If you're like most Americans, when hearing the term "sexual revolution," you think of the 1960s. Conjured up are images of hippies in tie-dyed t-shirts, Woodstock, rock 'n' roll, and everything else that attended that tumultuous time in our history. Lying in contrast is the image of the 1950s, supposedly a time of white picket fences, Leave It to Beaver, and sexual "repression." Yet some would trace the beginning of the sexual revolution back to that purportedly staid decade, and among these are the creators of a new documentary, The Kinsey Syndrome.
The documentary identifies a seminal year in the sexual revolution: 1953. What happened then? Alfred Kinsey, the famous — perhaps we should say infamous — "sex researcher" and professor at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, issued the second volume of his research, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, a work likened to an "atomic bomb" dropped on traditional morality in America. It was a follow-up to Kinsey's 1948 work Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, and together, they were a one-two punch, the Fat Man and Little Boy of the new morality, helping to change the way Americans viewed their nation — perhaps forever.
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