WEBVTT - The Kinsey Institute, and Sexual Research, Under Attack 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:04.800 All Zone Media. 0:00:04.960 --> 0:00:07.400 Hello, and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:10.319 about things falling apart and how we try to put 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:13.720 things back together again. It's sort of the Humpty Dumpty 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:17.119 of podcasts. And of course, all the King's horses and 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:19.240 all the kings men can't put us back together again 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:22.280 because the attendance of power will never solve our problems 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:24.640 for us. It's up to us to collectively solve our 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:29.360 own problems. I'm your guest host with all the dramatic metaphors, 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:34.960 Margaret Giljoy. Today it's one of those things falling apart episodes. 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:37.680 Today we're going to be talking about the Kinsey Institute 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:41.440 for Research and Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, a research institute 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:45.559 in Bloomington, Indiana. Its mission is to quote foster and 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:50.800 promote a greater understanding of human sexuality and relationships to research, outreach, education, 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:56.320 and historical preservation. The Kinsey Institute, in many ways, isn't 0:00:56.400 --> 0:01:00.440 just a sexual research center. It's the sexual research center. 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:03.880 We're going to be talking to Dev Montonez, who last 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:06.760 week gave me a tour of the center. But first 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:11.319 being me, I want to give you all context. I'm 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:13.760 going to talk about history. I'm going to talk about 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:18.560 a different institute for sexual research called well, the Institute 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:22.119 for Sexual Research, except it was in Berlin from nineteen 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.160 nineteen to nineteen thirty three, so they called it the 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:30.240 Institute for Sexual Wistenschaft. History sometimes remembers it as Hirschfeldt 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:35.840 Institute after Magnus Hirschfeldt, the director of it for fourteen years. 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:40.560 The institute researched human sexuality. They offered consulting on matters 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:43.640 of sex to straight and gay people. They pioneered a 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:48.120 ton of transsexual medical practices, including pushing for the shocking 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:51.640 at the time idea that trans people are happier if 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:54.280 we're just allowed to socially transition and live as our 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:58.960 preferred gender, which they observed led to a dramatic drop 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:03.400 in suicide rates. This is medical practice that has continued, 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:05.560 and we have more and more research about that to 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:11.040 this day. The institute coined the terms transvestite and transsexual. 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:15.040 They performed the first gender confirmation surgery in known history 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:18.639 on a woman named Dora Richter in nineteen thirty. They 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:24.040 worked alongside pro homosexual advocacy groups. Germany led the Western 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:27.960 world in acceptance of LGBT folks in the nineteen twenties 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:32.600 and early nineteen thirties. It was founded by three Jewish researchers, 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:37.000 the most famous of whom is the director Magnus Hirschfeld. 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:42.079 The institute itself, however, is famous today for one thing. 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:47.320 Imagine a picture of a book burning. The first picture 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:49.840 that comes to your mind is probably black and white, 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.760 and it's of Nazis. This photo is used any time 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:56.840 someone wants to say something like, the Nazis are bad, 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:01.119 they burned books. What usually goes it was unsaid when 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:05.080 this photo is reproduced, is what books those Nazis were burning. 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:10.720 They were burning the institute. On May sixth, nineteen thirty three, 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:15.200 Nazis burned around twenty thousand books, destroying endless amounts of 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:21.400 research into homosexuality, transsexuality, and cross dressing. Joseph Goebbels, the 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:24.400 chief propagandist of the Nazis, was present. He gave a 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:28.480 speech to forty thousand people during that book burning, so 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:33.400 ended the Institute for Sexual Research. The first transwoman to 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:38.000 undergo gender confirmation surgery, Dora Richter. She was either killed 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:40.880 in this attack or she was arrested and died in prison. 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:46.240 Shortly thereafter. Her exact fate is unknown. Magnus himself was 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:49.000 out of the country at the time, and he never returned. 