The first major contribution that Alfred Kinsey made to sex research was the importance and identification of the prevalence of masturbation within our society. His three points about masturbation, being that , it is harmless, it is not a substitute for sexual intercourse and that it plays an important role in woman’s sexuality because it provides a more reliable source of orgasm , are all important observations that were not only revolutionary back then, but also are extremely important today. With our era of instant access of endless streaming pornography , many are choosing a digital sexual lifestyle rather than a real one and I think Kinsey was the first to notice that this can be a harmful alternative.
Too much of anything is a bad, but especially with the youth, we are seeing that an overexposure to pornography at a young age is hurting them in the long run. Kinsey realized that while masturbation is harmless and even beneficial in ways, it can also have negative consequences if done in large amounts. Also the idea that a woman’s best way to explore her body through orgasms might be through masturbation, I imagine, would have been a very infuriating thought to many men at the time who lacked sexual education and the idea that they couldn’t please their wives to the full potential.
The second contribution that Alfred Kinsey made to the sexual research field is the realization to the public that human sexuality was not the same for everyone, but rather people had vastly different sexual habits. In fact the textbook references two extremes of two men, one who had only ejaculated once in a thirty year period and the second who had ejaculated 30 times in one week. The realization by the public that not everyone had the same sexual desires was at the time a huge revelation to many who knew little to nothing of human sexuality.
To some who might have thought they were messed up or broken because of what they found sexual pleasure in, I’m sure Kinsey made them feel more at ease. The first step of exploring the vast amounts of sexual turn ons was realizing that people liked different things, which was one very important contribution that Kinsey made. Perhaps the most important part of all was not that Kinsey made the realization, but that his book made the American people realize it as well.
The third and most important contribution in my opinion was that human sexuality is not black or white, but rather a spectrum. The creation of the Kinsey scale by Kinsey might seem a little outdated by today’s standards, but it laid a base layer for the idea that like everything in the human brain, things shouldn’t be thought of in absolutes. The textbook references that at the time anyone who took place in a single same sex encounter was considered homosexual, which is completely untrue. Many times people can not know what they like sexual without experimentation and the black and white labeling before Kinsey completely looks over that idea.
Many people today wish to not be associated with labels because they feel that one category can not fully be able to represent their sexuality and I completely agree. Kinsey was the first to realize not only do people not fall into the categories of just heterosexual and homosexual but that there could be an entire spectrum of sexual behaviors.
The limitations that came with Kinsey’s studies mostly come from the lack of ability to do surveys on a mass scale for large amounts of the population, like we can today. The first limitation was that, because they were surveys, there is no way to tell if the participants lied about their sexual behaviors, even if it would never get back to them , they still might have been embarrassed. The next limitation was the areas that were actually researched. With different areas , can come different sexual behaviors and at the time the surveys were only done in certain parts of the United States.
Finally the last and move important limitation of Kinsey’s studies was the lack of racial representation amongst the people he surveyed. We realize now that different raced can have different sexual behaviors, so misrepresentation of races, causes a bias amongst the research he has collected. Regardless though, as a stepping stone, Kinsey’s research was and is very useful to the new learner of sexual studies.