americans had never heard the name Alfred Kinsey. In fact, most people outside of Bloomington, Indiana had never heard of Kinsey. But by 1953, he was, according to U.S. News & World Report, quote, the most widely noticed man in the United States at the moment, next to President Eisenhower. And what had Kinsey done to deserve such fame, attention, and notoriety? Well, he'd written a book. A very controversial book.

In 1948, Kinsey shocked the nation with the release of his landmark scientific treatise, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. At first glance, Kinsey's book was not an obvious candidate for a national bestseller. Cover to cover, it was 804 pages, packed with scientific jargon and bone-dry analytics. Most Americans would have sooner used it as a doorstop or a blunt weapon than a source of entertainment.

But inside those brittle pages, Kinsey had detonated what one newspaper called, quote, a social atom bomb. In his book, Kinsey posts some very simple but provocative questions about sexual behavior. According to historian James Jones, Kinsey wanted to find out, quote, what people did sexually, at what ages they started doing it, how often they did it, what they thought or fantasized about while they did it, and with whom or what they did it with. American society was not at all prepared for what Kinsey found. Over

Over the previous 10 years, Kinsey had interviewed 5,300 American men, mostly white and middle class, about what they did between the sheets. Thousands of hours of rigorous, confidential interviews charting sexual histories all the way from childhood to the present day. And the resulting data was a bombshell. It suggested that there was a huge gap between what people said they did in public and what they actually did behind closed doors. It was what one paper described as a, quote, great schizophrenic split.

A chasm between what Americans do and what they believe they do, what they practice and what they preach. And we'll go into all the juicy revelations later, but needless to say, people were shocked, repulsed, fascinated, and excited at

all at once. With curled toes and hot cheeks, the American public devoured this new book. In its first two months, the Kinsey Report, as the press began calling it, sold 200,000 copies. It was flying off the shelves so fast, the publishing company had to keep two presses running day and night just to keep up.

Not since Gone with the Wind, wrote Time magazine, had booksellers seen anything like it. While the prose may have been stiff, the terminology esoteric, but inside the pages of the Kinsey Report, people found treasure. Answers to questions that they had never dreamed or dared to ask.

Things you just didn't talk about in polite society, unless of course you wanted to get some nasty looks and possibly a little jail time. But for many people, Kinsey's book was more than a source of information. It was a measure of relief, a liberating shout that broke the long, smothering silence. Like the bursting of a dam, sexual knowledge flooded into the public square and washed away some of the old inhibitions. As historian James Jones writes, quote,

However awkward, prurient, or naughty they might feel, Americans suddenly had permission to talk about sex. Kinsey gave them that right, and he did so in the name of science. Almost instantly, Dr. Kinsey became a celebrity, a pop culture phenomenon. Over the next few years, more than 500 articles would be written about Kinsey and his research.

Expressions such as "Hotter than the Kinsey Report" and "Kinsey Crazy" entered the language, wrote one historian. Movie studios bickered over the right to turn the book into a film. In May West, the famous Hollywood sex symbol even wrote a letter directly to Dr. Kinsey suggesting that they compare notes. By 1953, Kinsey was one of the most famous people on the planet, and when he announced that he would be writing a follow-up volume to Sexual Behavior and the Human Male, the press could hardly contain their enthusiasm.

This time, Kinsey said, he would be reporting on the sexual behavior of women, a

a charged subject if ever there was one. And no one knew exactly what he would unveil, but if Kinsey's first book was any indication, the revelations inside would be seismic. Sexual Behavior and the Human Female, wrote Cosmopolitan Magazine, was, quote, the most feverishly awaited, most wildly speculated on, most sensationally publicized book in history. And as the date of publication drew near, the nation held its breath. On August 20th, 1953, K.

"K-Day" as the media sensationally dubbed it, Kinsey would reveal what America's daughters, wives, and mothers did between the sheets. But not everybody was so enthused about Dr. Kinsey and his research. The political climate of the early 1950s was extremely hostile to anything or anyone that did not reinforce the existing social norms of the time. World War II had just ended, and at great cost.

But the confetti from the victory parades had barely been swept up when a new, more terrifying conflict blossomed like a mushroom cloud. A cold war with that strange, threatening superpower across the sea, the Soviet Union. An atmosphere of anxiety crept into the corridors of power. Fear that the Soviets and their ideology were infiltrating America from within.

Hysterical crusaders like Senator Joseph McCarthy saw commies around every corner, spies in the State Department, and saboteurs in Hollywood. Before long, the Red Scare was in full swing, and anything remotely counter-cultural was deemed an existential threat.

At that time, U.S. politicians sought to define American identity in oppositional terms. We are what they are not. Where the Soviets were godless, Americans were devout. Where the Reds were depraved, the Yanks were virtuous. Where the Commies were obscene, the capitalists were honest and true. It was simple moral arithmetic, and in the eyes of men like Senator McCarthy, sharply drawn values were as important to national security as an arsenal of atomic weapons. And

And so it was in this historical context that Dr. Alfred Kinsey dropped a few bombshells of his own. By holding up a mirror to Americans and their sex lives, his research was pushing against a very strong moral current. In an era when lawmakers were trying to narrowly define what it meant to be an American, to uphold a clean-cut image of national character, Kinsey was saying, actually guys, we don't know ourselves at all. And that made him a target.

At the offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, the file on Kinsey was several inches thick and growing fatter by the day. The director of the bureau, J. Edgar Hoover, was personally offended by the content of Kinsey's book. He found it, according to one historian, quote, "...deeply upsetting. It was 804 pages of trash, 22 chapters of filth, and at $6.50, not exactly a bargain."

