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.

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 American history. Almost everything is grist for Reumann's mill from poetry, to cartoons, to novels, to movies, to self-help books--nearly everything that might be examined to explore changing patterns of American belief. Also included are long samples of writings from both Kinsey's 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 Comfort, and the list could go on. Reumann says nothing about SIECUS, SSSS, Planned Parenthood, or any other organized sex group--not scholarly and scientific ones or the organizations catering to the sexual preferences 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 sellers, 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 team's 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.

Kinsey's 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 differences 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 documented. Reumann does believe, as do most other scholars, that the revelations about homosexuality in Kinsey's 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 proportion 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 Kinsey's female volume was simply the range of sexual 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 Kinsey's work, authorities from the helping professions seemed to all agree that a mutually exciting sexual life was vital to a successful marriage. Still most writers, and magazines 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 by Joseph Hilton Smythe, Miss Kinsey's 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 interviewing women and having somewhat different adventures 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 contraceptive but as a way of promoting good sex, offering women options other than full-time motherhood.

Reumann examines every aspect of the Kinsey studies, 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 conservatives 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 Kinsey's, a fact that Lauman, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels realized when they published two different versions 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 contested and compelling issue.

My major complaint regarding Reumann's 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 Kinsey's landmark work.

Reviewed by Vern L. Bullough (deceased).