Kiss and Tell.

Kiss and Tell. By Julia Ericksen (with Sally A. Steffen). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, 270 pages. Cloth, $29.95.

"Sexuality is not a trait with which individuals are born, but a crucial aspect of identity that is socially created" (Erickson, Kiss and Tell, p. 11).

When the history of "social constructionism" is constructed, let us hope that the authors have access to an obscure paper published in the journal Social Problems, titled "Ontological Gerrymandering: The Anatomy of Social Problems Explanations" (Woolgar & Pawluch, 1985). That article was written at a time when the term social construction was rather new, and usually applied to a form of sociological discourse championed by labeling theorists and other interactionists (e.g., Spector & Kituse, 1977; Best, 1990). Although I am an unabashed admirer of the social constructionist approach to social problems that Woolgar & Pawluch took to task, their critique was nevertheless apt. In my opinion, however, it would be even more productively applied to some of the new historicist writings of which the current volume is one, and of which I can't profess to be a great admirer (see D'emilio & Freedman, 1988, for another highly praised example).

Briefly, Woolgar & Pawluch's (1985) argument runs as follows: The central task of constructionist writings is to portray definitions of various phenomena and conditions as fluid, relative, and dependent upon sociohistorical forces. Constructionist theorists accomplish this by implicitly holding that at least some aspects of the phenomena under examination can be "objectively" characterized in some manner. They then demonstrate that whereas this objective phenomenal nature has remained constant, any changes in claims about the conditions or definitions regarding them must be entirely the result of associated sociohistorical changes.

However, as Woolgar & Pawluch (1985) write:

   But how do authors manage to portray [their] statements about conditions
   and behaviors as objective while relativizing the definitions and claims
   made about them? The metaphor of ontological gerrymandering suggests the
   central strategy for accomplishing this move. The successful [social
   constructionist] explanation depends on making problematic the truth status
   of certain states of affairs selected for analysis and explanation, while
   [relegating to the background] or minimizing the possibility that the same
   problems apply to assumptions upon which the analysis depends. By means of
   ontological gerrymandering, proponents of [social constructionist]
   explanation place a boundary between assumptions which are to be understood
   as (ostensibly) problematic, and those which are not. (p. 216).

Put more simply, Woolgar & Pawlich are saying that social constructionists refuse to apply the same standards of analysis to their own favored assumptions, which they take as a given, while treating assumptions they perhaps don't care for to a most rigorous deconstruction.

This criticism is equally applicable to contemporary social constructionist historical writings. In a tone eerily similar to that taken by scientists whose assumptions of objective neutrality they ridicule, the new historicist texts read exactly like the work of any scholar or scientist with pretensions to providing reasoned, clear-headed, objective analysis. The difference is that social constructionists loudly proclaim that the latter is not their intention because no such enterprise can exist. Erickson authoritatively proclaims on page 213 "Udry envisioned producing true scientific findings uninfluenced by surveyors' preconceptions or wish to manage the results. But this is impossible in any research, and especially in sex research [italics mine]."

Moreover, the contradictions inherent in ontological gerrymandering are not at all resolved by Erickson's acknowledgement of her ideological biases in a page or two of preface--a confession she claims to be making in the interest of fairness, given that her book "argues that researchers should acknowledge their histories and social positions" (p. vii). If these writers are to be taken seriously, they must do more than admit to bias. They must extend the rules of analyses within their texts to include themselves and their favored social movements. That way we would not have to respond in our minds every few sentences with "Oh, that's right, the writer is a post-Marxist feminist with consciousness-raising experience at Ann Arbor in the late 'sixties (and, I was there, yo'), so I'd better just ignore this whole passage." Of what other use are we to put the preliminary disclosure of personal history and social position? Interestingly, Erickson, an associate professor of sociology at Temple University, dates her interest in the newer, predominantly Foucault-inspired incarnations of social constructionism to the very mid-1970s University of Chicago constructionist sociology critiqued by Woolgar & Palwich (1985).

To its merit, Kiss and Tell provides the first comprehensive look at the modern history of sex survey research, and there is a wealth of historical information (and gossip) here that should be of interest to anyone in the sex research field. The author and her assistant reviewed 750 sex surveys for the book, interviewed dozens of researchers and their critics, and have attempted to reveal the ideological underpinnings of sex survey research as it has played out across the last 100 years. The sheer breadth of the book's scope, inclusive as it is of historical data on surveys one has never heard of, make it an important document ipso facto. Therefore, I recommend that everyone read it.

Nevertheless, the analysis is more sex-political than scientific. If one longs for more technical information about survey methodology and research design (and findings!), or if one simply finds this sort of writing silly or boring, be forewarned. The author's apparent belief that it is not only okay to use political ideology as a filter through which to view history, but it is virtually mandated to do so and/or impossible to resist doing so, may seriously limit the interest of this book for those who at least try to keep their politics out of their scientific and scholarly work--or who are more responsible about labeling their polemics "polemic."

Kiss and Tell is filled with the usual techniques of polemical social science, for example:

1. The use of quotation marks to ridicule disapproved ideas while presenting favored beliefs in a straightforward manner as though "everyone knows" that they are valid.

2. Bald speculations about the motivations of players in the drama of sex research as though these speculations were facts (e.g., male sex researchers' putative "fears" of female sexuality or gay male sexuality).

3. Repeated violations of Occam's Razor in attempts to explain away findings of well-documented sex differences as resulting artifactually from the manner in which questionnaire items were framed.

4. The use of phrases such as "Joe Blow and his colleagues believed that" or "This perpetuated the notion that" followed by statements of established fact (or at least, highly reasonable supposition) in an effort to cast doubt upon the veracity of the belief without the necessity of having to provide evidence against the belief. Examples: "Kinsey's agreement with his predecessors that female orgasm was a special problem perpetuated the idea that men and women were innately different and had difficulty in reaching sexual accord." (p. 60). Or "... this conviction that women's sexual urges were weaker then men's was to persist for most of the twentieth century" (p. 30). (Never do we read, however, "The notion that sexuality was entirely `socially constructed' was typical of sociology professors of the time.")

5. Identification of predictable heroes and villains; for example female researchers and gay male researchers are heroes, heterosexual male researchers (unless they are social script theorists) are typically bumblers or bigots, and uniformly devoid of self-insight. Particularly astounding is Erickson's characterization of AIDS researchers as "heroes" because they were "willing to abandon other research interests" in favor of studying "this new and terrifying disease" (p. 173). This emotionalistic interpretation ignores simple constructionist truisms about research interests fluctuating according to the appearance and disappearance of funding sources.

Perhaps I am being too harsh. Certainly, Kiss and Tell goes where no other text has gone before, and I intend to keep it on my shelf as a reference. However, it is difficult to know how to interpret the observations and analyses contained within, given that the book is so blatantly political. It is rather like ordering a plain pizza and receiving one with pepperoni, anchovies, peppers, onion, etc. You try to pull all that stuff to the side, but it's all so pungent that it's sometimes not clear where the mozzarella ends and the sausage begins. To contend that every text is political and to use that trivial observation as an excuse to produce polemics in the guise of history is, in my opinion, an endeavor of questionable utility.

REFERENCES

Best, J. (1990). Threatened children: Rhetoric and concern about child-victims. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

D'Emilio, J., & Freedman, E. B. (1988). Intimate matters: A history of sexuality in America. New York: Harper and Row.

Spector, M., & Kituse, J. I. (1977). Constructing social problems. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings.

Woolgar, S., & Pawluch, D. (1985). Ontological gerrymandering: The anatomy of social problems explanations. Social Problems, 32, 214-227.

Paul Okami, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095.