How does one study gender, race, or sexuality? What does it mean to study social phenomena “scientifically”?

What research methods are employed most often to study gender, race, sexuality? How is data collected via these research methods? What are the strengths and limitations of each method?

• Ethnography
• Interviewing
• Experiments
• Surveys
• Analysis of secondary statistical data
• Historical methods
• Comparative methods

What is a “social construct” according to Christiansen and Fischer (2016)?

Regarding the fair treatment of the research subjects, what ethical principles are integral and necessary for conducting a research project? How do we ensure that the risks are minimized?

What are the ethical dilemmas in the social experiments you watched during Week 1?

What effects did the Tuskegee Study have on the US according to Brandt (1978)? What aspects of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did you find most surprising? What are the implications of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study for African Americans concerning their views on and participation in research?

What were the most important contributions of the Kinsey Report according to Bullough (2014)?

What challenges might you run into as a sex researcher trying to secure funding for your study? How would you address those concerns according to Stombler et al (2014)?

What is an informed consent?

What institutional body within Rutgers is responsible for monitoring the research ethics compliance?

What is the difference between how we define sex and gender according to O’Brien (2018)?

Is gender biological, social, or both?

What genders are acknowledged in contemporary society? What is the gender binary, and how does it operate in society? What does “nonbinary,” “transgender,” or “intersex” mean, according to Lopez (2017) and Davis and Preves (2017)?

How would gender be viewed from the biological essentialist angle?

According to Martin (1991), how did the stereotypes of femininity and masculinity influence how scientists interpreted the actions of human cells under their microscopes? To what extent did the cultural biases color scientific discoveries? What are the best ways to avoid the biases exposed in this article?

What does it mean to say that gender is socially constructed? What biological, cultural or historical evidence led scholars to conclude that gender is a social construct?

What does “gender socialization” mean? When does it begin? Who and what propels this type of socialization? What are the effects of gender socialization? Is it possible to avoid gender socialization altogether? Have there been attempts to avoid it in history? Imagine that you and your family want to raise a child in a gender-neutral way. How would this process of gender-neutral socialization be affected by agents of socialization other than your own family as your child grows into a young adult?

What are some ways in which power is symbolically linked to masculinity in our society? What are some privileges men enjoy that others do not according to Deutsch? For women, how does their gender serve as a disadvantage in their work and life experiences?

What are some examples of “doing gender”?

Using the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert, the bacha posh in Afghanistan, the hijras in India, the Native American berdache, the guevedoches in the Dominican Republic, and the nádleehí in Navajo culture as support, discuss how gender can be seen as a social construction.

What are the underlying roots of contemporary gender inequality? 

What is gender policing, and how does this impact boys and men? 

What are some consequences of the sexual objectification of women’s bodies in the advertising media? How do you think these trends might impact how women are viewed and treated in broader society? In the workplace? In government and politics? In their intimate relationships?

What is the “tough guise” according to the Week 3 documentary? How is it related to hypermasculinity?

In Hossain’s (1905) Sultana’s Dream, what happens when the gender roles in the imaginary Indian society get reversed?

Many people believe that race has always existed in its current form. How has the concept of race changed over time? Where does the idea of race come from according to Taylor’s (2017) explanation and Golash-Boza’s (2019) video? Compare and contrast “race” in the ancient world (this would include ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and early Christendom) with “race” in modern times (this would include European colonization up to the present).

What is the difference between race and ethnicity? Which is voluntary and changeable, which is ascribed and less flexible?

What does it mean that “race is a social construction” and not a biological reality? Why do you think most people continue to think of race as biological?

According to the Race: the Power of an Illusion documentary, how did the racial definitions evolve over the US history? What do the famous legal cases of Bhagat Singh Thind and Takao Ozawa illustrate?

How did the racial logic influence the waves of immigration to the US? How were the European migrants like the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, or the Slavs classified by race when they moved across the Atlantic to the US in the 19th – early 20th centuries?

What is “red-lining”? What have its long-term impacts been?

What racialized systems existed throughout world history and across various geographical regions?

How have the racial categories on the US Census change between 1790 and 2020? How are Hispanics classified today – as white or non-white?

How does race structure individual life chances such as health, education, residence etc? Which racialized group is more likely to suffer from hypertension? More likely to live in segregated spaces? More likely to graduate from college?

What are the examples of racism? Define institutional racism and explain how it differs from racial discrimination at the individual level.

What does the “one drop rule” refer to? What is “white privilege”?

What is the connection between racism and colonialism? Did race classifications and racism exist in the pre-Columbus era?

Why is it difficult for white people to see their own race? What does McIntosh (1988) mean when she refers to whiteness as an “invisible knapsack of privileges”? What are some of the privileges that whites experience?

What does adultification refer to in Ferguson’s (2000) chapter? Who is more likely to be adultified? What are the likely consequences of adultification?

How does the model minority myth influence the dynamics within interracial marriages in the US according to Nemoto (2011)? Why are Asian-born women a preferred choice as marital partners for some men rather than the US-born Asian American or white women?

The resources you need:(movie)

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (1932-1972) (11 min)

Humphrey’s Tearoom Trade Study (1970) (7 min)

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) (14 min)

Toronto couple raising “gender free” child. (7min)

9 Questions about Gender Identity and Being Transgender

Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women (2010), a talk by Jean Kilbourne, 45 min

Tough Guise 2 (2013) documentary, 80 min

Baldoni – Why I’m done trying to be “man enough” 2018

What is Race?

Where does the idea of race come from?

(Before 1492, when Columbus arrived in Hispaniola, the notion that people belong to different races didn’t exist. Europeans created racial categories to explain the differences between themselves and the rest of the world. Watch this video to find out what made the idea of race possible.)

Pew Research Center (2020) What Census Calls Us

Race: The Power of an Illusion (2003) documentary

80 contexts.org

intersex and the social construction of sex
by georgiann davis and sharon preves

b
back page

Contexts, Vol. 16, No. 1, p. 80. ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-60521. © 2017 American
Sociological Association. http://contexts.sagepub.com. DOI 10.1177/1536504217696082.

“What is it?” It’s the first question most new parents field, and

it’s safe to assume no one wonders if the child is human. Instead,

the question usually refers to the child’s sex, and it reveals the

fundamental social importance of anatomical sex. Its bluntness

also indicates that, without a neatly assigned sex, a child might

not fully be a person. Granted a physical sex label—female or

male—the newborn is immediately and forever “gendered”

through social interactions. Sociocultural scholars have explored

the social construction of gender as a performative, fluid, and

non-universal category for decades, but the notion that physical

sex is also socially constructed has acquired far less exploration.

Some babies are born intersex. Their bodies aren’t clearly

female or male. While there is no reliable estimate of intersex

people in the population, a commonly reported statistic is that

intersex genital variation occurs about once in every 1,500 to

2,000 American births.

While we tend to rely on genital appearance at birth (more

directly, the presence or absence of a phallus) as the basis of

our sex assignment, what constitutes the essential sign of sex

has varied over the years. Genital appearance, sex hormones,

sex chromosomes, and the brain have each been used to sex

categorize bodies at different points in time. Sex hasn’t always

been a simple binary divide, either: pathologist Theodore Klebs,

for instance, first classified anatomical sex into five categories

in 1876, using the presence of gonads (ovaries, testes, or a mix

of ovarian and testicular tissue) as his guide, and biologist and

gender scholar Anne Fausto-Sterling further described these divi-

sions in her influential 1993 piece, “The Five Sexes.”