All in all, the Kinsey report was nothing short of a brazen assault on the moral character of the United States. And naturally, Director Hoover wanted to know everything there was to know about this obscure biology professor from Indiana. Who was this guy? Where did he come from? And how could he possibly know so much about the sexual habits of average Americans? Hoover, the McCarthyites, and the other soldiers of the status quo were determined to find out and

and shut him up. And so, before we examine the full content and consequences of the Kinsey Report, we also need to investigate the enigmatic Dr. Kinsey. We need to figure out who he is, what he believed, and why he decided to research sex in the first place. But to do that, we need to turn the clock back about 30 years, to the fall of 1920. The End

It's the fall of 1920. We're on the campus of Indiana University. Located in the quiet college town of Bloomington, Indiana, IU was not the biggest or most celebrated school in the nation. It couldn't boast the attendance of Chicago University or the prestige of Harvard, but what it did have was an absolutely gorgeous campus. As historian James Jones writes, quote, Indiana University looked like a manicured park with skyscrapers.

with sculptured shrubs and neatly trimmed lawns. Red brick walkways dating to the 1880s crisscrossed the campus, connecting buildings of different ages and designs. Trees gave the campus its special beauty. Maples, oaks, poplars, hickories, sweetgums, pines, and spruce. The variety seemed endless. Many had been standing when Indiana was still a territory, giving parts of the campus the look and feel of a virgin forest.

Lovely all year round, they were truly spectacular in the fall, setting the campus ablaze with fiery reds and splashes of orange, crimson, purple, and yellow. And across these pathways and gardens, hundreds of students scurried from class to class, hauling textbooks and daydreaming about the future. And one of those students was a 22-year-old chemistry graduate named Clara McMillan.

As she shuffled across the campus green, Clara would not have turned too many heads. She was, in the parlance of the times, plain as parchment, with a ruffled bob of raven black hair and an expression that said, please stop talking to me. She wore baggy clothes, shunned makeup, and never bothered with heels when a good pair of hiking boots would do. She was, wrote one historian, quote, something of a tomboy. But that didn't mean Clara was awkward or unsure of herself. In fact, she was completely at home in her own skin.

"I never thought about who I was," she reflected later in life. "I knew who I was. I was Clara McMillan." That semester, Clara had a full course load, a gauntlet of exams, labs, homework, and required reading. But as she studied late into the night, she found herself getting distracted by other thoughts.

As much as she hated to admit it, she could not stop thinking about a boy. A handsome, charming, intelligent boy. Alright, if she was being totally honest with herself, he wasn't really a boy, he was a man. Okay, and he wasn't just any man, he was a professor at the university. A drop-dead gorgeous 26-year-old professor, to be fair. And his name, written like neon in her mind's eye, was Alfred.

Professor Alfred Kinsey. She'd met him earlier that summer. Well, met was a strong word. She'd briefly seen him during a campus tour. And what a sight he was. All his life, Kinsey was extremely good-looking, wrote historian Jonathan Gothorn Hardy. He had bright blue eyes and golden blonde hair, which became easily curled.

Kinsey was, an acquaintance remembered, quote, To put it in modern terms, young Alfred Kinsey was a bit of a snack. And

and Clara thought about him all summer. And when she arrived at IU for graduate studies that fall, she was determined to engineer a meeting with this dreamboat professor. The leaves had barely changed color before she got her opportunity. It was a picnic retreat for the zoology department at a local state park, faculty and grad students only. Clara had managed to talk her way into an invitation from another professor. I sort of invited myself, she remembered.

And under the trees, among the foxes, deer, and rabbits, Clara went hunting. And her prey was Professor Kinsey. As it turned out, getting some alone time with Alfred was easier than she'd expected. According to one historian, quote, Everyone else huddled around a common campfire. But Kinsey, as was his habit, split off from the group. He had brought his own food and built his own immaculate campfire. Clara joined him. I helped him cook, she replied.

she remembered, and I had a wonderful time. As they talked in the firelight, Clara and Alfred discovered that they had many things in common. They both loved science, classical music, but most of all, nature and the outdoors. Alfred apparently was an eagle scout. If the need arose, he could navigate through a pitch black forest in the middle of a snowstorm and tie 12 elaborate knots while doing it. Clara

Clara was fascinated, and as she listened to him talk, she watched his hands, his eyes, his hair, his lips, and she knew she absolutely had to see this guy again. Clara, writes James Jones, was quote, strongly attracted to Kinsey from the first. And things progressed very quickly from there. Kinsey, as luck would have it, was equally enchanted with Clara, and as the trees on campus turned from yellow to orange to red, their courtship intensified.

A first date became a second, became a third, became a fourth, and by January of 1921, Kinsey was head over hiking boots. "She is a very brilliant scholar," he gushed to a friend, "one of the best athletes in the place. She knows the birds better than I do, knows flowers and trees, is a capable hiker and camper, a champion swimmer." Their attraction was deep, their interests were aligned, and their twenty-something libidos were absolutely raging.

As Clara recalled, quote, And the lovebirds didn't waste any time building their nest. Just two months after their first date, Kinsey popped the question.

And six months later, on June 21st, 1921, Clara Macmillan became Mrs. Clara Kinsey. Now, I know what you're thinking. A professor marrying a student? Surely that sort of thing was frowned upon, right? Well, the answer is no, not really. As historian James Jones writes, quote, It happened all the time.

As long as they conducted themselves with propriety, they could count on a warm reception from the academic community. However, Clara did end up dropping Kinsey's entomology course, as she explained, "I didn't think it would be right for me to take a course from the man I was going to marry." Needless to say, Mack and Proc were a unique couple. And when it came time for their honeymoon, Kinsey had something equally unique in mind. Most newlyweds like to celebrate their love on a sandy beach with a cold cocktail, but Mack and Proc were not most newlyweds.

