Abstract
This study examined reactions to first postpubertal same-sex sexual experience in the Kinsey female same-sex sample (consisting of females with extensive postpubertal same-sex experience) as a function of participant and partner ages. As such, it complemented the Rind and Welter (2016) study, which examined the same in the Kinsey male same-sex sample. Data were collected by Kinsey interviewers between 1939 and 1961 (M year = 1947). Girls under 18 (M age = 14.9), whose sexual experience was with a woman (M age = 26.3), reacted positively just as often as girls under 18 (M age = 14.1) with peers (M age = 15.0) and women (M age = 22.7) with women (M age = 26.3). The positive-reaction rates were, respectively, 85, 82, and 79 %. In a finer-graded analysis, younger adolescent girls (≤14) (M age = 12.8) with women (M age = 27.4) had a high positive-reaction rate (91 %), a rate reached by no other group. For women (M age = 22.2) with same-aged peers (M age = 22.3), this rate was 86 %. Girls with peers or women had no emotionally negative reactions (e.g., fear, disgust, shame, regret); women with women rarely did. Results contradicted prevailing clinical, legal, and lay beliefs that minor–adult sex is inherently traumatic and would be distinguished as such compared to age-concordant sex. The findings are discussed in terms of the time period in which the sexual experiences occurred.
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Notes
Delinquent participants were those convicted of a misdemeanor or felony, who had served or were serving a sentence—these participants were usually interviewed in prison (Gebhard & Johnson, 1979).
For example, since 1999, in response to attacks associated with its publishing the Rind et al. (1998) meta-analysis, the American Psychological Association has taken the official position that minor–adult sex is always abusive and harmful.
In clinical–forensic samples and non-clinical–forensic samples alike, the latter being the focus of meta-analyses such as Rind et al. (1998, 2001), cases of sexual relations between girls and women are generally rare or absent. Nevertheless, being minor–adult in structure, such relations are equally assumed in the mental health field and the law to be harmful (e.g., Hines & Finkelhor, 2007), thus being subsumed under the dominant view.
This figure, representing all participants for whom age at first postpubertal same-sex experience and partner’s age were recorded, is only slightly different from Gebhard and Johnson’s (1979) count of n = 475.
The traditional Kinsey heterosexual–homosexual scale ranges from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual), which constitutes researcher-scored values, as opposed to the participant-scored values discussed in the text, with their range from 00 to 60. Traditional Kinsey scores, however, were not available in the computerized dataset used for the current analysis.
In addition to the scale values listed in the text, these variables also had scale values of: 5 = none now, formerly more; 6 = little now, formerly more; 7 = some now, formerly more; and 8 = none plus comment. These responses were recorded here as 1 = none, 2 = little, 3 = some, and 1 = none, respectively.
Age of first partner could be coded as “actual age,” “around respondent’s age,” or “considerably older than respondent.” For the last of these, the partner’s age was estimated as the participant’s age plus 10 years. It might be suspected that for adolescents (≤14) with adult partners, their memories or perceptions of their partner’s age might often fail them, so that “considerably older” would be chosen. Contrary to this concern, actual partner ages were given in more than 95 % of cases.
Minors with minors younger by five or more years (n = 1) and adults with minors younger by five or more years (n = 1) were also categories but were not analyzed because of too few cases.
Technically, the minor–adult category is more precisely a minor–older person category, because, if the minor was less than 13, the older partner could have been a minor as well. In practice, all older partners in this category were adults aged 18 or above.
An adult–younger adult category was not included because of too few cases (n = 9), with even fewer cases answering the key measures on reactions (n = 4).
Pederasty is defined here, and in much of the cross-cultural and historical literature, as an erotic-based relationship between an adolescent and an adult of the same-sex, regardless of whether actual sexual interactions occur.
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Rind, B. Reactions to First Postpubertal Female Same-Sex Sexual Experience in the Kinsey Sample: A Comparison of Minors with Peers, Minors with Adults, and Adults with Adults. Arch Sex Behav 46, 1517–1528 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0876-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0876-2