More recently, hormonal levels have been used to categorize

sex, as is the case in sex testing conducted by the International

Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Association

of Athletics Federations (IAAF). In 2009, South African runner

Caster Semenya won the 800-meter race at the Berlin World

Championships in Athletics. The media and several of Seme-

nya’s competitors seized on her appearance and performance

to pose stigmatizing questions about whether she was eligible

to compete as a female. Semenya was temporarily banned from

competition. In a purported effort to prevent another such fiasco,

in 2012, the IOC and IAAF issued sex-testing policies centered

on hyperandrogenism (a medical term describing ,in females,

higher than “normal” levels of androgen, including testosterone,

and often associated with intersex traits). The groups claimed

the guidelines were not about sex testing women athletes, but

about ensuring fairness in elite athletic competitions. After years

of scrutiny, Semenya (who has never self-identified as hyperan-

drogenic or intersex) was reinstated. She won silver at the 2012

Olympic Games. In the summer of 2015, the sex-testing policies

were suspended after Dutee Chand, an Indian 100-meter sprinter,

successfully appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Chand

didn’t advance to the semi-finals in the 2016 Olympic Games, but

Semenya won gold in the 800-meter race. Immediately following

her win, the IAAF made a statement that they would consider

the possibility of reinstating hyperadrogenism testing.

That one’s eligibility to compete as a female athlete is debat-

able and that the physical criteria used to judge femaleness have

changed over time are evidence that the categorization of sex is

a social, variable process.

Sex is far more diverse than we acknowledge when we ask

whether a baby is male or female. It cannot be neatly defined by

our genitalia, hormone levels, reproductive structures, or brain

structure. And as people with intersex traits make exceptionally

clear, even chromosomes are a poor guide. People with complete

androgen insensitivity syndrome, for instance, have XY chromo-

somes (typically associated with males) but an outward female

appearance, including breasts and a vagina and minimal, if any,

ability to develop male secondary sex characteristics, such as

prominent facial hair.

Perhaps, then, we ought to ask parents “Who is it?” rather

than “What is it?” when we meet a child. That way, the focus

might rest more holistically on the newborn as a human being,

rather than the predetermined product of a historically variable

and socially constructed sex and gender system. Maybe then we

can get to the root of why, as a society, we are so quick to cat-

egorize babies as “females” or “males” ascribed with “feminine”

or “masculine” personalities. Doing so would require wrestling

with, and perhaps unraveling, our widely held beliefs that both

sex and gender are binary, neatly correlated phenomena. Simply

changing the focus of the conversation seems a good place to

start acknowledging the diversity of sex development.

Georgiann Davis is in the sociology department at the University of Nevada, Las

Vegas. She is the author of Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis. Sharon

Preves is in the sociology department at Hamline University. She is the author of

Intersex and Identity: the Contested Self.

http://doi.org/10.1177/1536504217696082

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1177%2F1536504217696082&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-03-22

Dichotomies
major theme in WGSS

Male / Female

White / Non-white

Wealthy / Poor

Heterosexual / Homosexual

Cis-gender / Transgender

Western / Non-Western

Citizen / Alien

Mind / Body

True / False

Normal / Abnormal

High Status / Low Status

Either / Or

• Firm, rigid, exclusive boundaries

• Based on biology – seems innate,
unabridgeable, universal, fixed,
stable, permanent, “natural”

• Polarized groups, opposition

• Socially imposed – no choice,
no control, perceived by others

• Hierarchical, unequal

dominant vs subordinate

• Two groups sum up the range of
possibilities

• Change possible only if subordinate
becomes more like dominant

Dichotomies
major theme in WGSS
Either / Or

• Seems logically neat, simple

• Reduces richness, complexity

• Puts an embargo on

both/sometimes-the-one,

sometimes-the other options

• Does not recognize plurality and

heterogeneity

• Influences social practices

• Not innocent, neutral, benign

• Maintains inequalities of power

• Institutionalized via policies and

public actions

Male / Female
White / Non-white
Wealthy / Poor
Heterosexual / Homosexual
Cis-gender / Transgender
Western / Non-Western
Citizen / Alien
Mind / Body
True / False
Normal / Abnormal
High Status / Low Status

Dichotomies
major theme in WGSS

Alternatives: Seeing Social Constructs

• Develop new tools,
non-dichotomous ways of thinking

• Think relationally

• Refuse to live within the categories

• Challenge harmful constructions

• Examine how and how well
boundaries were built, as well as
to what consequences

• Include experiences of people from
different groups

Male / Female
White / Non-white
Wealthy / Poor
Heterosexual / Homosexual
Cis-gender / Transgender
Western / Non-Western
Citizen / Alien
Mind / Body
True / False
Normal / Abnormal
High Status / Low Status

Dichotomies
major theme in WGSS
Alternatives: Seeing Social Constructs

• Non-hierarchical

• Multiple affiliations, fluid

• Voluntary, a choice – you learn and
adopt

• Not as closely linked with power
differences

• Divisions are not a biological fact
but a result of human interaction

– Varied through time and space

– Not universal

– Understood differently

Male / Female
White / Non-white
Wealthy / Poor
Heterosexual / Homosexual
Cis-gender / Transgender
Western / Non-Western
Citizen / Alien
Mind / Body
True / False
Normal / Abnormal
High Status / Low Status

GENDER RACE SEXUALITY

• Compulsory patriarchy, familial unity, property value

• Heterosexualism, fidelity, homophobia

• Biological dimorphism is normal

• Gender domination, women relegated to private life / home

• Women as “weak”, asexual, passive

• Gynecracy (potency in female, egalitarian), collective unity

• “Unsexed humanity,” positive towards homosexuals

• Not necessarily dimorphic, diversity is normal

• Gender fluidity, communal relations, collective decision
making and economies

• Women not fragile, powerless or weak

VIOLENCE OF COLONIALISM
erased alternatives

“Traditional” Family Model

8
Racism and Research: The Case of

the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
ALLAN M. BRANDT

Was it scientific zeal and the search for medical knowledge? Or was it a callous dis­
regard for the lives and suffering of persons thought to-be inferior in a racist soci­
ety? Probably both, and the lessons remain important for everyone. This tragic study
has become a classic example of how to do unethical research. Perhaps the lessons
to be learned from it can somehow begin to make amends for the harm it did.

I n 1932 the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) initiated an experiment in Macon County, Alabama, to determine the natural course of untreated,
latent syphilis in black males. The test comprised 400 syphilitic men, as well
as 200 uninfected men who served as controls. The first published report of
the study appeared in 1936 with subsequent papers issued every four to six
years, through the 1960s. When penicillin became widely available by the
early 1950s as the preferred treatment for syphilis, the men did not receive
therapy. In fact on several occasions, the USPHS actually sought to prevent
treatment. Moreover, a committee at the federally operated Center for Dis­
ease Control decided in 1969 that the study should be continued. Only in 1972,
when accounts of the study first appeared in the national press, did the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare halt the experiment. At that
time seventy-four of the test subjects were still alive; at least twenty-eight,
but perhaps more than 100, had died directly from advanced syphilitic lesions.
In August 1972, HEW appointed an investigatory panel, which issued a report
the following year. The panel found the study to have been “ethically unjusti­
fied,” and argued that penicillin should have been provided to the men.

This article attempts to place the Tuskegee Study in a historical context
and to assess its ethical implications. Despite the media attention which the
study received, the HEW Final Report, and the criticism expressed by several
professional organizations, the experiment has been largely misunderstood.
The most basic questions of hotv the study was undertaken in the first place
and why it continued for forty years were never addressed by the HEW inves­
tigation. Moreover, the panel misconstrued the nature of the experiment, fail­
ing to consult important documents available at the National Archives which
bear significantly on its ethical assessment. Only by examining the specific
ways in which values are engaged in scientific research can the study be
understood.

66

Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis study ■ 67

RAC S M AND ME D I C A L O P I N I O N

A brief review of the prevailing scientific thought regarding race and heredity
in the early twentieth century is fundamental for an understanding of the
Tuskegee Study. By the tu rn of the century, Darwinism had provided a new
rationale for American racism. Essentially primitive peoples, it was argued,
could not be assimilated into a complex, white civilization. Scientists specu­
lated that in the struggle for survival the Negro in America was doomed. Par­
ticularly prone to disease, vice, and crime, black Americans could not be helped
by education or philanthropy. Social Darwinists analyzed census data to pre­
dict the virtual extinction of the Negro in the twentieth century, for they believed
the Negro race in America was in the throes of a degenerative evolutionary
process.