Instead of fun in the sun, they opted for a grueling multi-week camping expedition across the White Mountains in New Hampshire. As always, Proc led the way. He took his new bride up mountains, across rivers, through canyons and valleys.

Clara, according to one historian, had, quote, never even seen a mountain, but she kept up with him every step of the way, even through some of the nastiest weather either of them had ever encountered. Quote, tremendous winds, snowstorms, hail and rain. But what the White Mountains lacked in comfort, it more than made up for in privacy. Out here in the American wilderness, away from giggles and gossip in Bloomington, they could finally be alone. Out here, they were free to do more than hold hands and steal kisses between classes.

They could finally consummate their marriage. They could finally satisfy all those feelings they'd had since that campfire conversation many months ago. And so, after a long day of hiking, with their blood pumping and their bodies wound tight, they retired to a warm tent and cocooned themselves in soft blankets. As they peeled each other's clothes off, their heartbeats were skipping with anticipation. And Kinsey confessed that he was a virgin.

Clara said she was too. But as they started to touch each other, to try and do what lovers do, they realized they had no idea what they were doing. Kinsey wasn't altogether clear how to go about this, a friend explained many years later. And secondly, Mac was quite apprehensive. She was completely inexperienced as well. I think on a couple of their early attempts it hurt physically, which one would expect, and so he would stop.

The newlyweds fumbled in the dark, trying and failing to physically connect. When they did, it hurt. Every attempt at pleasure was met with frustration, pain, or both. And after an embarrassing, agonizing attempt at intercourse, both of them just simply gave up. Mac was unsatisfied and nervous. Proc was humiliated and confused.

In short, it was an absolute disaster. As an Eagle Scout, Kinsey could climb any mountain, ford any stream, cross any marsh, but for him, the female body was uncharted wilderness. He had no compass, no map, no frame of reference. And neither did Clara. She couldn't guide him, couldn't even tell him what to do. And so, the Kinseys returned from their honeymoon just as they had started it.

who knew absolutely nothing about how to please each other sexually. Mack and Prock were indeed a unique couple, but their problems were not. In fact, their situation was incredibly, depressingly common. At the time, sex education in America was a void from which no light escaped. When it came to basic biological facts, Gothorn Hardy writes, most young men and women exhibited, quote,

total, uncomprehending ignorance. It is difficult today, when all is known, all told, all shown on film or video or printed in book and play, to realize the extraordinary confusion and ignorance surrounding all sexual matters that pertained in America, Britain, and over much of Europe in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.

It was quite common to find girls at college in the 1930s who did not know how babies were born. Quite often they thought that kissing made you pregnant. Boys were just as ignorant. According to one study of high school boys aged 12 to 18 in 1939 and 1940, the ignorance was astonishing at all social levels. 19% knew a baby had to leave a mother, but none realized the agency of a man was required. 91% didn't know what the word "virgin" meant.

27% didn't know the word intercourse. 96% didn't know the word masturbation. Their ignorance of female physiology was catastrophic. 71% knew nothing about menstruation, and only 29% knew the egg cell came from the mother. 3% thought it was provided by the hospital. And this all-pervading ignorance, confusion, and often terror were significant features of the historical and contemporary background of Kinsey's major work. So...

was guilt. In all this, religion played a dominant part. Essentially, as far as the Christian religion was concerned, all sex was sinful, unless it was between a man and a wife in order to have children. This position was, in varying degrees, upheld by American state laws. End quote. No wonder, then, that Alfred and Clara had no idea what they were doing. They were very much products of their time, an era when sex was something better left unsaid and unread.

As one contemporary writer put it, quote, In puritanical America, babies are still brought by storks. Decent people copulate only in wedded antisepsis. And the pubic region is mentionable nowhere except in alleys and medical colleges. But perhaps Clara said it best when talking to a reporter much later in life. She said that her premarital knowledge of sex could be summarized in one word, quote, none.

And so all of this begs the question, how did Alfred Kinsey, a repressed 26-year-old virgin who couldn't find the clitoris if it tapped him on the shoulder, become the world's foremost expert on the no-pants dance? As Mack and Proc drove back to Indiana in strained silence, Kinsey's mind might have wandered back in time. And as he thought about his childhood, about the circumstances of his youth, his grip on the steering wheel might have gotten just a little bit tighter. After all, thinking about his past made Kinsey very, very angry.

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It's June 23rd, 1907, 14 years before Mack and Prock's ill-fated honeymoon, and 31 years before the publication of the Kinsey Report. We're about 15 miles west of Hoboken, New Jersey, in a picturesque little suburban neighborhood. With their bricks and lawns and picket fences, the houses in this neighborhood look very much the same.

as if they'd rolled off a conveyor belt right onto the street. Copies of copies of copies. And one of these houses, a sturdy little two-story home, belongs to the Kinsey family. The neighbors didn't know much about the Kinsey family, aside from the basics. They knew the family had moved here from the city a couple years ago. They knew the patriarch of the clan was extremely religious, even for the time, attended by a church mouse wife who barely spoke. And they also knew that the family had a young son, a little boy named...

Alfred. In June of 1907, Alfred Kinsey has just turned 13 years old, and he is terrified. Being 13, of course, is one of the more terrifying experiences a person can have, but in Alfred's case, it was particularly distressing. Puberty had hit him like a freight train, elongating his limbs, stretching his voice, and turning his body into a combat zone of blemishes and body hair. And like most boys his age, Alfred was dealing with these changes with all the grace and poise of a cat wearing socks.