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:54.120 He died in exile in France. This, I believe, is 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:56.040 the context we need to hold onto when we talk 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:58.600 about the Kinsey Institute, when we talk about what they're 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:02.040 facing today, as we watch people running for office in 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:06.240 this country wielding flamethrowers to burn books and campaign ads, 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:11.840 while librarians face criminal penalties for making books available to students. Eventually, 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:14.520 the Nazis were defeated, of course, they were defeated through 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.200 force of arms, after great loss of life and a 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:22.000 coming together of ideological enemies like capitalists and authoritarian communists. 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:29.159 Shortly thereafter, in nineteen forty seven, a bisexual, polyamorous sexologist 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:32.920 named Alfred Charles Kinsey founded his own Institute for Sex 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:37.720 Research at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, seventy seven years 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.320 ago for those keeping track. Thereafter, he produced work that's 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:45.880 foundational to modern sexology. Most famous today is the Kinsey Scale, 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:50.640 which broke homosexuality and heterosexuality out of a binary. Maybe 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:52.760 the most famous at the time of his work, though, 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:55.840 was his nineteen forty eight book Sexual Behavior and the 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.120 Human Male in his later book, Sexual Behavior in the 0:04:59.160 --> 0:05:03.520 Human Female, which are often called the Kinsey Reports, which 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:07.520 offered groundbreaking analysis like it turns out women enjoy sex 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:11.400 also and also that thirty seven percent of men had 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:16.720 had quote overt homosexual experience to orgasm, which shocked the 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:20.400 hell out of the world. Well, it probably shocked about 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:25.000 sixty seven percent of the world. Since then, the Kinsey 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:28.440 Institute has been one of the premier sexology research institutes 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:32.160 and archives in the world, and now in the twenty twenties, 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:34.840 it finds itself at the center of a culture war 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:38.880 and conservative backlash. For decades, the right wing has tried 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:41.960 and failed to find evidence that Kinsey himself was a pedophile. 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.640 Last February, the Republican government of Indiana voted for House 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:50.920 Bill one thousand and one, which bars state money from 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:54.440 funding the institute. To tell us what's happened with that, 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:57.680 what the future of the institute is likely to be, 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:00.520 and how all this ties into the culture wars that 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:04.400 we're living through right now, we have Dev Montanez, the 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:08.000 admin coordinator of the institute and a student at Indiana University. 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:13.640 Hi Dev Hey, Thanks for listening to my long intro. 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:17.880 It's good for me to, you know, know some of 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:21.000 the history behind the place that I'm at forty hours 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:21.360 a week. 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.760 So could you introduce yourself about a little bit about 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:30.800 the work that you do at the institute And I 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:33.320 don't know maybe what brought you there, but just yeah. 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:40.000 So I started back in early twenty twenty two as 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:42.800 kind of the person who was spearheading the seventy fifth 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:45.240 anniversary celebrations that we were. 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:45.680 Going to have. 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:51.360 And I am lucky enough that I have a background 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:55.760 in DIY punk and so my organization skills are largely 0:06:56.640 --> 0:07:01.120 from that and not from any type of institution. Somehow, 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:07.000 those skills go over really well in academia. Okay, a 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.600 few of my friends that are like postdocs and stuff 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:12.880 that are now in you know, academic worlds, are like, 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:15.800 oh yeah, this has helped me, you know, running shows 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:18.000 has really helped me run research projects. 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:21.200 Oh yeah, because it's all about having your own initiative 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:24.320 and working for people exactly and interesting. 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:27.320 Yeah, it's been. It's been great to see and kind 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:28.920 of be in the middle of it. 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:29.800 Yeah. 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:30.760 Yeah. 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:33.840 I was originally at Rutgers and then I didn't finish 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:37.880 my degree there. Dropped out because of financial issues, of course, 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:41.760 as that's what happens when you're in college. Yeah, and 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:47.200 I was in Bloomington for a long time, almost seven years, 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:50.200 I want to say, before I started working here. And 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:53.440 I started working here, and I was like, well, I 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:57.720 get like a little bit of tuition reimbursement for working here, 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:01.600 I might as well finish it. So now I'm at 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.400 the purpose of or at the standstill of my life, 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:07.880 where I am back in school and working full time. Yeah, 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:10.080 mainly just to get it over. 