3/2/2023 0 Comments Alfred kinsey![]() ![]() Alfred’s Groundbreaking Sexual Fluidity DiscoveryĪlfred went on to study at Bowdoin College and Harvard University’s Bussey Institute, eventually accepting an academic post in biology at Indiana University where he founded the Institute for Sex Research in 1947 (which went on to become the Kinsey Institute). An outcast child with an irreverent view of religion and a peculiar fixation on sexuality allowed Alfred a distinct perspective and prompted him to question the entire hegemonic order of sexuality. These feelings of eroticism, remorse, and shame lingered for years prompting Alfred to explore them not only psychologically, but scientifically. Despite the fact that he’d engaged in these childhood rites of passage with a girl, he’d later confide in his colleagues that he felt something homosexual about the encounter. Like many children raised in strictly religious households, he found himself curious yet guilt-stricken with arousal and shame. Around the age of six, an older girl and Alfred participated in preadolescent sexual exploration in a neighbor’s basement. Yet, it was also in Hoboken where Alfred engaged in his first sexual experiences. The God of the Kinsey house was an old testament God filled with wrath and brimstone, punishing the disobedient. ![]() His father imposed strict rules, mandating Sunday to be spent in solemn prayer - even kicking Alfred’s aunt out of the house for playing the piano on a Sunday. He also developed rheumatic fever which kept him to long months of bed rest.Ĭoupled with a sickly childhood, Alfred was dealt the double blow of an overbearing, religious father. Due to a lack of Vitamin D, Alfred developed rickets, producing a double curvature of the spine ( kyphoscoliosis ) which left him humpbacked for the remainder of his life. He grew up both physically and emotionally impaired. The urban landscape was not the only thing stifling young Alfred. There was the cramped vision that it is the lot of the boy in the city.” “In lieu of woods and fields, there were the stones of the streets and the buildings, people, cats, dogs, horses, sparrows, the weeds of the vacant lots, and the frustrated plants of the mostly barren backyards. “I was born in the heart of what was reputed to be the most densely populated square mile in the country,” Alfred once described his childhood in Hoboken. This seems hard to believe, considering the Kinseys often returned to Hoboken to visit his grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and he’d play with cousins in the Hoboken streets. He recalled the first automobiles, the first paved streets, and fireworks on holidays - yet beyond public events, Alfred claimed not to have substantial memories of Hoboken. Truth be told, young Alfred enjoyed neither his family nor Hoboken - but like a vibrant wine, he flourished in this harsh soil. ![]() The family’s stern, Victorian temperament accompanied by an oppressive religious austerity would have profound effects on Alfred. worked at Stevens, the family lived at 161 7th Street and worshiped around the corner at the First Methodist Church (719 Washington Street now Mt. In doing so, he elevated himself from blue-collar worker to that of a lecturer within Stevens’ Department of Shop Practice. a placement in the machine shop at Stevens Institute of Technology. Kinsey spent his youth as a bedridden child in a strict, Victorian household, and his experiences here in Hoboken laid the foundation for his life’s crusade.Īlfred Kinsey’s father labored as a blue collar worker with aspirations for social mobility and a fierce work ethic. But before universal fame and infamy, Alfred C. This sickly, insecure child came to grace the cover of Time magazine and was even portrayed by Liam Neeson in the 2004 biopic film, Kinsey. Read on to learn more about Hoboken’s Alfred Kinsey, the first ‘sex doctor’ who launched an entire movement.īorn on Jin Hoboken, Alfred Kinsey would fundamentally challenge and change the concept of sexuality forever after. But none did so as profoundly as Hoboken’s own Alfred Kinsey, America’s first ‘sex doctor.’ In the 1950s, Alfred Kinsey became the first pop culture phenomenon to bridge the gap between ‘gay’ and ‘straight.’ Alfred’s academic studies revolutionized the world’s understanding of sexuality, while also sparking the LGBTQ+ Liberation Movement. Lil Nas X, Brokeback Mountain, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Friends, Will and Grace, Ellen, and Tom Hanks’ portrayal of an AIDS patient in Philadelphia are a few areas of pop culture that helped acquaint Americans with the LGBT+ community. Before the LGBTQ+ community had made the headway it’s made today, many pop culture milestones helped familiarize Americans with LGBTQ+ issues. ![]()
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