But it wasn't the pimples or the cracking voice that really scared Alfred. Most disturbing of all to him was the fact that he had started having... thoughts. Strange, incomprehensible ideas that involved his hand, some tissues, and a certain appendage. He didn't have a name for this urge, this act that invaded every waking thought, but he did know that it was very, very bad. At the time, Kinsey would never have even heard the word masturbation.

He would only have heard terms like self-abuse, self-pollution, or the solitary sin.

Kinsey, writes historian James Jones, was, quote, born into a society that was anxious and conflicted over human sexuality. His formative years were spent in a home and in a nation where many middle-class parents enshrouded sex in shame. Every authority figure in his life, from the Boy Scouts to the preachers to the teachers at school, told Kinsey and his peers that giving in to these urges would lead to nothing but ruin and tragedy. Masturbation is death, warned one contemporary physician. In

In the textbooks of the time, it was classified as a pathological disease, a degenerative behavior that would uncork a carnival of medical horrors. Doctors linked it to an astonishing assortment of illnesses, writes Jones, including insanity, blindness, impotence, epilepsy, vertigo, loss of hearing, loss of memory, chronic headache, rickets, and nymphomania, to name only a few. And those were just the earthly concerns. By Leibniz's

By letting his hand wander under the sheets, young Alfred wasn't just risking life and limb, he was endangering his immortal soul. Kinsey grew up in an extremely, extremely religious household, where God was always watching and always judging.

As Jones writes, quote, On Sundays, Jones continues, Kinsey would listen to, quote,

Sermons designed to shape his moral view of life as an unending struggle between good and evil. Much of what he heard was mean-spirited, hate-filled, and fearful, calculated to produce feelings of dependence and submission rather than love and trust. And so, 13-year-old Alfred faced a moral and mortal dilemma.

satisfy his maddening urges, or risk the destruction of his body and the death of his soul. Every night he waged a battle with his own raging hormones, and very often he lost. Afterwards, the guilt would crush him. Like so many of his generation, writes Gothorn Hardy, Kinsey felt considerable guilt over almost everything to do with sex. Guilt, but above all, frustration. What he remembered even more acutely as an adult was his terrible, torturing frustration. It had

And as scared as he was of the Almighty, there was someone Kinsey feared and hated even more. His father, Alfred Kinsey, Sr. Alfred Sr. was less of a dad and more of a live-in priest. A, quote, iron-hard, stubborn, and dictatorial man, in the words of one historian. In short, Alfred Sr. was the type of Christian who would have considered the Old Testament God a bit soft on crime. As Gothorn Hardy writes, quote, The Kinseys belonged to a group of Methodists so strict that they could, doctrine apart, have

have been described as Calvinists. And of that little group of Hoboken Methodists, Alfred Kinsey Sr. was the sternest, the strictest, and the most unforgiving.

Sundays were particularly cheerless. They went to three long services, walking, writing was forbidden, and allowed no entertainment, no relaxation, nothing pleasurable at all. The milkman was forbidden to deliver milk. Newspapers were forbidden. Mrs. Kinsey had to cook all Sunday's meals on a Saturday. The only thing they could do was pray.

"We lived in church," remembered Kinsey's younger brother, Bob. Under his father's regime, young Alfred Kinsey was denied even the simplest diversions. Movies? Forbidden. Dancing? Forbidden. Socializing with girls? Don't even think about it? Forbidden. And Alfred Sr.'s self-righteous moralizing did not stop at the pews.

His son was less of a child to nurture than a weapon to wield. He used Kinsey as bait to root out moral corruption in the neighborhood. For example, selling cigarettes to minors then and now is illegal, and Alfred Sr. would, according to James Jones, quote, "...send Kinsey into shops to ask for cigarettes."

If the order was filled, the father immediately reported the offending merchant to the police. After he reached adulthood, Kinsey spoke of these incidents with disgust, insisting that he had hated being used as a decoy. And all of this suffocating repression created a young boy who was introverted to the point of being invisible.

Handsome, but awkward. Studious, but shy. Friends would have called Kinsey kind, inquisitive, even charming. But they didn't, because he didn't have any friends. He was a real serious guy, one high school classmate remembered. Great on books, he was always reading. He wasn't a guy who would socialize, though. He was studying all the time. Another peer recalled, quote, He wasn't the type that you would go out and have a pleasant time with.

I think he was shy, another said. The shyest guy around girls you could think of. Yes, everywhere Kinsey looked, he was surrounded by apathy, mockery, or judgment. But there was one place, one refuge where he truly came alive. Just beyond the manicured lawns and prim picket fences of his suburban neighborhood, there were wild forests and rolling hills, where nature still thrived and animals roamed undisturbed. As

As an early member of the Boy Scouts of America, Kinsey got to spend a lot of time in the great outdoors, camping, hiking, foraging, and mapping. As he remembered, "...a new world suddenly opened up before me. There were birds with colored breasts, flowers that could be picked, endless things to discover, an inexhaustible treasure chest that drew me on into the fields and over the hills."

Out here, everything made sense. Things just existed. There was no right or wrong, good or evil, just life in all its endless variation and splendor. Birds and bees, flowers and trees, and absolutely no sign of Alfred Sr. for miles. And that alone made it heaven on earth.

But Kinsey wasn't just content to admire nature, he wanted to understand it too. As he progressed through high school, Kinsey excelled in all of his subjects but he loved science most of all. In particular, the science of living things, biology. As he collected plants and butterflies and read about how they worked, Kinsey could not help but notice the sheer inexhaustible variety that nature seemed to hold. No two things were exactly alike.

They might share similarities, they might even look identical to the naked eye, but under a microscope, every bug or flower had some small variation entirely unique to them. Specimens, Kinsey noticed, seemed to fall onto a scale, a continuum, rather than neat little categories.

