Dr. Kinsey Explains…Vampires

One of the most rewarding aspects of becoming a sex researcher has been cracking open a number of widely influential books that before I started researching sex in 2009 I had heard about, but never actually considered reading myself. One of these tomes turned out to be Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). One quirky data bit from the mounds that Kinsey collected gave me more insight into who women are, what we want and what makes us tick than tens of other studies and surveys I’ve read.

Kinsey asked women to gauge their own past involvement with and arousability to 34 different types of sexual stimuli and activities, ranging from foreplay to erotic drawing to pornography. In aggregate, compared to the ever-present and avid interest of males, women’s responses indicated a variable and comparatively tepid degree of…