Medicine: 5,940 Women

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The answers go back to puberty, and the popular fallacy that girls mature faster than boys. Kinsey notes that girls reach puberty a year earlier than boys, but this is only the beginning of adolescence and is no index to sexual maturity. Boys reach maturity (the height of their physical power for sexual activity) by their late teens, and are already on the downgrade in their early 203. But the curve of a girl's growing need for sex (or the breaking down of her inhibitions) rises only slowly in her teens,* keeps on rising slowly until she is 29 or 30. Even then there is no sharp peak: the curve levels off, leaving a smooth plateau until age 50 or 60. But the man's curve keeps on dropping, i.e., his need for sexual activity generally declines while the woman's stays fairly high. This, says Kinsey, is one of the difficulties he has found in many marriages. It is heightened by the fact that in the early peak years of a man's activity he resents his wife's seeming coldness. When her coldness has passed, so has his interest—"especially [if she] has previously objected to the frequency of his requests."

What Every Woman Wants. Another common fallacy, says Kinsey, is the idea that the female is slower to respond sexually than the male. Not proved, he says. "Females appear to be capable of responding to the point of orgasm as quickly as males, and there are some females who respond more rapidly than any male." But there is a difference in responsiveness which may explain the common fallacy. It lies in women's psychology.

They are not as easily stimulated to sexual response as are men. Most of them get no reaction from seeing the male form in the nude, from "beefcake" pictures of undraped athletes, or from erotic stories. What every woman wants, Kinsey has gathered from long hours of listening, is "a considerable amount of generalized emotional stimulation before there is any specific sexual contact." This is an ancient truth, known to scientists in the field and every successful husband, now confirmed by Kinsey's massive statistics.

The Workshop. Kinsey's statistical laboratory is an unlikely spot: the basement of an old, ivy-clad brick building (which also houses the department of home economics) on the tree-shaded campus of Indiana University. The door is marked "Institute for Sex Research—Walk In." A summer visitor is met by a wave of well-chilled air, and the whole atmosphere is one of scientific frigor. There is nothing in sight as provocative as a Petty calendar; only ultra-modern steel desks, work tables, filing cabinets and posture chairs.