The medical profession supported these findings of late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century anthropologists, ethnologists, and biologists. Physicians
studying the effects of emancipation on health concluded almost universally
that freedom had caused the mental, moral, and physical deterioration of the
black population. They substantiated this argument by citing examples in the
comparative anatomy of the black and white races. As Dr. W. T. English wrote:
“A careful inspection reveals the body of the negro a mass of minor defects
and imperfections from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet__ ” Cra­
nial structures, wide nasal apertures, receding chins, projecting jaws, all typed
the Negro as the lowest species in the Darwinian hierarchy.

Interest in racial differences centered on the sexual nature of blacks. The
Negro, doctors explained, possessed an excessive sexual desire, which threat­
ened the very foundations of white society. As one physician noted in the Journal
of the American Medical Association, “The negro springs from a southern race,
and as such his sexual appetite is strong; all of his environments stimulate this
appetite, and as a general rule his emotional type of religion certainly does not
decrease it.” Doctors reported a complete lack of morality on the part of blacks:

Virtue in the negro race is like angels’ visits—few and far between. In a practice
of sixteen years I have never examined a virgin negro over fourteen years of age.

A particularly ominous feature of this overzealous sexuality, doctors argued,
was the black males’ desire for white women. “A perversion from which most
races are exempt,” wrote Dr. English, “prompts the negro’s inclination towards
white women, whereas other races incline towards females of their own.”
Though English estimated the “gray m atter of the negro brain” to be at least
a thousand years behind that of the white races, his genital organs were over­
developed. As Dr. William Lee Howard noted:

The attacks on defenseless white women are evidences of racial instincts that
are about as amenable to ethical culture as is the inherent odor of the race—

68 ■ A L L A N M . BR A N D T

When education will reduce the size of the negro’s penis as well as bring about
the sensitiveness of the terminal fibers which exist in the Caucasian, then will it
also be able to prevent the African’s birth-right to sexual madness and excess.

One southern medical journal proposed “Castration Instead of Lynching” as
retribution for black sexual crimes. “An impressive trial by a ghost-like kuk-
lux klan [sic] and a ‘ghost’ physician or surgeon to perform the operation would
make it an event the ‘patient’ would never forget,” noted the editorial.

According to these physicians, lust and immorality, unstable families, and
reversion to barbaric tendencies made blacks especially prone to venereal dis­
eases. One doctor estimated that over 50 percent of all Negroes over the age
of twenty-five were syphilitic. Virtually free of disease as slaves, they were now
overwhelmed by it, according to informed medical opinion. Moreover, doctors
believed that treatment for venereal disease among blacks was impossible, par­
ticularly because in its latent stage the symptoms of syphilis become quies­
cent. As Dr. Thomas W. Murrell wrote:

They come for treatment at the beginning and at the end. When there are visi­
ble manifestations or when harried by pain, they readily come, for as a race they
are not averse to physic; but tell them not, though they look well and feel well,
that they are still diseased. Here ignorance rates science a fool. . .

Even the best-educated black, according to Murrell, could not be convinced
to seek treatment for syphilis. Venereal disease, according to some doctors,
threatened the future of the race. The medical profession attributed the low
birth rate among blacks to the high prevalence of venereal disease, which caused
stillbirths and miscarriages. Moreover, the high rates of syphilis were thought
to lead to increased insanity and crime. One doctor writing at the turn of the
century estimated that the number of insane Negroes had increased thirteen­
fold since the end of the Civil War. Dr. Murrell’s conclusion echoed the most
informed anthropological and ethnological data:

So the scourge sweeps among them. Those that are treated are only half cured,
and the effort to assimilate a complex civilization driving their diseased minds
until the results are criminal records. Perhaps here, in conjunction with tuber­
culosis, will be the end of the negro problem. Disease will accomplish what man
cannot do.

This particular configuration of ideas formed the core of medical opinion
concerning blacks, sex, and disease in the early twentieth century. Doctors
generally discounted socioeconomic explanations of the state of black health,
arguing that better medical care could not alter the evolutionary scheme.
These assumptions provide the backdrop for examining the Tuskegee Syphi­
lis Study.

Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis study ■ 69

t h e o r i g i n s o f t h e e x p e r i m e n t
In 1929, under a grant from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, the USPHS conducted
studies in the rural South to determine the prevalence of syphilis among blacks
and explore possibilities for mass treatment. The USPHS found Macon County,
Alabama, in which the town of Tuskegee is located, to have the highest syphi­
lis rate of the six coimties surveyed. The Rosenwald Study concluded that mass
treatment could be successfully implemented among rural blacks. Although
it is doubtful that the necessary funds would have been allocated even in the
best economic conditions, after the economy collapsed in 1929, the findings were
ignored. It is, however, ironic that the Tuskegee Study came to be based on
findings of the Rosenwald Study that demonstrated the possibilities of mass
treatment.

Three years later, in 1932, Dr. Taliaferro Clark, Chief of the USPHS Vene­
real Disease Division and author of the Rosenwald Study report, decided that
conditions in Macon County merited renewed attention. Clark believed the high
prevalence of syphilis offered an “unusual opportunity” for observation. From
its inception, the USPHS regarded the Tuskegee Study as a classic “study in
nature,”* rather than an experiment. As long as syphilis was so prevalent in
Macon and most of the blacks went untreated throughout life, it seemed only
natural to Clark that it would be valuable to observe the consequences. He
described it as a “ready-made situation.” Surgeon General H. S. Gumming wrote
to R. R. Moton, Director of the Tuskegee Institute:

The recent syphilis control demonstration carried out in Macon County, with
the financial assistance of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, revealed the presence of
an unusually high rate in this county and, what is more remarkable, the fact that
99 percent of this group was entirely without previous treatment. This combi­
nation, together with the expected cooperation of your hospital, offers an unpar­
alleled opportunity for carrying on this piece of scientific research which probably
cannot be duplicated anywhere else in the world.

Although no formal protocol appears to have been written, several letters
of Clark and Cumming suggest what the USPHS hoped to find. Clark indicated
that it would be important to see how disease affected the daily lives of the
men:

1- In 1866, Claude Bernard, the famous French physiologist, outlined the distinction
between a “study in nature” and experimentation. A study in nature required simple obser­
vation, an essentially passive act, while experimentation demanded intervention which
altered the original condition. The Tuskegee Study was thus clearly not a study in nature.
The very act of diagnosis altered the original conditions. “It is on this very possibility of
acting or not acting on a body,” wrote Bernard, “that the distinction will exclusively rest
between sciences called sciences of observation and sciences called experimental.”

70 ■ A L L A N M. B R A N D T

The results of these studies of case records suggest the desirability of making
a further study of the effect of untreated syphilis on the human economy among
people now living and engaged in their daily pursuits.

It also seems that the USPHS believed the experiment might demonstrate
that antisyphilitic treatment was unnecessary. As Gumming noted: “It is
expected the results of this study may have a marked bearing on the treatment,
or conversely the non-necessity of treatment, of cases of latent syphilis— ”

S E L E C T I N G T H E S U B J E C T S

Clark sent Dr. Raymond Vonderlehr to Tuskegee in September 1932 to assem­
ble a sample of men with latent syphilis for the experiment. The basic design
of the study called for the selection of syphilitic black males between the ages
of twenty-five and sixty, a thorough physical examination including x-rays, and
finally, a spinal tap to determine the incidence of neuro-syphilis. They had no
intention of providing any treatment for the infected men. The USPHS origi­
nally scheduled the whole experiment to last six months; it seemed to be both
a simple and inexpensive project.

