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Journal of Sex Research
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American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender and National
Identity in the Kinsey Reports. By Miriam J. Reumann
Reviewed by Vern L. Bullough (deceased)
Version of record first published: 05 Dec 2007.
To cite this article: Reviewed by Vern L. Bullough (deceased) (2007): American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender and National
Identity in the Kinsey Reports. By Miriam J. Reumann, Journal of Sex Research, 44:2, 213-214
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BOOK REVIEWS
The United States During and After Kinsey
American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender and National
Identity in the Kinsey Reports. By Miriam J. Reumann.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005,
294 pp., Cloth, $49.95.
Reviewed by Vern L. Bullough (deceased).
With some 67 pages of annotations, this reference
text is a historical analysis of American sexual attitudes
before, during, and after Kinsey. The Kinsey reports,
Reumann holds, spurred intensive public discussion
about sexual mores on a scale unprecedented in Ameri-
can history. Almost everything is grist for Reumanns
mill from poetry, to cartoons, to novels, to movies, to
self-help booksnearly everything that might be exam-
ined to explore changing patterns of American belief.
Also included are long samples of writings from both
Kinseys critics and his supporters.
Unfortunately, Reumann also excludes certain
material that would modify, or perhaps even strengthen,
some of her analysis. Though she mentions Albert Ellis,
she has no mention of Masters and Johnson, Hartman
and Fithian, Helen Singer Kaplan, or even Alex Com-
fort, and the list could go on. Reumann says nothing
about SIECUS, SSSS, Planned Parenthood, or any
other organized sex groupnot scholarly and scientific
ones or the organizations catering to the sexual prefer-
ences of their members. This limited scope results in
Kinsey being portrayed as having even more influence
on American sexuality than he did. Certainly Masters
and Johnson and Alex Comfort had national best sell-
ers, as did several others. Such important phenomena
as swingers, the rise of sado-masochistic groups, and
the social organization of gays and lesbians are hardly
mentioned.
Reumann is not uncritical of Kinsey, believing that at
least at times he was not entirely honest in his handling
of statistics. One of her examples is the Kinsey teams
examination of African Americans. Kinsey integrated
his data from African Americans into the general overall
data because, Kinsey claimed, his sample was too small.
Reumann believes this was not the case. Rather Kinsey
did so because he did not want racial categories to
muddy his discussion of class and other environmental
influences on sexual behavior.
Kinseys decision not to examine African Americans
as a separate category led to considerable reaction in
what was then called the Negro press. On the whole
African American were pleased that Kinsey had not
singled them out as a race. According to Reumann, this
was because African Americans were somewhat fearful
that they would be associated with rampant sexuality
and widespread deviance, as was generally the case in
the white public mind. African Americans rejoiced when
the Kinsey team reported the varied sexual habits and
social transgressions of mostly white middle-class
men or women, taking satisfaction that it was not race
that was a major factor in sexuality. In the opinion of
African Americans whites were the same as they were
but simply had been better able to hide their sexual
activity.
Reumann notes that Kinsey also denied inherent dif-
ferences between homosexuals and heterosexuals
because he believed that, biologically, they were the
same. Whether these explanations for why Kinsey
treated data from African Americans and homosexuals
the same as data from white heterosexuals is more a
matter of interpretation than one that can be documen-
ted. Reumann does believe, as do most other scholars,
that the revelations about homosexuality in Kinseys
male volume were what attracted the most public
attention. George Corner, one of the more influential
physician backers of Kinsey (he was on the team that
gave Kinsey a grant), went so far as to state that
the popular opinion of the homosexual as a pervert
must be replaced by the realization that homosexual
behavior is something in which a rather large pro-
portion of boys and men are liable to engage under
conducive circumstances, whatever their physical
build.
The sexuality of women, according to Reumann,
had not been much discussed before Kinsey. This
would explain why the most controversial aspect of
Kinseys female volume was simply the range of sex-
ual activities engaged in by women. Reumann quotes
Marie Robinson, a conservative but popular physician
advice giver to women. Robinson had been rather
guarded, but in her 1959 post-Kinsey best seller, The
Power of Surrender, she extolled the sexual pleasure
that now awaited the new wife. After Kinseys work,
authorities from the helping professions seemed to
all agree that a mutually exciting sexual life was vital
JOURNAL OF SEX RESEARCH
2007, Vol. 44, No. 2, 213222
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to a successful marriage. Still most writers, and maga-
zines such as the Ladies Home Journal, emphasized
the importance of sex within marriage, not outside
of it.