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:13.080 With, get working full time over with. 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.600 Uh No, well I wish get the degree over with. 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:21.560 The debt, I might as well have it. 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:25.480 Yeah, So okay, So you work for the Kinsey Institute, 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:29.080 and the Kinsey Institute is totally fine and on solid 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:31.360 footing and is completely okay. So this is the thing 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:34.720 that surprised me, you know, when I came and visited 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.640 the Kinsey Institute and thank you for the tour of 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:42.840 the institute. I the Kinsey Institute is such a institute, 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:46.440 such a monolith, such a a thing that has existed 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:50.920 for so long. It's hard for me to imagine people 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:53.400 being really mad at it, Like it's it's hard for 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:58.440 me to imagine that it's in trouble and it seems 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:00.480 too big to fail, but like not too big, but 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:06.559 too institutional, too important, Like I can't imagine someone saying, oh, 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.960 we want to get rid of this incredibly important historical thing. 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:12.360 I guess that's what a lot of the culture wars 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:15.880 actually are about. So what's going on? 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:22.439 Okay, so last summer, but it was like the budget 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:28.440 vote I think for Indiana government, state government, and they 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:35.960 someone Larisa sweet is her name, the representative who proposed this, 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:42.679 basically decided to say Kensing's too is perverts, and you 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:47.720 we shouldn't fund them with state money, which would you 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:51.800 know under I guess understandable. But we're not funded by 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:56.559 state money. Okay, only like a small percentage of the 0:09:56.640 --> 0:10:01.120 university as a whole is funded by state government, so 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:05.520 it's not quite like your tax dollars are paying for 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:10.320 us to exist. We are able to utilize the services 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:15.560 of the university, which is very helpful in the case 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:19.200 of being If we were like a nonprofit, we'd probably 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:21.440 have to do a lot of that work, like legwork 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:25.000 in terms of like keep of a building, like we'd 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:25.520 have to do that. 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:26.760 On our own right. 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:32.240 But the university, the state government does not fund us. 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:36.800 We're funded by donors. We're funded by grants that we 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:41.439 receive and endowments that exist that other people have given 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.160 us because they believe in the worst that we do 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:46.160 and they want to see it continue. 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:51.400 So why are they trying to go after the wrong 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:53.480 source of your funding? And how does it end up 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:57.679 impacting you like that they've passed this you know, essentially 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:00.960 law to take money away from you that you weren't using. 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:07.520 Yeah, So the big thing is that there is a 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:12.640 lot of misinformation about Alfred Kinsey and his first book, 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:15.400 The Human Behavior of the sorry the Sexual Behavior of 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:20.600 the Human Male, And there is a table within it 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:25.800 of doctor Kinsey. When he did his research, he interviewed 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:31.080 people specifically to ask them, you know, when were you first, 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:35.120 like first realizing your sexual arousal. 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:37.600 And some people. 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:40.040 Said, you know, I was this age, I was twelve, 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:44.360 I was five. And as a child, you know that 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:47.000 you play around with your body because you're learning it 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:50.600 because you've never used most of these things before. 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:51.440 It's brand new. 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:56.760 And so he had years in their ages in there 0:11:56.840 --> 0:12:00.960 that were younger than anyone that is cannservative. Would want 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:04.000 to believe that you would be sexually. 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:08.880 Aroused, right unless you're going to marry a heterosexually into 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:10.840 a pastor Yeah, yeah, exactly. 