MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

These two books, widely known as the Kinsey Reports, became best-sellers soon after their publishing and are still considered as some of the most influential and controversial scientific books of the 20th century. The reports were listed in the "Most Harmful Books" list by American weekly conservative Human Events. Considered pioneering for its time, there search initiated by Alfred Kinsey, professor of zoology at Indiana University and the founder of Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, was primarily based on data collected from more than 5300 males and nearly 6000 females. Besides the information acquired from the reports of the participants, it also references material derived from various fields of medicine, animal behaviour, social studies, penology, marriage counselling, literature, the fine arts amongst many others. Published before the sexual revolution of the 1960-70s, the Kinsey Reports challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality among both specialists and the general public. Although considering a range of factors and sources of sexual outlet, such as decade of birth, age, religious adherence, etc., the Kinsey Reports have been criticised for their pretension to universality and objectivity, while at the same time omitting African-Americans from the research.