The task of collecting the sample, however, proved to be more difficult than
the USPHS had supposed. Vonderlehr canvassed the largely illiterate, poverty-
stricken population of sharecroppers and tenant farmers in search of test sub­
jects. If his circulars requested only men over twenty-five to attend his clinics,
none would appear, suspecting he was conducting draft physicals. Therefore,
he was forced to test large numbers of women and men who did not fit the
experiments specifications. This involved considerable expense since the
USPHS had promised the Macon County Board of Health that it would treat
those who were infected, but not included in the study. Clark wrote to Vonder­
lehr about the situation: “It never once occured to me that we would be called
upon to treat a large part of the county as return for the privilege of making this
study.. . . I am anxious to keep the expenditures for treatment down to the
lowest possible point because it is the one item of expenditure in connection
with the study most difficult to defend despite our knowledge of the need
therefor.” Vonderlehr responded: “If we could find from 100 to 200 cases. . .
we would not have to do another Wassermann on useless individuals— ”

Significantly, the attempt to develop the sample contradicted the prediction
the USPHS had made initially regarding the prevalence of the disease in Macon
County. Overall rates of syphilis fell well below expectations; as opposed to the
USPHS projection of 35 percent, 20 percent of those tested were actually dis­
eased. Moreover, those who had sought and received previous treatment far
exceeded the expectations of the USPHS. Clark noted in a letter to Vonderlehr:

I find your report of March 6th quite interesting but regret the necessity for Was-
sermanning [sic]. . . such a large number of individuals in order to uncover this
relatively limited number of untreated cases.

Further difficulties arose in enlisting the subjects to participate in the exper­
iment, to be “Wassermanned,” and to return for a subsequent series of exam­
inations. Vonderlehr found that only the offer of treatment elicited the
cooperation of the men. They were told they were ill and were promised free
care. Offered therapy, they became willing subjects. The USPHS did not tell
the men that they were participants in an experiment; on the contrary, the sub­
jects believed they were being treated for “bad blood”—the rural South’s col­
loquialism for syphilis. They thought they were participating in a public health
demonstration similar to the one that had been conducted by the Julius Ros-
enwald Fund in Tuskegee several years earlier. In the end, the men were so
eager for medical care that the number of defaulters in the experiment proved
to be insignificant.

To preserve the subjects’ interest, Vonderlehr gave most of the men mer­
curial ointment, a noneffective drug, while some of the younger men appar­
ently received inadequate dosages of neoarsphenamine. This required
Vonderlehr to write frequently to Clark requesting supplies. He feared the
experiment would fail if the men were not offered treatment.

Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis study ■ 71

ie it if

The readiness of the test subjects to participate of course contradicted the
notion that blacks would not seek or continue therapy.

The final procedure of the experiment was to be a spinal tap to test for evi­
dence of neuro-syphilis. The USPHS presented this purely diagnostic exam,
which often entails considerable pain and complications, to the men as a “spe­
cial treatment.” Clark explained to Moore:

We have not yet commenced the spinal punctures. This operation will be deferred
to the last in order not to unduly disturb our field work by any adverse reports
by the patients subjected to spinal puncture because of some disagreeable sen­
sations following this procedure. These negroes are very ignorant and easily
influenced by things that would be of minor significance in a more intelligent
group.

The letter to the subjects announcing the spinal tap read:

Some time ago you were given a thorough examination and since that time we
hope you have gotten a great deal of treatment for bad blood. You will now be
given your last chance to get a second examination. This examination is a very
special one and after it is finished you will be given a special treatment if it is
believed you are in a condition to stand it__

R emember T his I s Your Last C hance F or S pecial F ree T reatment. Be S ure
TO M eet T he N urse.

The HEW investigation did not uncover this crucial fact: the men participated
in the study under the guise of treatment.

72 ■ A L L A N M. B R A N D T

Despite the fact that their assumption regarding prevalence and black atti­
tudes toward treatment had proved wrong, the USPHS decided in the sum­
mer of 1933 to continue the study. Once again, it seemed only “natural” to pursue
the research since the sample already existed, and with a depressed economy,
the cost of treatment appeared prohibitive—although there is no indication it
was ever considered. Vonderlehr first suggested extending the study in letters
to Clark and Wenger:

At the end of this project we shall have a considerable number of cases present­
ing various complications of syphilis, who have received only mercury and may
still be considered untreated in the modern sense of therapy. Should these cases
be followed over a period of from five to ten years many interesting facts could
be learned regarding the course and complications of untreated syphilis.

“As I see it,” responded Wenger, “we have no further interest in these
patients until they die” Apparently, the physicians engaged in the experiment
believed that only autopsies could scientifically confirm the findings of the
study.

Bringing the men to autopsy required the USPHS to devise a further series
of deceptions and inducements. Wenger warned Vonderlehr that the men must
not realize that they would be autopsied:

There is one danger in the latter plan and that is if the colored population become
aware that accepting free hospital care means a postmortem; every darkey will
leave Macon County and it will hurt [Dr. Eugene] Dibble’s hospital.

The USPHS offered several inducements to maintain contact and to pro­
cure the continued cooperation of the men. Eunice Rivers, a black nurse, was
hired to follow their health and to secure approval for autopsies. She gave the
men non-effective medicines—“spring tonic” and aspirin—as well as transpor­
tation and hot meals on the days of their examinations. More important, Nurse
Rivers provided continuity to the project over the entire forty-year period. By
supplying “medicinals,” the USPHS was able to continue to deceive the par­
ticipants, who believed that they were receiving therapy fi*om the government
doctors. Deceit was integral to the study. When the test subjects complained
about spinal taps one doctor wrote:

They simply do not like spinal punctures. A few of those who were tapped are
enthusiastic over the results but to most, the suggestion causes violent shaking
of the head; others claim they were robbed of their procreative powers (regard­
less of the fact that 1 claim it stimulates them).

Letters to the subjects announcing an impending USPHS visit to Tuskegee
explained: “[The doctor] wants to make a special examination to find out how

you have been feeling and whether the treatment has improved your health.”
In fact, after the first six months of the study, the USPHS had furnished no
treatment whatsoever.

Finally, because it proved difficult to persuade the men to come to the hos­
pital when they became severely ill, the USPHS promised to cover their burial
expenses. The Milbank Memorial Fund provided approximately $50 per man
for this purpose beginning in 1935. This was a particularly strong inducement
as funeral rites constituted an important component of the cultural life of rural
blacks. One report of the study concluded. “Without this suasion it would, we
believe, have been impossible to secure the cooperation of the group and their
families.”

Reports of the study’s findings, which appeared regularly in the medical
press beginning in 1986, consistently cited the ravages of untreated syphilis.
The first paper, read at the 1936 American Medical Association annual meet­
ing, found “that syphilis in this period [latency] tends to greatly increase the
frequency of manifestations of cardiovascular disease.” Only 16 percent of the
subjects gave no sign of morbidity as opposed to 61 percent of the controls. Ten
years later, a report noted coldly, “The fact that nearly twice as large a pro­
portion of the syphilitic individuals as of the control group has died is a very
striking one.” Life expectancy, concluded the doctors, is reduced by about 20
percent.

A 1955 article found that slightly more than 30 percent of the test group
autopsied had died directly from advanced syphilitic lesions of either the
cardiovascular or the central nervous system. Another published account
stated, “Review of those still living reveals that an appreciable number have
late complications of syphilis which probably will result, for some at least, in
contributing materially to the ultimate cause of death.” In 1950, Dr. Wenger
had concluded, “We now know, where we could only surmise before, that we
have contributed to their ailments and shortened their lives.” As black physi­
cian Vernal Cave, a member of the HEW panel, later wrote, “They proved a
point, then proved a point, then proved a point.”

During the forty years of the experiment the USPHS had sought on several
occasions to ensure that the subjects did not receive treatment from other
sources. To this end, Vonderlehr met with groups of local black doctors in 1934,
to ask their cooperation in not treating the men. Lists of subjects were distrib­
uted to Macon County physicians along with letters requesting them to refer
these men back to the USPHS if they sought care. The USPHS warned the
Alabama Health Department not to treat the test subjects when they took a
mobile VD unit into Tuskegee in the early 1940s. In 1941, the Army drafted
several subjects and told them to begin antisyphilitic treatment immediately.
The USPHS supplied the draft board with a list of 256 names they desired to
have excluded from treatment, and the board complied.