The Kinsey message was not only carried in guides
and summary articles and books, but also in fiction,
including novels such as The Fig Leaf by Victor Menzies
and Jean Bernard-Luc, The Chapman Report by Irving
Wallace, The Sex Probers byJoseph Hilton Smythe,
Miss Kinseys Report by Ray Train, and many others.
Wallace hit the jackpot when his novel was made into
a movie featuring the Chapman sex research team inter-
viewing women and having somewhat different adven-
tures than did the Kinsey team.
Reumann refers of battalions of experts speaking
on sex, all based on the Kinsey findings. If individuals
or couples experienced sexual problems, such experts
stood ready to help since everything could be worked
out. Birth control was now pushed as not only a contra-
ceptive but as a way of promoting good sex, offering
women options other than full-time motherhood.
Reumann examines every aspect of the Kinsey stu-
dies, holding that the societal responses to the reports
bore out many of the best hopes and worst fears of post-
war commentators, with each groups focusing on the
parts they liked or disliked. Gay and lesbian groups used
the reports to demand civil rights, sometimes misreading
the Kinsey data to increase their numbers. Many conser-
vatives condemned the reports for implying widespread
immorality and ignoring such factors as love. The
jeremiads conducted by individuals such as Patrick
Buchanan and groups such as Focus on the Family
continue to find fault, blaming the high divorce rate,
sexually explicit mass media, the emancipation of gays,
and any other development they disapprove of on the
reports.
Even today Americans eagerly consume authoritative
sexual information and advice, at least as measured by
best-seller lists, newspaper and internet counsel, chat
rooms, and even water cooler conversations. The public
might not, however, again read scholarly tomes like
Kinseys, a fact that Lauman, Gagnon, Michael, and
Michaels realized when they published two different ver-
sions of their report, one for scholarly and scientific
readers and the other for the general public. American
are still seeking answers about sex, ranging from what
kinds of sexual behavior are pleasurable, what kind of
sex is good for society, and what sexual behaviors are
harmful. There is as yet no agreement with all segments
of society, but the question of who decides, is a con-
tested and compelling issue.
My major complaint regarding Reumanns book is
what I stated earlier in this review, namely that to
emphasize the importance of Kinsey, the author ignores
the other researchers and scholars who filled in many of
the gaps left by Kinsey and his colleagues. Still it is an
excellent guidebook to the changing American sexual
scene since Kinseys landmark work.
Beyond Abstinence: Toward a Different Kind of
Yardstick
Sex in Development: Science, Sexuality, and Morality in
a Global Perspective. Edited by Vincanne Adams & Sta-
cey Leigh Pigg. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2005, 360 pages. $23.95, softcover.
Reviewed by Benjamin Shepard, Department of Social
Work, California State University at Long Beach, 250
Bellflower, Long Beach, CA 90840. E-mail: benshe-
pard@mindspring.com
In January of 2003, Congress passed and President
George W. Bush signed the United States Leadership
Against HIV=AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of
2003, also referred to as the Presidents Emergency Plan
for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The law earmarks relief
money for services to people with HIV and AIDS in
fifteen countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
As with most development policies advanced by the
current Republican administration, PEPFAR included
a number of ideological components that put a premium
on morality rather than public health. PEPFAR extends
the trend begun with the 1984 Mexico City Policy, better
known as the gag rule, which prevents foreign aid
funds from being used to support services attached to
comprehensive family planning programs.
PEPFAR specifically mandates controversial absti-
nence-until-marriage approaches to sex education,
despite the fact that study after study has shown that
comprehensive HIV prevention and sex education pro-
grams are far more effective than so-called abstinence-
only approaches (Collins et al., 2002). According to
Naina Kaur Dhingra, director of Public Policy Advo-
cates for Youth, abstinence-only approaches prevent
young people from gaining access to information about
condoms, one of the most effective means of preventing
HIV infection. The result is a culture of fear around
condom use. Further, recent research suggests that
marriage is no panacea: married women in Africa have
been found to be at higher risk for HIV=AIDS than
those who are not married. Unfortunately, such exam-
ples of misplaced focus are hardly new in the field of
HIV=AIDS research (Murray & Paine, 1988).
An Anniversary and a Protest
The morality and ethics of AIDS policy have long been
subjects of contested debate (Crimp, 2002; Warner, 1999),
REVIEWS
214
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