Kinsey is Autistic
Autistic Culture Presents
Kinsey's Background and Guilt
This chapter explores the background of Kinsey and his connection to sex, including his scientific background and personal experiences. It delves into his feelings of guilt and how studying bug sex helped him normalize his perspective on human sexuality.
In this episode of The Autistic Culture Podcast, hosts Dr. Angela Kingdon and Matt Lowry, LPP take listeners on a virtual culture trip into the intersections of autism, sex, gender, and sexuality. This episode spotlights the life and work of Alfred Kinsey, the ground-breaking scientist who transformed how society understands human sexuality.
🎧 What You’ll Learn:
- Why Alfred Kinsey’s autistic traits—like bottom-up processing, obsessive data gathering, monotropic focus, and a drive to uncover hidden truths—fueled his pioneering research.
- Kinsey’s famous 18,000 interviews that became the foundation of modern sexology, and the revolutionary Kinsey Scale showing sexuality as a spectrum.
- How Kinsey’s work directly challenged conservative Victorian attitudes about sex, sparking backlash that contributed to his declining health—a reflection of how autistic advocates are often punished for disrupting the status quo.
- Connections between Kinsey’s findings and today’s research, showing that autistic people are more likely to reject binary notions of gender and sexuality.
- His commitment to justice and advocacy, including volunteering in prisons, as an expression of autistic values of fairness and honesty.
- Reflections on Kinsey’s early death, which Angela and Matt frame as symbolic of autistic burnout and heartbreak—an urgent reminder of why autistic life expectancy remains so low.
- A celebration of autistic strengths like intense focus, honesty, and data-driven thinking, and a critique of how flawed diagnostic criteria and allistic systems erase or stigmatize autistic and LGBTQ+ identities.
Resources:
- Alfred Kinsey: Asperger disorder
- Matt’s Reframing of DSM Autism Criteria
- Christiane Rudolph’s research on Autistics and sexual orientation in Stockholm
Related episodes:
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🎙️ Executive Producers: Amy Burns, Anamaria B Call, Andrew Banner, Anna Goodson, Ashley Apelzin, Audrea Volker, Ben Coulson, Brian Churcek, Cappy Hamper, Carley Biblin, Charlene Deva, Chloe Cross, Clay Duhigg, Clayton Oliver, Danny Dunn, Daria Brown, David Garrido, Emily Burgess, Eric Crane, Erik Stenerud, Fiona Baker, Grace Norman, Helen Shaddock, Jaimie Collins, Jason Killian, Jen Unruh, Jennifer Carpenter, Julia Tretter, Kathie Watson-Gray, Kenneth Knowles, Kira Cotter, Kristine Lang, Kyle Raney, Llew P Williams, Laura Alvarado, Laura De Vito, Laura Provonsha, Lily George, Nelly Darmi, Nigel Rogers, Rachel Miller, Tim Scott, Tyler Kunz, Victoria Steed, Yanina Wood.
🎧 Producers: AJ Knight, Bobby Simon, Da Kovac, Eleanor Collins, Emily Griffiths, Hannah Hughes, Jennifer Kemp, Jonas Fløde, Kate F, Katie N Benitez, Kendra Murphy, Lisa Dennys, Logan Wall, Louise Lomas, Melissa Nance, Nicola Owen, Rebecka Johansson, Sam Morris, Sarah Hannah Morris.
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