Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women
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Cover of the first edition
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| Authors |
Alan P. Bell Martin S. Weinberg |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Homosexuality |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
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Publication date
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1978 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 505 |
| ISBN | |
Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (1978) is a book by the psychologist Alan P. Bell and the sociologist Martin S. Weinberg, in which the authors argue that homosexuality is not necessarily related to pathology and divide homosexuals into five different types. Together with Homosexuality: An Annotated Bibliography (1972), it is part of a series of books that culminated in the publication of Sexual Preference in 1981. The work was a publication of the Institute for Sex Research.
The book received much attention when it was published, and mixed reviews. Though it became influential, and has been seen as a classic work, it has been criticized for its authors' sampling methods and their typology of homosexuals, which has been seen as arbitrary and misleading. Some of their findings, such as those pertaining to gay men's sexual behavior, have become dated due to social changes since the 1970s, such as those brought about by the AIDS epidemic and the progress of the gay rights movement.
The sex researcher Alfred Kinsey had intended to publish a study of homosexuality to complement Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), but died before being able to produce such a volume. Following Kinsey's death, the Institute for Sex Research became involved in other projects and did not focus its attention on homosexuality again until the late 1960s. Stanley Yolles of the National Institute of Mental Health established the National Institute of Mental Health Task Force on Homosexuality, which held its first meeting in 1967, and decided that further research into homosexuality was needed. The NIMH Task Force invited the Institute for Sex Research to submit a proposal for a comprehensive study of the development of homosexuality. The Institute's proposal, based upon many of the NIMH Task Force's recommendations, was modified after consultation with NIMH officials.
Bell and Weinberg, during the initial stages of their work, consulted with numerous experts on homosexuality who often held views quite different from theirs. Those listed as contributors to the study included the ethologist Frank A. Beach, the psychoanalyst Irving Bieber, Wainwright Churchill, the psychologist Albert Ellis, the anthropologist Paul Gebhard, the psychologist Evelyn Hooker, the sociologist Laud Humphreys, the psychiatrist Judd Marmor, the sexologist Wardell Pomeroy, the sociologist Edward Sagarin, the psychiatrist Robert Stoller, the psychologist Clarence Arthur Tripp, and the sociologist Colin J. Williams. Bell and Weinberg commented that, "Our correspondence and personal meetings with these individuals were of great help to us in constructing a viable interview schedule. While the final instrument, devised over many meetings of various Institute personnel, did not entirely please or represent the views of any one person associated with it, the interview schedule in its final form was the result of endless discussions and sometimes painful compromise on the part of many highly committed people."
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