In spite of these efforts, by the early 1950s many of the men had secured
some treatment on their own. By 1952, almost 30 percent of the test subjects

R acism a n d R e s e a rc h : T h e C a s e o f t h e T u s k e g e e Syphilis s t u d y ■ 73

74 ■ A L L A N M. BR A N D T

had received some penicillin, although only 7.5 percent had received what
could be considered adequate doses. Vonderlehr wrote to one of the par­
ticipating physicians, “I hope that the availability of antibiotics has not
interfered too much with this project.” A report published in 1955 consid­
ered whether the treatment that some of the men had obtained had
“defeated” the study. The article attempted to explain the relatively low
exposure to penicillin in an age of antibiotics, suggesting as a reason: “the
stoicism of these men as a group; they still regard hospitals and medicines
with suspicion and prefer an occasional dose of time-honored herbs or ton­
ics to modern drugs.” The authors failed to note that the men believed they
already were under the care of the government doctors and thus saw no
need to seek treatm ent elsewhere. Any treatment which the men might
have received, concluded the report, had been insufficient to compromise
the experiment.

When the USPHS evaluated the status of the study in the 1960s they con­
tinued to rationalize the racial aspects of the experiment. For example, the min­
utes of a 1965 meeting at the Center for Disease Control recorded:

Racial issue was mentioned briefly. Will not affect the study. Any questions can
be handled by saying these people were at the point that therapy would no lon­
ger help them. They are getting better medical care than they would under any
other circumstances.

A group of physicians met again at the CDC in 1969 to decide whether or not
to terminate the study. Although one doctor argued that the study should be
stopped and the men treated, the consensus was to continue. Dr. J. Lawton
Smith remarked, “You will never have another study like this; take advantage
of it.” A memo prepared by Dr. James B. Lucas, Assistant Chief of the Vene­
real Disease Branch, stated: “Nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a sin­
gle case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling
veneral disease in the United States.” He concluded, however, that the study
should be continued “along its present lines.” When the first accounts of the
experiment appeared in the national press in July 1972, data were still being
collected and autopsies performed.

T H E NE W F I NAL R E P O R T

HEW finally formed the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Ad Hoc Advisory Panel on
August 28,1972, in response to criticism that the press descriptions of the
experiment had triggered. The panel, composed of nine members, five of them
black, concentrated on two issues. First, was the study justified in 1932 and
had the men given their informed consent? Second, should penicillin have been
provided when it became available in the early 1950s? The panel was also
charged with determining if the study should be terminated and assessing

current policies regarding experimentation with human subjects. The group
issued their report in June 1973.

By focusing on the issues of penicillin therapy and informed consent, the
Final Report and the investigation betrayed a basic misunderstanding of the
experiment’s purposes and design. The HEW report implied that the failure to
provide penicillin constituted the study’s major ethical misjudgment; implicit
was the assumption that no adequate therapy existed prior to penicillin. None­
theless medical authorities firmly believed in the efficacy of arsenotherapy for
treating syphilis at the time of the experiment’s inception in 1932. The panel
further failed to recognize that the entire study had been predicated on non­
treatment. Provision of effective medication would have violated the rationale
of the experiment—to study the natural course of the disease until death. On
several occasions, in fact, the USPHS had prevented the men from receiving
proper treatment. Indeed, there is no evidence that the USPHS ever consid­
ered providing penicillin.

The other focus of the Final informed consent—also served to
obscure the historical facts of the experiment. In light of the deceptions and
exploitations which the experiment perpetrated, it is an understatement to
declare, as the Report did, that the experiment was “ethically unjustified,”
because it failed to obtain informed consent from the subjects. The Final
Report’s statement, “Submitting voluntarily is not informed consent,” indicated
that the panel believed that the men had volunteered for the experiment The
records in the National Archives make clear that the men did not submit vol­
untarily to an experiment; they were told and they believed that they were
getting free treatment from expert government doctors for a serious disease.
The failure of the HEW Final Report to expose this critical fact—that the
USPHS lied to the subjects—calls into question the thoroughness and credi­
bility of their investigation.

Failure to place the study in a historical context also made it impossible for
the investigation to deal with the essentially racist nature of the experiment.
The panel treated the study as an aberration, well-intentioned but misguided.
Moreover, concern that ih.% Final Report might be viewed as a critique of human
experimentation in general seems to have severely limited the scope of the
inquiry. The FinalReport is quick to remind the reader on two occasions: “The
position of the Panel must not be construed to be a general repudiation of sci­
entific research with human subjects.” The Report assures us that a better-
designed experiment could have been justified:

It is possible that a scientific study in 1932 of untreated syphilis, properly con­
ceived with a clear protocol and conducted with suitable subjects who fully under­
stood the implications of their involvement, might have been justified in the
pre-penicillin era. This is especially true when one considers the uncertain nature
of the results of treatment of late latent syphilis and the highly toxic nature of
therapeutic agents then available.

Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study ■ 75

76 ■ A L L A N M. BR A N D T

This statement is questionable in view of the proven dangers of untreated syph­
ilis known in 1932.

Since the publication of the HEW Final Report, a defense of the .Tuskegee
Study has emerged. These arguments, most clearly articulated by Dr. R. H.
Kampmeier in the Southern Medical Journal, center on the limited knowledge
of effective therapy for latent syphilis when the experiment began. Kampmeier
argues that by 1950, penicillin would have been of no value for these men. Oth­
ers have suggested that the men were fortunate to have been spared the highly
toxic treatments of the earlier period. Moreover, even these contemporary
defenses assume that the men never would have been treated anyway. As Dr.
Charles Barnett of Stanford University wrote in 1974, “The lack of treatment
was not contrived by the USPHS but was an established fact of which they pro­
posed to take advantage.” Several doctors who participated in the study con­
tinued to justify the experiment. Dr. J. R. Heller, who on one occasion had
referred to the test subjects as the “Ethiopian population,” told reporters in
1972:

I don’t see why they should be shocked or horrified. There was no racial side to
this. It just happened to be in a black community. I feel this was a perfectly
straightforward study, perfectly ethical, with controls. P art of our mission as
physicians is to find out what happens to individuals with disease and without
disease.

These apologies, as well as the HEW Final Report, ignore many of the essen­
tial ethical issues which the study poses. The Tuskegee Study reveals the per­
sistence of beliefs within the medical profession about the nature of blacks,
sex, and disease—beliefs that had tragic repercussions long after their alleged
“scientific” bases were known to be incorrect. Most strikingly, the entire health
of a community was jeopardized by leaving a communicable disease untreated.
There can be little doubt that the Tuskegee researchers regarded their sub­
jects as less than human. As a result, the ethical canons of experimenting on
human subjects were completely disregarded.

The study also raises significant questions about professional self-regulation
and scientific bureaucracy. Once the USPHS decided to extend the experiment
in the summer of 1933, it was unlikely that the test would be halted short of
the men’s deaths. The experiment was widely reported for forty years with­
out evoking any significant protest within the medical community. Nor did any
bureaucratic mechanism exist within the government for the periodic reas­
sessment of the Tuskegee experiment’s ethics and scientific value. The USPHS
sent physicians to Tuskegee every several years to check on the study’s prog­
ress, but never subjected the morality or usefulness of the experiment to seri­
ous scrutiny. Only the press accounts of 1972 finally punctured the continued
rationalizations of the USPHS and brought the study to an end. Even the HEW

• Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis study ■ 77

investigation was compromised by fear that it would be considered a threat to
future human experimentation.

