The new movie about Kinsey

There's an interesting article today about the new biopic on Alfred Kinsey and naturally it focuses on the controversy--a controversy largely driven by fundamentalist Christians and other sympathetic conservatives who have been whipped into a feeding frenzy of Kinsey-bashing, one person trying to outdo the next in concocting accusations that Kinsey's interest in human sexuality was downright criminal. Kinsey is the perfect person to turn into a monster they can beat the rest of us over the head with--he's dead and can't defend himself. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that James Dobson has a long list of people he considers wicked libertines to start defaming the second they start taking their long dirt nap.

The movie seems to be based on two books, one of which I've read called Alfred C. Kinsey : A Public/Private Life. The book doesn't make Kinsey out to be a saint, and some of the things that Kinsey did in his pursuit of deeper and wider knowledge of human sexuality will make almost anyone cringe. But the writer James H. Jones makes the point that Kinsey was pretty much the ultimate nerd, though he puts it in a different way of course, who was driven to bizarre sexual experimentation by roughly the same urge that drove him to obsessively collect insects in his prior career as an entomologist. That makes plenty of sense to me, especially considering how Kinsey sometimes almost seemed to forget that he was dealing with people with human emotions while he endlessly teased out details about what usually goes unspoken. The funny thing about that is that since he treated every person he interviewed like they were a specimen, the usual rules of moralistic judgement were suspended and people probably felt freer to open up to him than they otherwise would.

It seems like this part of him is exactly what offends his critics, who largely seem to feel that the only proper response to a frank sexual confession is to start dealing out judgement without thinking it over first. The article spends a lot of time talking to a writer named Judith Reisman who has set out to discredit Kinsey, which I suppose would be fine if she wanted to discredit his data. But she seems much more upset that he was willing to listen to people who had sex with animals or molested children than anything else. Naturally, this had led to her being treated like a hero by the Concerned Women for America and Dr. Laura, who is in no position to hold her nose at Kinsey doing things like filming people having sex.

Reisman's biggest issue is that Kinsey kept in contact with pedophiles and interviewed them instead of sitting around lecturing them about being evil. Well, duh. Kinsey was trying to examine all facets of human sexuality and while pedophilia is evil and criminal, it's still a facet of human sexuality. Passing judgement on someone is not going to make the behavior disappear, but it sure is effective in making frankness disappear. We have the courts and all the rest of society to pass judgement on people--a scientist gathering information can be expected not to want to handicap his research by doing something he knows will cause his subject to clam up. Lots of wicked people are examined by researchers who want to know why they do what they do--hell, the FBI's behavior unit makes it a habit to interview serial killers so they can better catch other serial killers in the future.

This is not to say that Kinsey's research and methods are not open for debate. Of course they are--how can the field be improved if other scientists and researchers are not always checking each other? But that some of Kinsey's numbers and methods are questionable doesn't change the fact that he kicked open the door to treating sex like it's part of human life and society and therefore worthy of study just like any other part of life. And it doesn't change the fact that his numbers are much, much closer to reality than to the rosy picture people have of themselves.

Contrary to what Dr. Laura, the Concerned Women for America and other Kinsey critics would have you believe, Kinsey didn't invent homosexuality, pornography, premarital sex, clitoral orgasms and all the other things they are afraid will tear down the male-dominated family. All he did was point these things out. He did irrevocable damage to our ability to lie to ourselves is all. And while the Concerned Women for America would very much like to bury all our heads back into the sand, I for one am grateful to Kinsey for taking on this project and making it easier for all of us to live a little more honestly.