It was an insight that would bloom into a very important idea later in life. And so, driven along by his obsession with science and possessed by a work ethic that would have made a Quaker blush, Kinsey threw himself into his studies, earning a trophy case of badges and accolades.

And by the time he walked across the stage at his high school graduation, he was an Eagle Scout, the class president, and the valedictorian. The senior yearbook bestowed Alfred Kinsey with the, quote, brightest and most respected superlatives. His classmates called him, quote, the great scientist. But despite all his accomplishments, despite an academic resume that could have taken him anywhere, there was still one very large, very imposing obstacle standing between Kinsey and the future he wanted.

Alfred, Sr. When Kinsey told his dad about his dream of becoming a biologist, Alfred Sr. threw a bucket of ice water on the idea. "Absolutely not," he said. "Not on my dime. You're gonna study a trade, something practical. You're gonna study…engineering. Just like I did. And not only will you study engineering, you'll do it close by. As long as you're taking my money to go to college, young man, you'll stay right here where you belong."

Under my roof and under my rules. Church three times a week, exams or no exams. It was a tale as old as time. Ambitious son meet repressive dad. And for the next two years, Kinsey did as his father said. He studied a subject he didn't care about in a town he wanted to leave under the roof of a man he despised. Now,

And like a flower suddenly deprived of sunshine, Kinsey wilted under his father's shadow. His grades suffered and his energy waned. But then one day, he decided he'd had enough. In secret, Kinsey applied to a liberal arts college in Maine. And when he received his acceptance letter, he took a deep breath, marched up to his father, and steeled himself for a confrontation. As James Jones writes, quote, Everything pointed to a cataclysmic explosion. There could be no negotiation.

No give and take, no effort to find middle ground. For his father did not know the meaning of compromise. No, Kinsey would have to present his decision as a fait accompli and then deal with the consequences. At a minimum, there would be angry shouts and emotional bullying. Since delay could only hurt his cause, Kinsey mustered his courage and delivered the news immediately. As Clara put it, quote, "...finally he just rebelled. He said he absolutely wouldn't go anymore."

But he did not stop there. The days of doing as he was ordered were over, Kinsey told his father. Henceforth he would be his own man and do as he pleased. Alfred Sr. was shocked, stunned, and furious. To his authoritarian mind, Kinsey was guilty of filial rebellion, domestic treason most foul. Instead of crushing his spirit, all those years of keeping silent and doing as he was told had left Kinsey emotionally hardened and defiant, a boy whose outward compliance masked a strong will of his own.

It was almost as if Alfred Sr. did not know the defiant young man who stood before him. How could a boy who had always been so obedient, so perfect in every way, suddenly turn into a rebel? If he could not run his son's life, Alfred Sr. did not propose to finance his freedom. Kinsey's father refused to put another dime into his son's education. As he prepared to leave home, the only support Kinsey received from his family was a suit of clothing worth $25.

Henceforth, Kinsey was on his own. End quote. For the rest of their lives, Kinsey and his father had barely any contact.

Alfred Sr. did not attend his son's college graduation, nor did he offer a word of praise when Kinsey was accepted into Harvard to pursue a doctorate in biology. He didn't write, he didn't call, and he didn't congratulate Kinsey when he was offered a teaching position at Indiana University straight out of grad school. And when 26-year-old Professor Kinsey fell in love with a bright young woman named Clara a year later, Alfred Sr. was most definitely not invited to the wedding.

Aside from a few scattered visits, it was a clean break. Over time, writes James Jones, Kinsey walled his father off completely. Without ranting or raging, he reduced the old man to the psychological status of a non-entity. And Kinsey's rejection of his father was so final, so complete, that he even abandoned the religion Alfred Sr. had drilled into him Sunday after Sunday, year after year. At some point, his belief in God began to weaken, Jones writes.

Why remains unclear, since he left no records on the subject. Still, what happened to Kinsey was a familiar story. Many deeply religious young men of his generation entered graduate school in the sciences only to emerge agnostics or atheists because they were unable to reconcile the conflicts between science and religion. Undoubtedly, this is what happened to Kinsey. After four years of rigorous scientific training, he had learned to think independently.

and to reevaluate his worldview. Somewhere along the way, the young Christian gentleman had started losing ground to the hard-nosed young scientist who demanded proof for everything. Kinsey's religious crisis was accompanied by a surging faith in science.

His future wife, Clara, Mac, had a much more straightforward explanation. Quote, he was overdosed on religion as a youth. Alfred Kinsey had been able to escape his father's house, to escape the long, gut-wrenching sermons and straitjacket morality. But the damage that they had done was not so easily cast aside. Those feelings of confusion, ignorance, and guilt about sex followed Kinsey like a cloud, a latent disease that would flare up at the slightest provocation.

Until, many years later, when he decided to do something about it. It's September of 1938, and once again we are on the campus of Indiana University. It's been almost 25 years since Alfred Kinsey walked out of his father's house. It's been 17 years since he and Clara returned from their disappointing honeymoon. And in that time, in those two decades since Mac and Proc had fallen in love, the University of Indiana hadn't changed much.

It was still small, it was still beautiful, and it was still buried in the conservative heart of middle America. But on this fine day in 1938, Indiana University is buzzing with an unusual energy. Like most institutions of higher learning, Indiana University offers all sorts of courses of varying degrees of usefulness.

You could learn about economics. You could learn about art. You could learn about the economics of art. But this semester, one class in particular has everybody talking. One class that has captured the imagination of every student, every faculty member, every resident in this tiny college town.