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:15.080 Yeah, child marriage is coming back, So there's that too. Yeah, 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:18.680 So there's that that exists. Is a lot of people 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:20.800 who don't understand the research that he does. 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:21.280 Period. 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:24.120 There was a lot of backlash when he had when 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:26.760 he did his work because people didn't want to believe 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:32.000 that anyone was having premarital sex, that anyone was homosexual 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:38.080 and it was normal, or that anyone any woman enjoys sex, 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:41.200 right because it's for one thing only, right. 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:45.079 So they looked at this chart that said five year 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:51.360 olds experienced sexual attraction and said he's interviewing five year olds? 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:52.160 Is that. 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:59.520 Basically, or rather that he was doing experiments on five 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:04.480 year olds. His work is like physical because he is 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:09.599 a zoologist, right, biologist by nature. And I'm going to 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:11.880 guess they think that any research that you do has 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:13.960 to be with a person in one room and not 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:18.720 you know, social interviews or oral histographies, like they don't 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:20.160 put those two things together. 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:22.679 Right, And I was reading that they have a lot 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.280 of I was expecting when I when I looked at this, 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:27.880 I was expecting to find like op eds from the 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:30.920 fifties or something, But I'm finding things from twenty twenty 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:35.400 three of people throwing a fit about the fact that 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:38.679 he during some of this he did like, I mean, 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:41.000 he was kinky. It seemed like right, he like filmed 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:44.760 himself fucking, and he filmed his wife fucking, and he 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.000 a bunch of consenting adults had some sex that he 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:53.480 was around for. And that's like meant to mean that 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:55.640 he is a horrible, weird monster. 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:00.240 Yeah, And truly, none of my work has anything to 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:02.880 do with or literally anyone's work has anything to do 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:06.280 with what Kinsey might have done when he was here, 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:10.720 because he died so like within eight years of the. 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:12.080 Institute even being a thing. 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:13.680 Yeah, so. 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:18.920 I don't know, it's not important to the work that 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:21.400 we do now, even if he was a kinky person, 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:26.360 Like people that get into sex research are interested in sex, 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:27.960 so he wanted to. 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.720 Try stuff out. I guess, like, who does it. That's 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:33.520 like the point of being alive. 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:38.080 No, No, actually, the point of being alive is buying 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:41.320 goods and services from our advertisers. I don't know if 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:43.040 you knew this. I think you thought it was about 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:47.680 seeking joy, but it's actually about filling the gaping mall 0:14:47.960 --> 0:15:00.360 at the center of your life with products like these ones. 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:07.000 And we're back. Okay, So obviously people have a problem 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:09.160 with this man who's been dead since the fifties, and 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:12.040 therefore I'm mad at this institute that keeps track of 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:14.280 a lot of stuff over the years, like an archive. 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:17.920 What do they when they try to pull state funding 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:20.840 from you? How does that impact you? You were saying 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:24.240 that that's like not you know, does it primarily impact 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:26.960 you because everyone's suddenly aware of and mad at you again, 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:29.920 or does it actually also like is it going to 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:31.400 cut your funding? Like what's happening. 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:37.360 So what's happening is there's now a I don't want 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:42.160 to say like a disagreement, but there's a there's people 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:45.440 trying to figure out how to be compliant with this law, 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:51.040 which means that they need to go into certain administrative 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:55.600 burdens to prove that we don't get these fonts. Okay, 0:15:56.040 --> 0:16:01.400 that's really all that it is. Otherwise we are pretty 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:06.480 good standing. It's it's more so at least now. The 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:11.560 board of Trustie's voted on Friday and they basically brought 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:15.960 in the president's recommendation of do not separate us from 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:20.800 the from the university, and so that happened on Friday, 