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SHS005-The Unknown Kinsey

Intro

Allie: Welcome to the Sex History Show.

John: This is a frank, but polite discussion about sex history. So, if you're offended by this kind of talk, hop in a Victorian time machine and get the Hell out of here..

Allie: I'm Allie.

John: I'm John.

Randal: And I'm Randal.

Body

John: Allie, you ended our last show with a riddle. You proposed something in common with the main characters of our last two shows: Margaret Sanger, Ida Craddock, and Anthony Comstock.

Randal: And in common with homosexuality? As far as I can tell, Sanger and Craddock never really talked about that.

Allie: We seem to be developing a tradition for letting people speak for themselves.

Ellis: "It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great¹."

Randal: Sorry, still no idea.

Voice: "'Homosexual' is a barbarously hybrid word, and I claim no responsibility for it²,³."

Havelock Ellis - the shoulders that Kinsey stood upon.

John: Of course! That's Havelock Ellis, the unknown Kinsey.

Allie: Thats a good way to describe him really, and he certainly made Kinseys works possible. It was really his works that started the thaw in Victorian prudery that allowed voices like Sanger and Craddock, and later Kinsey, to speak.

Randal: Kinsey and homosexuality. Im getting the impression that he studied homosexuality before Kinsey did.

Allie: Not just homosexuality. He covered everything from homosexuality to masturbation to erotic symbolism.

John: Thats true, but, as his voice says, he wouldnt have said homosexuality⁴. He referred to it as sexual inversion. That was the topic of his most famous book on sexuality. And the one that got him in trouble.

A young Edith Lees

Randal: I think were getting ahead of ourselves. Who is this guy? Why havent I heard of him?

Allie: Ellis was an Englishman, born in 1859. Although a certified medical doctor, he never practiced. I'd say he was just too busy with his many other interests.

John: I've heard he wrote books on poetry, travel, hygiene, history, dreams, genius, criminal reform, and conflict. Well, and sex.

Allie: He was a pretty unlikely sexual researcher. He was impotent until the age of 64⁵. He married, and deeply loved, an openly lesbian woman⁶. After their wedding, the two retired to different homes! On the other hand, he was very open about his life-long masturbation and he and his wife both took other lovers.

Margaret Sanger was profoundly influenced by Ellis.

John: And one of them was Margaret Sanger. I talked about her in episode #3. I think its especially ironic that she met Ellis because of Anthony Comstock the anti-obscenity crusader from last episode. Sanger was caught by Comstock for sending birth control information through US mails. Sanger fled for England for several years. While gone Comstock managed to jail her husband!

Allie: In England, Sanger met Ellis, a person she had read and admired for many years.

John: Her relationship with him really loosened up Sanger.

Randal: Loosened her up? She sounded like a pretty open-minded woman to me!

John: Well, everyone has their little flaws. In What Every Girl Should Know, arguably her most famous work, she said she never found anyone more revolting than the chronic masturbator.

Ellis' seven-volume 'Studies in the Psychology of Sex', originally starting with Sexual Inversion.

Allie: I hadnt heard that! Ellis must have convinced her otherwise by example. He certainly had a lot to say about sex in general at that time. He had already published part of what would become his seven-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex. The first volume was really famous!

Randal: Ive got this bad feeling. By 'famous', I hope you mean that people liked it.

Ellis' co-author, John Addington Symonds, died before the 'Inversions' saw print.

Allie: Well, not everyone. The first volume was subtitled Sexual Inversions. In addition to his wife, Ellis had a lot of gay friends, including his coauthor, John Addington Symonds. Symonds died before the book saw print. The book created a whirlwind of controversy.

Randal: Yeah, I guess I was expecting that. Remember, that Oscar Wilde had just been imprisoned for being homosexual⁸.

Allie: And Ellis stated that homosexuality was natural, inborn, and potentially wholesome. Far ahead of his time, he cited many animal species with homosexual individuals. His 33 human case studies were drawn from his professional and social contacts generally quite successful people.

Randal: All this before 1900? Wow!

Being wildly popular was not enough to keep Oscar Wilde out of jail for his homosexual activities.

John: So, what kind of trouble did he get into?

Allie: The usual: a big obscenity case that he eventually lost and suffered a lot of bad publicity at home.

John: Hey, I thought we were going to have a more upbeat episode!

Allie: Not to worry. Ellis eventually got Inversions and the subsequent six volumes in the series published across the Atlantic in Philedelphia!

Allie: Well, it wasnt a clean sweep. The controversial Inversions was moved to after The Evolution of Modesty and none of the volumes were available to anyone but licensed medical professionals until 1935!

Randal: Still, I can see that a lot of people read them anyway, including Craddock and Sanger and Kinsey. And a lot of people started talking about homosexuality.

Next Show

John: They were talking about it, but it seems no one could agree what to call it. Sexual invert, homosexual. People were also using the words like gay, lesbian, tribad, queer, saphic, and fairy. All of these terms have pretty interesting origins, some from Ellis' time, some from way back.

Allie: Wow, that's cool. Let's talk about them on our next show.

Randal: Until then, we hope you'll visit us at SexHistoryShow.com. Come on down and check out our show notes and extended discussions in the forums.

Additional General Reference

Wikipedia's rather sparse entry is here
Three biographies can be found here,here, and here,
This site is an excellent list of other links about Ellis.
Most of Ellisons works are in the public domain. Many can be viewed at the Gutenberg project here.

Notes

1	Widely attributed to Ellis, though we havent yet found the actual source.
2	Studies in Psychology (1897)
3	For more excellent quotes by Ellison, see here.
4	The term homosexual was coined in Hungary in 1869. See the opening paragraph of Sex Lives of the Famous Gays (2006) by Nigel Cawthorne
5	When he discovered a female friend of his showed him that he could be aroused by women urinating! He had an active sex life for 12 years after that.
6	He married Edith Lees on December 19, 1891. Lees was an advocate of womens rights.
7	Available for reading at the Gutenberg project here.
8	On May 25, 1895 Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labor