It's called simply the marriage course, but among the student body it goes by a much different name. They call it the sex course. Marriage courses were nothing new on American campuses, usually just joke health classes that regurgitated the same dusty myths and moral platitudes. But this one was different. Indiana University described their marriage course as a, quote,

non-credit series of 12 lectures on legal, economic, sociological, psychological, and biological aspects of marriage.

Initially, that aggressively mundane description only attracted a handful of students, but once word got around about what was actually being taught and shown in those lectures, interest in the course exploded. Applications poured in, and the enrollment in the class doubled. The first students to complete the course said that it contained some of the most enlightening, validating, and useful material about human reproduction that they had ever been exposed to. For some, it was the only material about human reproduction that they had ever been exposed to.

"I personally feel," one student said, "that it is the best course I have ever been privileged to take."

This was not some boring, bookish sermon on the merits of wedlock or the importance of chastity. This was, by all accounts, a no-holds-barred and no-belts-buckled discussion of sexual intercourse and all its attendant concerns. To the students' astonishment and relief, this marriage course was a complete departure from the sorry status quo of sex education in the United States. Education, of course, being a very strong word. As James Jones writes, quote,

Dated as they were, Victorian ideals dominated sex education in the US. Instead of answering young people's questions about their bodies or discussing the difficulties adolescents faced in a society that made absolutely no provision for sexual contacts before marriage, educators and public officials censored any discussion of topics such as reproductive anatomy, petting, premarital intercourse, and birth control.

If educators mentioned masturbation at all, they did so only to decry its deleterious effects on health and character. In short, what passed for sex education might better be called anti-sex education.

At a time when most young people were starved for basic information about sex, at a time when 40% of boys thought masturbation caused insanity and many girls believed babies came out of a woman's navel, this new class was offering answers to all their burning questions. Especially their burning questions, in fact, since the national STD rate had been skyrocketing in recent years. "Finally," they said, "someone was teaching the student body about their student bodies." Finally, someone was telling the truth about sex.

"The course begins where the fairy tales end," wrote the student editorial in the university paper. And so, as the students filed into the auditorium of the chemistry building and took their seats, a hush fell over the room. A high-frequency wavelength of suppressed excitement and nervous curiosity rippled through the crowd. "You could hear a pen drop," remembered one faculty member. And in two, this pregnant pause strode the primary lecturer of the course.

With his off-center bow tie and unflattering crew cut, 44-year-old Professor Alfred Kinsey did not exactly cut the image of an expert on sex. But when he clicked on the slide projector and opened his mouth to speak, he absolutely blew their minds. In an uninhibited society, Kinsey said...

A twelve-year-old would know most of the biology which I will have to give to you in formal lectures as seniors and graduate students. Conventional sex education, everything they've heard thus far, Kinsey continued, was a, quote, curious if well-intentioned mixture of superstition, religious evaluation, and a mere perpetuation of social custom. This course, he promised, would break that mold. Here, they would learn the facts. They

They would learn science, but most importantly they would learn to accept and understand their own bodies after a lifetime of misinformation. In truth, Kinsey was giving the lecture he wished he had received. The lecture that he and Clara should have heard when they were young newlyweds, clueless about their own bodies. And so, with a matter-of-fact, almost bored tone that suggested unassailable scientific certainty…

Kinsey launched into his pioneering lecture. Over the next 12 weeks, he discussed a huge array of topics, from reproductive anatomy to contraception to basic sexual techniques. Gasps erupted from the crowd when photographs of human genitalia and even intercourse were shown. The front row turned bright red when Kinsey used words like coitus, condom, vagina, or semen.

And if you, listener, living almost 100 years later just felt an involuntary twinge of embarrassment or discomfort hearing those words, magnify it by about a thousand and you might have some idea of what it was like for these sheltered students. Over the course of his lectures, Dr. Kinsey stressed that sex was not only "not shameful" or morally wrong, it was a key ingredient for any healthy, happy marriage.

And Kinsey did have to use the word marriage there, there were only so many paradigms he could break at the time, but what he meant was that a knowledge of sexual physiology could enrich any romantic relationship. And to the astonishment of many young men in the class, Kinsey advocated for, according to James Jones, "...complete equality in erotic pleasure for both sexes. Every sexual union," he maintained, "...should end in mutual bliss. Any husband who did not leave his wife sexually satisfied had failed to perform his manly duties."

But, he assured them, this was not some arcane mystery to unravel or some scary, unknowable art. It was biology. Simple, basic biology. All it took was patience and practice. Kinsey stressed that at the end of the day, according to one scholar, quote, sex was a series of physiological reactions which are as mechanical as the blinking of an eyelid.

The class was mesmerized, not only by the provocative material, but by Kinsey's rich, theatrical speaking style. "He was a marvelous speaker," one student sighed. "He made you want to hear more, to learn more, to participate. He inspired you." "He was a real showman," a colleague remembered. Yes, Kinsey had come a long way from the introverted Eagle Scout from Hoboken.

Initially, Indiana University had been reticent to offer the marriage course, fearing that it might offend more conservative sensibilities within the student body. But as it happened, it had the opposite effect. As the university braced for a tide of outrage, they instead received overwhelmingly positive feedback on Kinsey's course. Instead of being shocked or offended, writes Jones, many

Many students endorsed explicit and detailed discussions of human sexuality. "Students responded enthusiastically to the course as a whole," wrote another scholar. According to their comments, the course gave them confidence about themselves, fulfilled a genuine need for knowledge not available elsewhere, and fostered healthy attitudes about marriage. "I wish my parents had treated the matter of sex instruction in such a natural way to me," wrote one female student.

instead of telling me little or nothing about it. Many persons have wanted to know the information obtained, another said, but didn't know where to get it and did not want to ask.

