Context and Significance
The Kinsey Reports, which together sold three-quarters of a million copies and were translated in thirteen languages, may be considered as part of the most successful and influential scientific books of the 20th century. The Kinsey Reports are associated with a change in public perception of sexuality. In the 1960s, following the introduction of the first oral contraceptive, this change was to be expressed in the sexual revolution. Also in the 1960s, Masters and Johnson published their investigations into the physiology of sex, breaking taboos and misapprehensions similar to those Kinsey had broken more than a decade earlier in a closely related field.
To what extent the Reports produced or promoted this change and to what extent they merely expressed it and reflected the conditions that were producing it is a matter of much debate and speculation.
Read more about this topic: Kinsey Reports
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