We get started with the obvious: Wiker is going to reject almost everything that Alfred Kinsey reported in “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.” This, for readers of the series, should be familiar. Wiker arguing from the standpoint of a conservative Christian isn’t going to be accepting of a publication that accepts homosexuality as normal or anything that goes against the Judeo-Christian model of what sexual normalcy is supposed to be.
As I said in a few posts, I can’t really fault him for that. That is his point of view and while I disagree; if I consistently decided to argue against that it would mean that these posts are going to get pretty repetitive. I can, however argue against his application of that viewpoint if it tends towards hypocrisy, double standards, and other crimes of inconsistency. The main issue with the chapter is that it is curiously devoid of quotes and direct references to the actual report. This seems to have been a problem that Wiker himself had as he explains, “The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction will not allow me to quote anything.“
I’m not an expert in copyright law but I have three publications in which I have quoted from other works and never once have I had to ask for permission to quote/paraphrase/summarize from one of those works. As long as I correctly cited the material confirming that it is not my own it was deemed legal. I will grant the possibility that lawyers for the books’ publishers took care of this for both myself the author of any chapter in question and the editor of the books themselves, but I can’t see how Wiker cannot directly quote while numerous books and articles have been written attempting to discredit the report. Am I to assume that none of these books have quotes from the Reports themselves? Further adding to this enigma is that Kinsey’s report is scientific and not allowing a person to quote a scientific report seems wrong to me. I have no evidence to call him a liar although this claim seems incredible to me.
Without direct reference to the work the chapter seems bare. We, of course, can get copies of the Kinsey report and check the work ourselves based on the citations that Wiker inserts into the chapter but that does seem to take away from the book’s purpose.
The main issue with this chapter is that Wiker brings up an interesting conflict. The conflict is between “is” and “ought.” Kinsey’s report sought to explain what kind of sexual behaviors males were engaging in through the use of surveys with sample populations. Wiker seems to think that the report ought to have brought in the concept of what kind of sexual behaviors human males ought to engage in. This would lead to black and white judgment on the population in question seeming to satisfy Wiker’s need to have morality permeate every aspect of science.
He of course, ties this back to Machiavelli who famously explained that he sought to explain the reality of the matter rather then explain the ideal. At this point even I’m sick of reading about Machiavelli. So we must cast judgment, but from what viewpoint should be casting judgment? While Wiker, to his credit, only references his religious convictions a few times (twice, I think) however this is the last chapter* in the book so we know where he is coming from. Why should a report pass judgment? Well Wiker never explains that, he says that Kinsey was seeking to normalize his own sexual perversions bending the world to Kinsey’s own predilections, but this does little to explain why a person conducting a sexual study should be in the business of enforcing morality.
It leads into Wiker’s favorite tool of applying the Ad Hominem attack, he leads into semi-graphic explanations of Kinsey’s own sexual practices and then how Kinsey used them to influence his report. That, technique seems to permeate the attacks on the Kinsey Report itself in three various websites all of the conservative leaning. This does little for the technique as Ad Hominem is still an informal fallacy of logic. Despite Kinsey’s own behaviors the numbers don’t change, his report is still there. Just because Stalin said that one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic doesn’t make it less true because Stalin said it.
“Ought” is still his issue. Kinsey should have instead reported the sexual behaviors that men ought be engaging in, and in 1948 it would probably look just like Wiker and those that share his viewpoint think it should now.
Along with Ad Hominem Wiker brings back his old favorite of equating “natural” with “desirable.” We have seen with Hobbes and Rosseau that this is a mistake. Although he goes about it in a strange manner that is very telling. Wiker talks about how he had a Disney image of a Rooster copulating with Chickens in the Hen house. That image was shattered when he actually had a Rooster and could hear the mating noises of the poultry which he described as “pain filled shrieks” because the Rooster wasn’t being nice. This image destroyed and him being bothered by the noises (which as someone who has heard animals mating before I can’t really blame him) he “moved the Roosters into the freezer.” A nice way of saying that he killed the roosters and then ate them.
It is natural for a rooster to mate with hens in this manner. This is their inherent nature. That is after all we use the word “cock” to describe both a male chicken and a male asshole. So being offended with the rooster’s behavior Wiker murdered** them. Apparently then the male chicken is immoral for following its nature.
Natural isn’t always desirable, I can’t stress this enough and Wiker admitting that homosexuality has existed throughout history seems to agree on the separation. It doesn’t mean that Kinsey was advocating homosexuality for the population only that it seems to be a natural occurrence in human males. Kinsey did engage in homosexuality but since he conducted his report with an air of “disinterested objectivity” as Wiker says, it means that he wasn’t passing judgment on those people exclusively heterosexual as missing out on something. It would seem that Kinsey might have been advocating tolerance instead of adherence to a code from a book that no one knows the author.
At no point in this chapter or the entire book has Wiker explained the superiority of his morals/values instead taking it for granted that they simply are. Wiker’s favorite moral code, the Biblical one, also allows Lot to have an incestuous three-way with his two daughters but we don’t have Wiker condemning Exodus for allowing him to go unscathed.
The real issue with Kinsey is touched upon but cast aside in favor of more scandalous attacks. That issue is that Kinsey’s samples were made up of people that were more than willing to confess their sexual histories, too willing in fact as numerous critics of the report comment. It’s called “volunteer bias” and it means that if you are willing to help out with an experiment to, say, cure cancer and knowing this ahead of time you are going to be either subconsciously or consciously hoping for the conclusion. Also Kinsey interviewed a good number of male prisoners wherein he derived higher than normal statistics of homosexual acts (in prison? duh…) from which readers of the report claimed 1 out of 3 men are homosexual.***
Instead of attacking Kinsey’s conclusion, Wiker had a good opportunity to attack his method going into what could have been a nice explanation of the scientific method and how to conduct research polling. Having done that the conclusion would have fallen apart on its own. He didn’t do it last chapter so missing such a golden opportunity again isn’t much of a surprise. It would be a much more effective and agreeable method if he applied it to this whole book and maybe he will do it in the last chapter.
*It’s not there’s always a conclusion, but he does manage to squeeze in one more under the guise of a “dishonorable mention.”
**: I haven’t gone all PETA, I understand that he was keeping the Chickens for both eggs and meat which doesn’t bother me in the least. Wiker points to the Rooster’s behavior as being the sole motivation for their “incarceration” in the freezer.”
***: But that statistic is nowhere in the report itself, nor is it implied.
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