October 05, 2005
UK 'Kinsey report' reveals 1950s sex lives:
BBC News describes a suppressed sexual behaviour survey conducted in the 1950s, in the wake of the Kinsey Reports that first described the then shocking truth about the sexual behaviour of American participants.
The British survey followed the Kinsey's studies by only a few years, but reportedly revealed information considered too uncomfortable to publicise and subsequently remained unpublished (although the BBC story doesn't indicate who was responsible for suppressing it).
Findings in the survey included:
One in four men admitted to having had sex with prostitutes, one in five women owned up to an extra-marital affair, while the same proportion of both sexes said they had had a homosexual experience.
The techniques used in the study would be considered vastly unethical by today's standards, and were even dodgy when compared to the research methods used by Kinsey on the other side of the Atlantic.
The research is further discussed in a BBC television programme called Little Kinsey to be shown on BBC Four on Wednesday 5 October, at 2100 BST.
Link to "Britain's secret sex survey".
