Male Feminist of the "Week" #4

(Okay, so it's been a month. Tant pis!)

After having posted on Freud, it only makes sense to follow up with...

Kinsey!

There's a good summary on Nerve right now--basically what you know if you saw the Liam Neeson movie, with added stuff about Kinsey's urethra and the things that went in it. Fun! As I'm sure you know, Alfred Kinsey followed up Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) with Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). With these two books, Kinsey blasted societal mores and showed the world, based on extensive research, that there was no such thing as "normal"--and that this was perfectly normal.

Given that female sexuality is usually further repressed by society than male sexuality, Kinsey no doubt had even a greater impact for women than he did for men--orgasms, masturbation, homosexuality, all the myths regarding these were exploded. Furthermore, Kinsey made up for Freud's mistakes--he knew the importance of clitoral stimulation, better understood female anatomy, didn't judge the validity of various behaviors, and generally took "neurosis" out of the sexual vernacular. (Or, would eventually--I'm not actually sure how long it took his work to catch on.) And, of course, he expanded upon Freud's insistence that everyone was inherently bisexual--making it a spectrum rather than a hard and fast rule. (Tee hee, "hard and fast!")

To me, Kinsey's work anticipated the Third Wave. Kinsey knew that any consensual sex act was a good one, that whatever kind of orgasm you had it shouldn't be politicized* and that exploration, whenever you were ready for it, was crucial to a healthy life. Amen!


*More on this next.