Alfred Kinsey: The Father of Modern Deviancy

For revolutionaries, there can be no joy without continually transgressing boundaries, so of course sexual revolutionaries had to come for the children.

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About the Author

Barbara Kay, based in Montreal, is a former teacher of literature and composition. She began her journalism career writing for the Quebec political magazine, Cité libre. She has been a regular opinion columnist for Canada’s National Post newspaper since 2003. Since 2019 she has been a regular opinion columnist for The Epoch Times newspaper. Kay has also written book reviews and longer opinion pieces for other publications, such as Quillette, the Dorchester Review, C2C Journal and Animals 24-7.org. She is the author or co-author of four books. Her most recent, in 2021, with principal writer Linda Blade is Unsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial are Destroying Sport. Kay is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.

In her gripping and insightful long read below, Kay dives into the historical and controversial ties between influential figures in the world of literature, academia, and sexology, and their stances on pedophilia. By referencing figures like German sexologist Helmut Kentler, who encouraged the placement of abandoned boys with pedophiles, and the famous names including Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir who supported the argument that sexuality was socially constructed, Kay exposes the dangerously lenient perspectives about child sexuality held by some prominent thinkers of the past century.

Kay also navigates the complicated relationship between sexual liberation and its proponents. She discusses the notable roles of figures like Wilhelm Reich, who linked sexual liberation with personal and societal health, and Alfred Kinsey, whose shocking reports on human sexual behavior challenged existing societal norms. However, the core of Kay’s analysis revolves around Judith Reisman, a researcher who challenged Kinsey’s methods and conclusions, especially those concerning children’s sexuality. Reisman’s revelations, particularly about Kinsey’s dubious experiments on infants and children, are highlighted as the basis for her tireless advocacy against the normalization of pedophilia.

Although she faced significant opposition and attempts to discredit her work, Reisman’s research serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of unquestioning acceptance of “expert” conclusions, and a call to critically evaluate the motivations and methodologies of those who have historically shaped discussions on human sexuality.

Happy reading!

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Readers of a certain age will remember the famous poets of the 1950s “Beat Generation,” such as Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, author of the poem “Howl,” once (perhaps still?) a staple on American Literature courses.

More associated with the university scene than the others, Ginsberg was in the forefront of the 1960s counter-cultural revolution, which culminated in the hijacking by the intelligentsia of public discourse on cultural issues. This was the movement that inspired Senator Daniel Moynihan’s famous phrase, “defining deviancy down,” to describe the process in which we change the meaning of morality to fit what we are drawn to do and intend to do anyway.

Ginsberg was a sexual libertarian, who believed that children’s so-called “innocence” was a function of repressive bourgeois decency codes. In the late 1980s, he joined NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association—extant today, though in radically diminished form, but still advocating for legal sex with children. He framed his affiliation with the pedophilia-promotional forum as a free-speech issue, and likened NAMBLA members to anti-war and civil rights activists.