If I had heard the lecture on individual variation several years ago, one married student confessed, it would not have taken my husband and me years of patient endeavor to have worked out a certain aspect of sexual adjustment, for we would have been on the right track and needn't have worried and experimented our way along ignorantly until we finally stumbled upon a solution to our problem. And Kinsey's class offered not only guidance and vital information, but

but comfort to students who felt that something was wrong with them or that their feelings were unnatural. Everything about the man inspired trust, writes James Jones. The expression of understanding and concern in his eyes, his word choice when discussing sensitive topics, and the tone in his voice when he offered words of reassurance. All this and more spoke to a man who understood their problems and who cared about their confusion and pain. As one student professed, quote,

This course has helped me immensely, making clear many things which have bothered me a great deal. It gave me a new understanding of life.

"I believe," another young woman said, "that a thorough understanding of one's own body means less fear of it." "Why should people continue to wreck their lives through this false idea of sex?" one student wrote passionately. "I appreciate this fact because it has damaged part of my life already. Why anyone should object to the knowing of their own bodies is beyond me. I burn to think of such people, even though my parents are among them. I say to hell with criticism.

continue to bring human anatomy of this forbidden nature to light, to struggling persons who have not had the chance of finding it out before. And as he read through all these glowing endorsements with a growing sense of pride, Kinsey would have seen reflections of his younger self in the students he was teaching. The same insecurity, the same confusion, the same pain.

17 years earlier, in 1921, when he and Clara had returned from their honeymoon, they were desperate for answers about why they could not comfortably have sex. Other young couples might have suffered in silence or given up, but Mac and Proc were determined to get some answers.

They loved each other very much, and they were not going to let their physical connection die on the vine. And it wasn't long before they got the relief they craved. After consulting with a local physician, it was discovered that Clara had a small, routine genital abnormality, which, as luck would have it, could be easily remedied by a $5 surgery. The surgery was performed, and after that, the Kinseys were able to finally, fully consummate their marriage.

And although the physical impediments were lifted, the mental inhibitions remained. Kinsey's repressive childhood still loomed large, and Clara was certainly no femme fatale. But for a pair of fiercely intelligent and deeply motivated people like Mac and Proc, there was no challenge too daunting. As James Jones writes, quote, "...over the years following their honeymoon, the Kinseys sought to combat their ignorance and guilt with knowledge and reason."

They did their homework, and they did it often. So often, in fact, that by 1928, the Kinsey Christmas card included several children. Two girls and a boy named Anne, Joan, and Bruce. And like learning a new language or sharpening a skill, Mack and Prock taught themselves how to please each other, to let go of old pain and embrace new ideas. The healthy attitude towards sex became a cornerstone of the Kinsey household. And as his children grew up, Prock strove to be everything his father was not.

According to James Jones, quote,

Determined to banish ignorance and shame, the twin legacies of Victorian repression, he hoped to demystify sex by treating it as natural and healthy. As one of Kinsey's daughters put it later in life, quote, You knew that you could always go talk to him, to either one of my parents. If you had something that bothered you, you could go and talk to them about it. But as open-minded and tolerant as he was, there was one thing that Kinsey could not abide in his household.

Religion. The religious fervor of his youth had been transformed into a passionate atheism, wrote one historian. As Kinsey's daughter Joan remembered, quote,

Daddy felt very strongly about the need for no religion. It was not a passive attitude toward it. He really had no use for it. It was an active, almost on occasions, aggressive dislike for religion. Once, writes historian David Halberstam, Kinsey's son Bruce pointed to a flower and told his father that God had made it. Now Bruce, Kinsey said, where did that flower really come from?

From a seed, Bruce Kinsey admitted. The children never really knew why their father hated religion so much, but they knew better than to ask. With adults, on the other hand, Kinsey could be much more gruff and forthcoming on the subject. When asked by a colleague if he believed in God, Kinsey scoffed, quote, Don't be ridiculous. Of course not.

No, Kinsey was a scientist. He quoted Darwin, not scripture. He believed in what he could see, touch, observe, and measure. And throughout the 1920s and 30s, as a respected biology professor at Indiana University, that is exactly what he did. He wrote a very influential biology textbook, graced the stage of countless conferences,

and passed his undying love of nature and the outdoors onto a generation of young minds. But underneath it all, always scratching at the back of his brain, was this problem of sex. An all-consuming need to understand it, to know more about it, to experience more of it. According to one historian, quote,

evolved into a quest for self-understanding. It is a truism of behavioral psychology, writes John Gothorn Hardy. Indeed, it is common sense that if something pleasurable and strongly desired is prohibited, it becomes an obsession. And it

And it is certainly true that Kinsey became obsessed with sex. Yes, the only thing that interested Kinsey more than birds and bees was the birds and the bees. But he was not the only person thinking more and more about sex in those early decades of the 20th century. As one historian wrote, quote, By the 1920s and 30s, many middle-class Americans were eager to discuss a variety of sexual issues. Should sex be restricted to procreation, or was it a good thing in its own right? Was masturbation harmful? Would petting...

that just means hand stuff lead to premarital intercourse would premarital intercourse spoil a couple's chances for finding happiness in marriage was oral sex perverted in keeping with other areas of their lives middle class americans expected experts to come up with the answers end quote and the experts kinsey discovered were woefully inadequate the more and more he read about the so-called science of sex the more appalled he became you know kinsey told a colleague

There isn't much science here. According to one historian, quote, "...the field of sex research began in several European countries in the 1860s, its beginnings often centered on a particular problem or sexual pattern—prosecution."

