Kiss and Tell: Surveying Sex in the Twentieth Century - Hardcover

Ericksen, Julia A.; Steffen, Sally A.

3.78

9 ratings by Goodreads

9780674505353: Kiss and Tell: Surveying Sex in the Twentieth Century

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674505352 ISBN 13: 9780674505353

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1999

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Learning the details of others' sex lives is the most enticing of guilty pleasures. We measure our own practices against the "normalcy" that sex surveys seek to capture. Special interest groups use or attack survey findings (such as the claim that 10% of Americans are gay) for their own ends. Indeed, we all have some stake in these surveys, be it self-justification, recrimination, or curiosity--and this testifies to their significance in our culture.

Kiss and Tell chronicles the history of sex surveys in the United States over a century of changing social and sexual mores. Julia Ericksen and Sally Steffen reveal that the survey questions asked, more than the answers elicited, expose and shape the popular image of appropriate sexuality. We can learn as much about the history and practice of sexuality by looking at surveyors' changing concerns as we can by reading the results of their surveys. The authors show how surveys have reflected societal anxieties about adolescent development, teen sex and promiscuity, and AIDS, and have been employed in efforts to preserve marriage and to control women's sexuality.

Kiss and Tell is an important examination of the role of social science in shaping American sexual patterns. Revealing how surveys of sexual behavior help create the issues they purport merely to describe, it reminds us how malleable and imperfect our knowledge of sexual behavior is.

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Review:

"One in ten Americans is gay" has become a truism, a rallying point for pro- and antigay forces alike. But what does this "fact" mean? Where did it come from? How reliable is it as a descriptive statistic? Does it refer only to those who self-identify as gay, or to all people who have ever had a same-sex sexual encounter?

Julia Ericksen and Sally Steffen's Kiss and Tell is a fascinating history of sex surveys in the United Sates in the last hundred years. Sex surveys are a particularly colorful lens through which to examine the use of surveys as a social science tool. The prurience of survey consumers, the biases of researchers, and the eternal question mark of subjects' honesty are, arguably, especially heightened when the topic of the research is shrouded in such mystery, coyness, and taboo. Ericksen and Steffen discuss how changes in researchers' concerns and the refinement of their methods both reveal and construct notions of sexual normality. What is asked of whom reflects and frames the debates on sexuality in the United States, they emphasize, whether the focus be on the capacity of women to be sexual creatures, the dangers of "rampant" adolescent sexual activity, or sexual behaviors considered deviant by the majority. And when the federal government operates as a source of research funding in the field, the sexual politics become further politicized. Operating on a number of levels, Kiss and Tell is a sophisticated critical discussion of the development of social science methods--and a welcome addition to sexology literature. --Julia Riches

About the Author:

Julia A. Ericksen is Professor of Sociology at Temple University.

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