In retrospect the Tuskegee Study revealed more about the pathology of rac­
ism than it did about the pathology of syphilis; more about the nature of scien­
tific inquiry than the nature of the disease process. The injustice committed
by the experiment went well beyond the facts outlined in the press and the HEW
Final Report. The degree of deception and damages have been seriously under­
estimated. As this history of the study suggests, the notion that science is a
value-free discipline must be rejected. The need for greater vigilance in assess­
ing the specific ways in which social values and attitudes affect professional
behavior is clearly indicated.*

*In the summer of 2010 Susan Revorby, history professor at Wellesley College, revealed
that from 1946 to 1948 doctors from the United States deliberately infected Guatemalans
with venereal diseases, ostensibly to study the use of penicillin as a preventative as well as
a curative for syphilis. Dr. John C. Cutler, involved in the Tuskegee experiments, led the
experiment in Guatemala. It is unclear if the Guatemalan subjects were effectively treated
once they were infected with venereal diseases. See Donald G. McNeil’s article, “U.S.
Infected Guatemalans with Syphilis in ’40s,”New; York Times, October 1,2010, page A1 and
A6. [Editor’s note]

V ALFRED KINSEY AND THE KINSEY REPORT
VERN L. B U L L O U G H

t:—..—ihe more I study the development of
modern sexuality, the more I believe

J in the importance and significance of
Alfred Kinsey. Although his research was on
Americans, it came to be a worldwide source
of information about human sexuality and
set standards for sex research everywhere. In
America and much of the world, his work was
a decisive factor in changing attitudes toward
sex. Within the field o f sexuality, he reoriented
the field, moving it away from the medical
model and medical dominance, to one encom­
passing a variety of disciplines and approaches.
In short, his work has proved revolutionary.

To understand what Kinsey wrought, one
must look at the field of sexuality when Kinsey
began his studies. One must also look briefly
at Kinsey as an individual to understand his
accomplishments.

SEX RESEARCH, 1 8 9 0 -1 9 4 0

The modern study o f sexuality began in the
nineteenth century, and these early studies
were dominated by physicians. It was assumed
that since physicians were the experts on body
functions, they should be the experts regarding
sexual activities. In a sense, this was a diver­
gence from the past, when sexuality had been
regarded almost entirely as a moral issue. And
although there were still moral issues involved,
physicians were also judged as qualified to
speak on these issues as well. Although few
physicians had any specialized knowledge on
most sexual topics, except perhaps for sexually
transmitted diseases, this did not prevent them
from speaking with authority on most aspects
of human sexuality.

Havelock Ellis, one of the dominant figures
in promoting sexual knowledge in the first
third of the twentieth century, said that he
sought a medical degree primarily because it
was the only profession in which he could safely
study sex. Inevitably, most of the so-called
experts were physicians. Equal in influence to
Ellis was Magnus Hirschfeld, another physi­
cian. Both Ellis and Hirschfeld compiled what
could be called sexual histories, as Kinsey later
compiled. Ellis, however, acquired almost all of
his histories from correspondence o f volunteers
and, as far as I know, never interviewed anyone.
Hirschfeld, later in his career, compiled many
case histories based on interviews, but early
on he depended mainly on historical data and
personal knowledge. Unfortunately, Hirschfeld
used only a small portion of his data in his pub­
lished books, and before he could complete a
comprehensive study of sexuality, his files were
destroyed by the Nazis (Bullough, 1994).

Although some of the data physicians reported
about sex [were] was gathered from their own
practices, these [data] were usually interpreted
in terms o f traditional views and were supple­
mented by historical materials or reports of
anthropologists [in order] to increase their
authenticity. Simply put, most physicians writ­
ing about sex were influenced more by the
Zeitgeist of the time rather than by any special­
ized base of knowledge. A few early physician
investigators, such as the American obstetrician

From “Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Report: Historical
Overview and Lasting Contributions” by Vern L. Bullough,
Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 35, Issue 2, 1998, pp. 127—131.
Copyright © 1998 Routledge, reprinted by permission
of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandf
.co.uk/journals).

http://www.tandf

ALFRED KINSEY AND THE KINSEY REPORT 55

Robert Latou Dickinson (Dickinson and Beam,
1931, 1934), had over 1,000 case studies, but
most had only a handful. As the twentieth
century progressed, the ordinary physician
probably was regarded as the easiest available
authority on sex, but most of the medical writ­
ings on sexual topics came from psychiatrists,
particularly those who were psychoanalytically
trained (Bullough, 1997). Unfortunately, even
the most comprehensive sex studies under­
taken by psychiatrists, such as that of George
Henry, were flawed by the assumptions of the
investigators interpreting data. For example,
they assumed that homosexuals were ill. More­
over, whether the answers to their questions
were valid for determining differences with het­
erosexuals is uncertain, as there was a lack of
any comparative study o f heterosexuals (Henry,
1941).

Still, assumptions about medical exper­
tise remained. W hen the Com m ittee for
Research in the Problems in Sex (CRPS), the
Rockefeller-funded grant-giving body oper­
ating under the umbrella of the National
Research Council, began to explore the pos­
sibilities of carrying out surveys of sexual
behavior, they first sought out physicians. For
example, Adolf Meyer of Johns Hopkins U n i­
versity was commissioned to complete a study
of attitudes of medical students, but failed
to complete his work. The only social scien­
tists funded in the first 20 years of the CRPS
were psychologists, although anthropologi­
cal consultants and members of other fields
provided occasional input. Lewis Terman, for
example, was given funds to carry out studies
on attitudes toward sex and marriage. Though
his and similar studies were valuable, they
depended on questionnaires rather than inter­
views to gather their data (Terman, Butten-
weiser, Ferguson, Johnson, and Wilson, 1938),
and the sexual part of their studies was sec­
ondary to other interests. Even though one of
the major reasons the CRPS had been created

in 1921 was to complete such general studies,
the com m ittee members were either unwilling
or unable to find a person to carry out this
kind of study. I suspect that the first factor
was more important than the second: There
is considerable evidence to indicate that the
com m ittee members were uncomfortable with
studies on actual sexual behavior and much
preferred to fund what might be called bench
(i.e., laboratory-based) scientists to social sci­
entists. I should add that this attitude was not
shared by the Rockefeller Foundation or John
D. Rockefeller, Jr.: both funded other survey
projects dealing with sex, including that o f
Katherine Bement Davis (1929).

Funding for research projects when Kinsey
began his work operated much more according
to an old-boy network than it does today. There
was little advertisement of fund availability and
individuals were invited to apply, had to be nomi­
nated to apply, or had to have a connection.
Certain universities and individuals dominated
the disbursement of the money available. To an
observer [today] examining most of the research
grants given for sex research, the relationships
look almost incestuous.

Unfortunately for the committee, sex activ­
ity could not be studied exclusively in the
laboratory or even in the field by observing
animals or gathering historical data. There had
been nongrant-supported popular studies of
sex, but their samples were not representative
and the questionnaires were poorly designed.
Moreover, in keeping with its reliance on aca­
demia, the committee seemed reluctant to give
its imprimatur to individuals conducting such
studies. What was needed was a person will­
ing to blaze new trails, dispassionately exam­
ining sex without the preconceived notions of
most of the physicians then involved in writing
about sex. The qualified individual or individu­
als needed an academic connection, preferably
one with an established reputation for scientific
studies.

56 INVESTIGATING SEXUALITY

KINSEY CO M ES O N THE SCENE

It was in this setting that Kinsey entered the
scene. He was the right person at the right
time; that is, a significant amount of money
was available for sex research and there was an
interest within the CRPS for some general kind
of survey of American sex behavior. Who was
Kinsey?

In terms o f overall qualification, Kinsey’s
best asset was that he was a bench scientisf,
a biologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard, and an
internationally known expert on gall wasps.
But he was also a broad-based scientist. Unlike
most research scientists today, who often are
part o f a team, researchers in the 1930s in the
United States were self-dedicated and carried
a major teaching load. Kinsey, for example,
simultaneously taught genera! biology, pub­
lished two editions o f a popular introductory
general biology text, two editions of a work­
book, and a general text on methods in biology,
and carried out major research. His entry into
sex seems to have been serendipitous, taking
place after he had completed his studies on gall
wasps. Professors at the University of Indiana
had discussed the possibility of an introduc­
tory cross-discipline course on marriage, then
a topic beginning to receive some attention in
academic circles. Kinsey was not only involved
in such discussions but took the lead. In 1938,
he was invited to coordinate and direct the new
course on marriage and family. As a sign of
the time, the course was taught by an all-male
faculty from a variety of disciplines, including
law, economics, sociology, philosophy, medi­
cine, and biology.