Prostitution, venereal diseases, homosexuality, nymphomania, and masturbation anchored the field's earliest work. And in those early days, almost all sex research was taking place within the medical profession. Doctors and psychologists whose job was to diagnose, treat, and heal. Who only thought in terms of healthy or unhealthy, well or unwell. And as a result, the understanding of sexual behavior was similarly bifurcated.

As one historian wrote, quote, Medicine logically requires disease, so disease had to be found in sex. Anything but common, heterosexual, missionary-positioned sexual intercourse to have children was at various times classified as disease. Oral sex, homosexuality, masturbation, back-positioned sex were all considered pathological. End quote. Yes, to these early medical minds, sex was to be performed with all the finesse and creativity of a bricklayer. This

This goes there, that goes there, job well done. Well, in Kinsey's view, all these doctors were really doing was applying clinical labels to behaviors that society already condemned as abnormal or deviant. They weren't bringing truth or comfort to people, they were just reinforcing the church's rhetoric with respectable-sounding terminology.

At the end of the day, it was just a fresh coat of paint on the chapel doors. And the more Kinsey read, the angrier he became. To his dismay, the scientific attitudes about sex had barely budged since his childhood. And Kinsey could never forget or forgive the same medical community who had told boys of his generation that masturbation would literally kill them. Kinsey fumed that it was, quote, "...morals masquerading under the name of science, and it has no right to a place in our science classrooms."

Absent from the medical literature was data. Hard, empirical data on what the majority of people did or didn't do. After all, what was normal anyway? For 70 years, doctors and psychologists had only nibbled at the fringes of the population, the outliers who believed they had a problem or were told they had a problem.

And with a lightning bolt of clarity that both angered and excited the scientists within, Kinsey realized that no one actually knew anything about human sexual behavior. As one historian put it, quote, "...these simple questions about sexual behavior no one had really explored. No one knew precisely what people did, and therefore everyone was anxious or guilty about whatever they did."

Up until that point, sex had only really been catalogued from a pathological perspective. McKinsey wanted to research it from a biological perspective: unbiased, unjudgmental, unconcerned with antiquated notions of right or wrong, normal or abnormal.

As a trained biologist, zoologist, and entomologist with almost 20 years of experience, he believed that he was the perfect man for the job. So when the student newspaper at Indiana University started advocating for the creation of a marriage course in the summer of 1938, Kinsey saw a golden opportunity. The student body was asking for a sex course right in his own backyard.

And not only did he volunteer to teach the course, he campaigned to teach the course. Kinsey correctly assumed that young people at Indiana University wanted desperately to know more about sex. Not intercourse, that was something dusty and clinical and best left on the highest shelf possible. Not fornication, which was something preachers and men with signs on street corners screamed at you. No, they wanted to know about S-E-X sex. Steam on the window, wet spot on the sheets, sex.

and Kinsey's class most certainly delivered. Working with other departments and faculty, Kinsey assembled a comprehensive syllabus. Twelve lectures, half a dozen speakers, and one seriously groundbreaking course. The results, as we have already seen, were electrifying. It was...

Perfect, wrote one student. I think the lectures have been extremely valuable and interesting, said another, partly for the information in them but mostly for the splendid attitudes they foster. One woman said, quote, It is a satisfaction to see so many of the things one has wondered about so graphically explained.

Kinsey's course clearly struck a nerve. And to his pleasant surprise, not only were his students eager to learn more about sexual and reproductive health, they weren't shy about asking questions either. Almost every day, students would knock on his office door, hoping he could offer answers to deeply private issues. According to James Jones, quote,

One student had inquired about an endocrine disturbance, eight had expressed concern over genital malformation, and three had sought information about spontaneous abortion and marriage. No fewer than 18 married students had inquired about adjustments and techniques, three had requested information on contraception, three more had discussed divorce, and one had inquired about extramarital intercourse.

Eight students had complained about a total lack of erotic response, 36 had asked about masturbation, 29 had inquired about premarital intercourse, and no fewer than nine had sought information about homosexuality.

End quote. As the stack of comments on his desk grew taller and the line of students outside his office grew longer, it occurred to Kinsey that this wasn't just good feedback, it was good data. So at the end of every lecture, Kinsey distributed a written questionnaire inviting students to provide information on their sexual histories. If they wished, they could stop by his office for a private consultation, whatever made them more comfortable. But rest assured, all information volunteered would remain strictly confidential.

And the response he got was incredible. By the end of the fall semester, almost 30% of students in the class had volunteered some of the deepest, most personal details about their sex lives, or lack thereof. Kinsey was elated. He was on to something here. This class, he told a friend, could be a, quote, scientific goldmine. If he could only somehow amass, organize, and analyze this stuff, it might yield some earth-shattering conclusions for the scientific community. But

But Kinsey's pioneering course had not gone unnoticed by more conservative members of the Indiana faculty. And no sooner had Kinsey started collecting data than forces from without and within started marshalling against him. And not all of that attention was welcome, because Alfred Kinsey had some secrets of his own.

Well, folks, that is all the time we have for today. Next time, in part two, we'll continue the story of Alfred Kinsey and his burgeoning study into human sexuality. And now that we've really established the basics and overall drive behind Kinsey's work, we can start to explore how his research began to expand, the key ideas within it,

and how it ultimately impacted American society at the time. We'll also continue to peel back the layers of Kinsey's private life and discover some of the deep dark secrets he was hiding from the world, his wife, and even himself.

So, lots more to come. Look out for part two in the next couple of weeks or so, and expect part three a couple of weeks after that. I know sometimes I keep you waiting a while between episodes, but for this first series of the year, I'm really trying to push myself and release things a little bit more rapidly. So, as always, thanks for spending your valuable time with me, and I hope you have an awesome day. This has been Conflicted. I'll see you next time.

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