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- Title
'Dear Dr K': Mobility, Sex, and Selfhood in Alfred Kinsey's British World Correspondence, 1948–58.
- Authors
Daily, Ruby Ray
- Abstract
"Dear Dr K": Mobility, Sex, and Selfhood in Alfred Kinsey's British World Correspondence, 1948-58 Introduction 'Dear Dr Kinsey, I have been reading about your book ... and I must say that it is disappointing'. Whether they responded to Kinsey's work with hostility, scepticism, or confusion, the Kinsey correspondence indicates most Americans were surprisingly comfortable with a functional understanding of sex as a spectrum of biology or catalogue of behaviours. 21 By the 1950s, Kinsey had finally gained recognition in British society largely due to a divided popular press: the left-wing cited Kinsey's research as an argument for citizens' right to sexual knowledge; conservative reactionaries protested that American immorality was a threat to British "character". Many of those who wrote to Kinsey, regardless of country of origin, believed that sex mattered because it governed relationships between people; sex was a feature of interpersonal relationships, like courtship, marriage, and procreation.
- Subjects
HUMAN sexuality; IDENTITY (Psychology); SOCIAL surveys; SOCIAL scientists; HUMAN behavior
- Publication
Twentieth Century British History, 2021, Vol 32, Issue 1, p24
- ISSN
0955-2359
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/tcbh/hwaa013