Before the appearance o f courses on mar­
riage and family, the academic discussion of
human sexuality had been confined to lec­
tures in the hygiene-type courses that had
been established on many campuses in the
second decade of the twentieth century, largely
through the efforts of the American Social

Hygiene Association. The approach to sex of
these hygiene classes was quite different from
that of the marriage and family courses, as they
generally emphasized the dangers of sexually
transmitted diseases and masturbation. In a
sense, these hygiene-type courses were con­
ceived to preserve sexual purity, whereas the
sexual portions of marriage and family courses
provided information, following the outlines of
the better sex manuals of the time.

Kinsey went even further in his discussion
o f sexuality than the sex-positive marriage
manuals, and soon clashed with Thurman
Rice, a bacteriology professor who had writ­
ten extensively on sex, primarily from the
point of view of eugenics. For many years, Rice
had delivered the sex lectures in the required
hygiene course, where the males were sepa­
rated from the females when he gave his lec­
tures. Kinsey deliberately had not included
Rice in his recruited faculty, which probably
furthered Rice’s antagonism. Rice was typi­
cal of an earlier generation o f sex educators in
that he considered moral education an essential
part of sex education. He believed and taught
that masturbation was harmful, condemned
premarital intercourse, and was fearful that
Kinsey’s course on marriage was a perversion of
academic standards. For example, he charged
Kinsey with asking some of the women stu­
dents about the length o f their clitorises.
To show that his accusations were based on
more than gossip, Rice demanded the names
of students in Kinsey’s class so that he could
verify such classroom voyeurism. Rice opposed
Kinsey’s questioning of students because he
believed that sexual behavior could not and
should not be analyzed by scientific methods
because it was a moral topic, not a scientific
one. Rice’s perspective thus was perhaps typi­
cal o f the hygiene approach to sex.

Kinsey had probably been doing at least
some of the things that Rice mentioned because
he had approached sex as a taxonomist—as one

ALFRED KINSEY ANDTHE KINSEY REPORT 57

interested in classifying and describing— as a
dispassionate scientist and not as a reformer or
politician. In a sense, he was a political inno­
cent. He believed that science could speak for
itself, and he criticized his faculty colleagues
who took any kind of political stand, He
refused to join organizations that he felt had
any kind of political agenda, including the Soci­
ety for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS)
in its early years.

There is, however, much more to Kinsey’s
interest in sex than the dispassionate scien­
tist. In his personal life, he was not inhibited
about body functions. Even before starting his
course on marriage, he had sought information
about the sex life of his students. His openness
about sex (see Jones, 1997: 1997a) was what Rice
objected to.

It might well be that when Kinsey began
teaching the sex course, he was undergoing a
kind of midlife crisis, feeling that he had come
to know all he wanted to know about gall wasps
and needing to explore new fields. Sex to him
represented an unexplored new field where
comparatively little was known, and where there
was much information to be gleaned. He began
his study as he had that of gall wasps: finding
out what was known and, in the process, build­
ing up a personal library of serious books on sex
(hardly any of these had found their way into
university libraries) and reading extensively.
He also sought first-hand information by ques­
tioning his students about topics such as their
age at first premarital intercourse, frequency of
sexual activity, and number of partners.

All this gave fodder to Rice and his allies,
including a number of parents who, perhaps
at Rice’s urging, complained about the spe­
cific sexual data given in the course and par­
ticularly about questions that Kinsey asked of
his students. The president of the university,
Herman Wells, a personal friend of Kinsey who
had appointed him coordinator of the course,
counseled him and gave him two options: to

continue to teach the course and give up some
of his probing of student lives, or to devote
more time to his sex research and not teach the
course. Because Kinsey had already begun to
extend his interviews off campus, the answer
was perhaps inevitable. Although Kinsey con­
tinued to teach courses in biology, his load
was reduced, and much of his life came to be
devoted to sex research.

Because Kinsey was already well connected
to the scientific establishment, his initial efforts
to study sex received encouragement from the
CRPS. He received an exploratory grant from
them in 1941, during which time he would be
evaluated as to suitability for a larger grant.
George W. Corner, a physician member and
later the chair of the CRPS, visited Kinsey as
one of the grant investigators to determine
whether Kinsey deserved further funding. He
was tremendously impressed and reported
that Kinsey was the most intense scientist he
had ever met. He added that Kinsey could talk
about little besides his research. According to
Corner (1981), Kinsey was an ideal person for a
grant to study sex:

H e was a fu ll professor, married with adolescent chil­
dren. W hile carrying on his teaching duties in the zool­
ogy department he worked every available hour, day a n d
night, traveling anywhere that people would give him
interviews. H e was training a couple o f young men in
his method o f interviewing. Dr. Yerkes a n d / subm itted
separately to his technique. I was astonished a t his skill
in eliciting the most intim ate details o f the subject’s sex­
ual history. Introducing his queries gradually, he m an­
aged to convey an assurance o f complete confidentiality
by recording the answers on special sheets printed with
a grid on which he set down the information gained, by
unintelligible signs, explaining that the code h a d never
been written down a n d only his two colleagues could read
it. H is questions included subtle tricks to detect deliberate
misinformation, (p. 268)

Important to the continuation of the grant
was the support of the university administration
and its president, which Kinsey received despite

58
i n v e s t i g a t i n g s e x u a l i t y

sniping by some fellow faculty members such
as Rice and others who regarded Kinsey’s inter­
est in sex with suspicion. As Corners reference
to Kinsey’s family indicates, the committee
wanted to make certain that the researcher had
no special agenda except, perhaps, to establish
some guides to better marriages. Kinsey satis­
fied them on this account and was well aware
that any indication otherwise might endanger

IS grant. Thus, his own sex life remained a
closed book, only to be opened by later gen­
erations o f scholars (Jones, 1997). The CRPS

committed to Kinsey that by
the 1946-1947 academic year, he was receiving
half of the com m ittee’s total budget.

Before the interviews stopped with Kin­
seys death, about 18,000 individuals had been
interviewed, 8,000 by Kinsey himself. Kinsey
strongly believed that people would not always
tell the truth when questioned about their
sexual activities and that the only way to deal
with this was through personal interviews in
which the contradictions could be explored.
He did not believe that self-administered
questionnaires produced accurate responses-
He regarded them as encouraging dishonest
answers. He also recognized that respondents
might he even in a personal interview, but he
provided a variety o f checks to detect this and
believed his checks were successful. Subjects
were usually told that there were some con-
radictions in their answers and were asked to

explain them. If they refused to do so, the inter­
view was terminated and the information not
used. Kinsey was also aware of potential bias
Of the interviewer. He sought to overcome this
hias by occasionally having two people conduct
the interviews at different times and by relying
mainly on four interviewers, including himself
o conduct the study. Ifthere was a bias, it came

to be a shared one. The questions, however
were so wide-ranging that this too would limit

a n v tn ‘he data in
c i l \ ” T ‘ prin­ciples, he wanted to gather data from as many

subjects as possible, and he hoped initially to

sTrfnn ‘ “ d later to conduct
80 000 more H e did not live to achieve this.

efore he died, the funding sources had dried
up tor such research, and other methods based
on statistical sampling grew more popular.

WHAT KINSEY DID

Kinseys major accomplishment was to chal­
lenge most o f the assumptions about sexual
activity in the United States. In so doing, he
aroused great antagonism among many who
opposed making sexual issues a matter of pub­
lic discussion and debate. One reason for the
antagonism is that he brought to public notice
many sexual practices that previously had not
been publicly discussed. Although Kinsey
prided him self as an objective scientist, it was
bis very attempt to establish a taxonomy of sex-
ua behaviors-treating all activities as more
or less within the range o f human behavior—
that got him into trouble. Karl Menninger for
example, said that “Kinsey’s compulsion to
orce human sexual behavior into a zoological

frame o f reference leads him to repudiate or
neglect human psychology, and to see normal­
ity as that which is natural in the sense that
It is what IS practiced by animals” (quoted in
Pomeroy, 1972, p. 367).