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:26.240 March first was the day that that went through. So 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:29.000 we are all feeling pretty good. We all kind of 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:31.200 had a little bit of a not so much a 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:35.800 victory lap, but like a we've been hearing this for 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:40.040 the last six months of worrying about what's going to 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:42.680 happen to this place that we all love and that 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:45.960 carries so many things because of the librarians who are 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:48.440 around in the artifice. Who are around aren't the people 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:55.480 handling the collection, And the legislature later decides, I, you 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:58.960 in a university can't hold anything that is obscene. 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:04.080 I scene is you know I have the beholder. 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:09.000 Yeah, it could easily mean that this, like six hundred 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:12.680 thousand artifacts that we hold in our collections are gone 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:16.160 and we have stuff that spans two thousand years. It's 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:21.000 not just items that are around today, and everything that 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:24.199 we get is donated. We don't buy any of the 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:28.840 items per secon People just mail them to. 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:32.760 Us, the kind of things that normally if you mail 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:34.040 to someone you might get in trouble. 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:38.840 Yes, exactly, and that was kind of the people still 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:39.919 think they're going to get in trouble. 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:41.400 Yeah, kind of the point. 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:45.320 Like I've heard that people have like shipped porn in 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:50.680 cereal boxes as a way to like hide them because 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:54.359 they're still worried that the Comstock law is around in 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:58.240 a way that will make these items be destroyed. 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:01.720 Yeah. Well, okay, Oh, there's so many parts of this 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:04.520 that I want to talk about. I actually thought about 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:07.480 this because I mailed a book from the Kinsey Institute 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:09.800 to someone last week, and as I was packaging it up, 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.600 I was thinking to myself, this used to be a crime, 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:16.720 the Comstock laws. For anyone who's curious, there was this 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:21.159 historical pervert named Comstock, And by that I mean he 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:23.920 was the largest collector of porn of his era who 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:30.240 was on a wild crusade against perversion and birth control 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:33.639 and all of these things, and he went around and 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:35.960 stopped people. He got all these laws passed that he 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:39.000 can't pass pornographic materials through the US. 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:39.280 Maile. 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:43.000 That was like his big contribution to society, besides ruining 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:48.760 an awful lot of people's lives. And that's coming up again, 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:51.080 like the ghost of the comstock laws. Do you want 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:51.600 to talk about that. 0:18:52.840 --> 0:19:00.160 Yeah, So we have book bans happening within libraries. I honestly, 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:04.040 I am not positive what is happening within Indiana libraries. 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:05.480 But there is a. 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:09.880 Group of I would say parent groups, but I don't 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:12.560 even know that they're actually still parents of children. It's 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:18.320 usually like women in their mid fifties and later who 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:24.800 are running for superintendent or the school board whatever, and 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:28.000 now coming up with these ways that children can't interact 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:34.520 with items that maybe have never been illegal in the past, 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:38.159 so to speak. Like if any book mentions sex of 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:42.359 any kind, right, it can't be around. If anyone is 0:19:42.680 --> 0:19:49.760 homosexual in any of the books, it's banned in their eyes. Yeah, 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:53.439 and you know a majority of our books are a 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:54.639 lot of those things. 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:58.080 I'm sure there's some straight stuff in there if you 0:19:58.119 --> 0:19:58.840 look really hard. 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:02.560 Well. I today I was in the reading room that 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:06.399 we have and we had out the It was called 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:11.159 the like Wild Edibles of the Eastern North America, And 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.120 it was a book written by Alfred Kinsey because he 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:15.360 was a he. 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:18.719 Was like an eagle scout, yeah, like loved nature. 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:20.640 He was one of the first eagle scouts. 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:23.560 Actually, yeah, you know more about him than I too. 