(3 of 3)
Kinsey regarded man merely as an animal of extremely versatile sexuality, whose sexual aberrations were not aberrations at all because there was no sexual norm—much less morality or responsibility. It was all very well, they said, to catalogue behavior in the interests of science, but to make the catalogue available to the lay public was to undermine the individual's sense of right & wrong. Other Kinsey critics challenged the soundness of his sampling methods. Last summer the National Research Council (which supplies a slice of Kinsey's research funds) completed an investigation of this charge and found no reason to withdraw its support.
KINSEY'S house in Bloomington, Ind., in which he and his wife have lived for 25 years and in which their three children grew up, is a red brick structure designed by himself on a green, sunny street a few blocks from the campus. There are 170 different kinds of trees and shrubs on the 22-acre property, most of which Kinsey planted himself. Kinsey gets to his Institute at about 9 in the morning, seven days a week, and works (with a brief lunch period) till about 6. He goes home for dinner, plays some music, pokes around in the garden, and returns to the Institute at 7:30, working there till 11 or midnight. On Sunday evening, which is devoted to music, he does not go back to the office, and exactly once a year, on Christmas, he takes the whole day off. He has not had a vacation in 13 years.
Though Sexual Behavior in the Human Male sold 275,000 copies, and would have earned him a considerable fortune, he has never taken a cent of royalties. All the proceeds are plowed back into the research, and this will be the procedure with future books.
Eight or nine Kinsey books are planned in all—the next one to deal with the sexual behavior of women. Awaited expectantly for at least a year, it has been delayed, partly because women's sex habits proved far harder to tabulate than men's. "It's double the work," says Dr. Kinsey.