M ost sex researchers today accept the fact
that total objectivity in our field is probably
i^mpossible. Some o f Kinsey’s difficulty resulted
from his belief that he could be totally objec­
tive. He did not realize that the way he orga­
nized his data sometimes could challenge
his objectivity, even though the organization
seemed logical. For example, Kinsey developed
a seven-point bipolar scale, which was one of
the standard methods of organizing data in
social science research at that time. He did not
trust people’s self-classification as homosexual
or heterosexual. Therefore, he decided that
regardless of how they might have classified
themselves, the only objective indicator that he

ALFRED KINSEY AND THE KINSEY REPORT 59

could use was to define sex in terms of outlet—
namely, what activity resulted in orgasms.

In most seven-point scales, the extremes are
represented by 0 and 6 (or by 1 and 7, depending
upon the number with which the scale starts).
Most people tend to respond using the middle of
the scale. When one rates heterosexual orgasm as
0 and homosexual orgasm 6, a logical decision in
terms of taxonomy, he in effect weights the scale
by seeming to imply that exclusive heterosexual­
ity is one extreme and exclusive homosexuality
the other. Although his data demonstrated that
far more people were identified as exclusively
heterosexual than as any other category, his
scale also implied that homosexuality was just
another form of sexual activity, something that
1 think Kinsey believed was true. For his time
and place this was revolutionary. His discussion
of homosexuality and its prevalence resulted in
the most serious attacks upon him and his data
(Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin, 1948).

Kinsey was a trailblazer, openly and will­
ingly challenging many basic societal beliefs.
It was not only his dispassionate discussion
of homosexuality that roused controversy, but
also his tendency to raise questions that soci­
ety at that time preferred to ignore, In his
book on males, for example, he questioned
the assumption that extramarital intercourse
always undermined the stability of marriage
and held that the full story was more complex
than the most highly publicized cases led one
to assume. He seemed to feel that the most
appropriate extramarital affair, from the stand­
point of preserving a marriage, was an alliance
in which neither party became overly involved
emotionally. Concerned over the reaction to
this, however, he became somewhat more cau­
tious in the book on females. He conceded that
extramarital affairs probably contributed to
divorces in more ways and to a “greater extent
than the subjects themselves realized” (Kinsey,
Pomeroy, Martin, and Gebhard, 1953, p. 31).

Kinsey was interested in many different sex­
ual behaviors, including that between genera­

tions (i.e., adults with children or minors). One
of his more criticized sections in recent years
is the table based on data he gathered from
pedophiles. He is accused of not turning these
people over to authorities, although one of the
major informants was already serving time in
jail for his sexual activities when interviewed.
Kinsey gathered his data wherever he could
find it, but he also reported on the source of
his data. H is own retrospective data tended to
show that many individuals who experienced
intergenerational sex as children were not seri­
ously harmed by it, another statement that got
him into trouble,

Kinsey is also criticized for his statistical
sampling. Although his critics (even before his
studies were published) attempted to get him
to validate his data with a random sample of
individuals, he refused on the grounds that
not all of those included in the random sample
would answer the questions put to them and
that, therefore, the random sample would be
biased. It is quite clear that Kinsey’s sample
is not random and that it overrepresents some
segments of the population, including students
and residents of Indiana. Part o f the criticism,
however, is also due to the use and misuse of
the Kinsey data without his qualifications. This
is particularly true o f his data on same-sex rela­
tionships, which are broken down by age and
other variables and therefore allowed others to
choose the number or percentage of the sample
they wanted to use in their own reports.

Another assumption of American society
that Kinsey also challenged was the asexual-
ity o f women. This proved the issue of greatest
controversy in his book on females. A total of
40% o f the females he studied had experienced
orgasm within the first months of marriage,
67% by the first six months, and 75% by the
end of the first year. Twenty-five percent o f
his sample had experienced orgasm by age o f
15, more than 50% by the age o f 20, and 64%
before marriage. On the other hand, he also
reported cases in which women failed to reach

60 INVESTIGATING SEXUALITY

orgasm after 20 years of marriage. In spite of
the controversies over his data on orgasms, it
helped move the issue of female sexuality on to
the agenda of the growing women’s movement
of the late 1960s and the 1970s, and to encour­
age further studies of female sexuality.

In light of the challenges against him, Kinsey
ignored in his writings what might be called
sexual adventurers, paying almost no attention
to swinging, group sex, and alternate lifestyles
such as sadism, masochism, transvestism, voy­
eurism, and exhibitionism. H e justified this
neglect by arguing that such practices were
statistically insignificant. It is more likely that
Kinsey was either not interested in them or not
interested in exploring them. He was also not
particularly interested in pregnancy or sexually
transmitted diseases. However, he demystified
discussion of sex insofar as that was possible.
Sex, to him, was just another aspect of human
behavior, albeit an important part. He made
Americans and the world at large aware of just
how big a part human sexuality played in the
life cycle of the individual and how widespread
many kinds of sexual activities were.

Kinsey was determined to make the study
of sex a science, a subject that could be stud­
ied in colleges much the same way that animal
reproduction was, with succeeding generations
of researchers adding to the knowledge base.
He succeeded, at least in the long run. He had
a vision of the kind of studies that still needed
to be done, some of which were later done by
his successors at Indiana and elsewhere, but he
himself died before he could do them and the
funds dried up.

Another of his significant contributions was
to establish a library and to gather sources
about sexuality from all over the world. He
blazed a trail for future sex researchers; The
library he established at Indiana University
served as an example that helped many of us
to persuade other university libraries to collect
works from this field. Although there are now

several impressive collections o f this kind in
the country, Kinsey’s collection is still tremen­
dously important.

In sum, Kinsey was the major factor in chang­
ing attitudes about sex in the twentieth century.
His limitations and his personal foibles are
appropriately overshadowed by his courage to
go where others had not gone before. In spite of
the vicious attacks upon him during his last few
years of life, and the continuing attacks today,
his data continue to be cited and used (and mis­
used). He changed the nature of sexual stud­
ies, forced a reexamination of public attitudes
toward sex, challenged the medical and psychiat­
ric establishment to reassess its own views, influ­
enced both the feminist movement and the gay
and lesbian movement, and built a library and an
institution devoted to sex research. His reputa­
tion continues to grow, and he has become one
of the legends of the twentieth century… .

REFERENCES
Bullough, V. L. 1994. Science in the bedroom: A history of sex

research. New York: Basic Books.
Bullough, V. L. 1997. American physicians and sex

research. Journal o f the History of Medicine, 57, 236-253.
Corner, G. W. 1981. The seven ages of a medical scientist.

Philadelphia; University of Pennsyivania Press.
Davis. K. B. 1929. Factors in the sex life o f twenty-two

hundred women. New York: Harper.
Dickinson, R. L., and Beam, L. 1931. A thousand marriages.

Baltimore: Wiliams and WIkins.
Dickinson, R. L., and Beam, L. 1934. The single woman.

Baltimore: Wiliams and WIkins.
Henry, G. 1941, Sex variants: a study o f homosexual patterns

(2 vols.). New York: Hoeber.
Jones. J. H. 1997, August 2 and September 1. Annals of

sexology: Dr. Yes. New Yorker, pp. 99-113.
Jones, J. H. 1997a. Kittsey: A Public/Private Life. New York:

Norton.
Kinsey, A., Pomeroy, W., and Martin, C. 1948. Sexual

behavior in the human male. Philadelphia: Saunders.
Kinsey, A.. Pomeroy, W., Martin, C., and Gebhard, P. 1953.

Sexual behavior in the human female. Philadelphia: Saunders.
Pomeroy, W. B. 1972. Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex

Research. New York: Harper and Row.
Terman, L,, Buttenweiser, P.. Ferguson. L., Johnson, W. B.,

and Wilson, D. P. 1938. Psychological factors in marital
happiness. New York; McGraw-Hill.