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:27.000 I just read about him in order to prepare this introduction. 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:32.399 But a lot of those groups, like Moms for Liberty, 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:36.320 they're the ones who are like a big crusade right now. 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:42.920 When I first started, we just got a statue installed 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:48.040 behind our building of Alfred Kinsey, and that is kind 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:51.760 of when the majority of the threats that we would 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:56.160 get started. Okay, when they start talking about this statue. 0:20:56.920 --> 0:20:58.560 I have talked to people that have worked here for 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:02.840 twenty years and they have said they've never seen threats 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:04.240 come in like this ever before. 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:05.680 Yeah. 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:10.520 So it's people talking about like bombing the statue, calls 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:14.359 about you know, being a sexual predator, a deviant, or 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:17.960 you know, you guys should all die, and it's very 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:22.280 directed at us, right, It's it's less of being directed 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:25.720 at like a random abstract thing. 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:26.440 Right. 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:29.399 We have gotten a lot of harassment in terms of 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:32.879 like people who because they think, oh, you do sex research, 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:34.400 so you want a picture of my dick? 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:36.760 So interesting. 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:40.159 Yeah, so that will happen at times. 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:44.160 You all should do an exhibit of the dick pics 0:21:44.240 --> 0:21:48.639 that have been donated so kindly to your institution and 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:52.560 the individuals who work for it, are are a rating 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:53.480 system underneath. 0:21:53.880 --> 0:22:00.800 I'm sure a curator, a compassman will love that. We 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:05.199 actually just got in donated to us was the Cynthia 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:08.439 plaster Casters, her Dick molds that she did of the 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:12.960 in the eighties. She's like a famous groupieka like rock stars. 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:16.840 So we have like Jimmy Hendrick's keenis whoa you know, 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:20.719 bronze mold and that's the next big exhibition that's supposed 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:25.280 to happen. But we also have like Jello Biafra whow Okay, 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:26.640 it's hilarious. 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:30.120 Would you all get never mind? I was thinking abou 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:31.280 how you all can make some money? 0:22:32.400 --> 0:22:33.919 Lots of people are thinking of that. 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:41.359 Yeah, okay, huh well no, it's okay. So it's so 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:43.800 interesting to me, right because it seems like their attempt 0:22:43.840 --> 0:22:48.240 to shut you down legislatively was a swing and a miss. Right. 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:50.880 It was this thing that they they thought that they 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:52.920 had this thing that they're like, haha, we're going to 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:55.280 get those perverts by cutting off their funding. And then 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:58.240 everyone was like, well, that's not where the funding comes from. 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:00.720 And the university was like we kind of like this place. 0:23:00.760 --> 0:23:02.840 It's been around for seventy seven years. It's literally the 0:23:02.840 --> 0:23:06.760 only reason anyone outside of Indiana has ever heard of us. Yeah, 0:23:06.960 --> 0:23:07.560 is that kind. 0:23:07.400 --> 0:23:10.720 Of a that's definitely the vibe we had like a 0:23:10.840 --> 0:23:15.280 series of listening sessions with the higher administration of like 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:20.560 the public, well the university public coming in and just 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:23.640 basically a lot of them saying the Kinzians too. 0:23:23.680 --> 0:23:26.800 Is the only reason why I came to Ium. 0:23:27.600 --> 0:23:30.840 The fact that this is here allows me to do 0:23:30.920 --> 0:23:35.560 my research, even if their research is in like Eastern European. 0:23:36.040 --> 0:23:37.560 You know, like faberge Eggs. 0:23:38.119 --> 0:23:41.640 Right, So it gives people a chance to see that 0:23:42.280 --> 0:23:45.600 like academic freedom and like freedom to research what you 0:23:45.720 --> 0:23:52.119 want is possible, and not just possible, but like encouraged. Right, Like, 0:23:52.200 --> 0:23:56.080 as an R one university, we should be doing we 0:23:56.119 --> 0:24:01.480 should be researching things that aren't or taboo at times, Yeah, 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:05.120 and are actually trying to help the world rather than 0:24:05.720 --> 0:24:07.200 making money for. 0:24:08.600 --> 0:24:09.960 Some investor somewhere. 0:24:10.440 --> 0:24:17.440 Right, No, because that seems like the entire point of academia, right, Academia. Okay, 0:24:17.440 --> 0:24:19.040 this is really interesting to me because I have kind 0:24:19.080 --> 0:24:21.240 of a bit of a love hate relationship with academia, 0:24:21.280 --> 0:24:22.479 and you know, there's a lot of critiques that can 0:24:22.480 --> 0:24:25.040 be laid at sort of ivory tower and locking away 0:24:25.040 --> 0:24:28.560 information and things. But yet as we enter this sort 0:24:28.600 --> 0:24:32.040 of anti intellectual time that is absolutely a right wing 0:24:32.080 --> 0:24:34.320 culture war thing is to be anti intellectual and in 0:24:34.320 --> 0:24:39.440 this case, specifically shut down the academy's ability to preserve 0:24:39.520 --> 0:24:42.119 and transfer knowledge. Like, the problem from my point of 0:24:42.160 --> 0:24:45.760 view is that when there are limits to how well 0:24:45.840 --> 0:24:50.400 the information can be transferred, Rather than the right wing 0:24:50.440 --> 0:24:54.680