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Journal of Modern Italian Studies
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Let's not talk about Italian sex:
the reception of the Kinsey
reports in Italy
Penelope Morris
a
a
University of Glasgow
To cite this article: Penelope Morris (2013): Let's not talk about Italian sex: the
reception of the Kinsey reports in Italy, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 18:1, 17-32
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1354571X.2013.730271
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Lets not talk about Italian sex: the reception of the
Kinsey reports in Italy
Penelope Morris
University of Glasgow
Abstract
This article analyses of the reception of Alfred Kinseys two reports Sexual
Behaviour in the Human Male (1948, trans. 1950) and Sexual Behaviour in the Human
Female (1953, trans. 1955) in a range of magazines and newspapers in 1950s Italy. It
offers an insight into Italian attitudes towards sexuality at a time when such matters
were rarely the subject of public discourse. It reveals a deep ambiguity in those
attitudes, showing them to be closely enmeshed with notions of Italian, European or
Latin identity, and characterized by certain perceptions of gender roles and of the
place of emotion in Italian society and by an assertion of the otherness of America.
Rejecting the reports as morally dangerous, or, by contrast, as offering nothing new
to a wise, old Europe, responses to Kinsey in the 1950s attempted to suppress further
public discussion of Italian sexuality, yet were themselves part of the very process
that, by the end of the decade, saw Italians begin to turn the spotlight on themselves.
Keywords
Kinsey, Italy, 1950s, sexuality, emotions, gender.
In the 1940s, Alfred Kinsey, an entomologist with a particular interest in the
taxonomy of the gall wasp, working at Indiana University, decided to turn his
attention instead to studying sexuality in the human animal. After many years
of research, and after he and his team had conducted thousands of interviews,
he published the two volumes for which he became famous: Sexual Behaviour in
the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female (1953).
Presented to what was, at the time, a very conservative society that was
extremely uncomfortable with public references to sexuality, these were studies
that went into a great deal of explicit detail and suggested not only that
American sexual practices were far more varied than popularly assumed, but
also that those behaviours generally regarded as illicit particularly adulterous,
premarital or homosexual sex were far from being the preserve of a small
minority. As is well known, both volumes caused a huge uproar in the United
States and, despite the length of the books, the number of graphs and charts and
the abstruse scientic language (Reumann 2005: 1) both became bestsellers.
Time magazine commented that Not since Gone With the Wind had booksellers
seen anything like it (Manners and morals 1948).
Journal of Modern Italian Studies 18(1) 2013: 1732
Journal of Modern Italian Studies
ISSN 1354-571X print/ISSN 1469-9583 online 2013 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1354571X.2013.730271
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The conclusions of Kinseys reports vastly undermined received notions of
sexual normality and the idea of a clear dividing line between normality and
perversion. Also very challenging to many was the suggestion that womens
interest in sex was equal to that of men. As Miriam Reumann observes, the
reports were received . . . as important statements about gender difference,
social change and American identity (Reumann 2005: 5), at a time when
Americans sexual behaviour was seen as both cause and consequence of a host
of ills (Reumann 2005: 18). Whilst Kinseys advocates viewed the reports as a
welcome corrective to decades of repression, those on the other side of the
argument argued that they would plunge the nation into moral and sexual
anarchy (Reumann 2005: 256).
The reports were quickly translated into many languages, and they caused an
equally explosive and divided reaction in other countries. However, their
reception in Europe has received somewhat scant scholarly attention so far. An
interesting article on France by Sylvie Chaperon puts the emphasis particularly
on gender roles, and considers the reports in relation to another, very different,
publication of the same period, Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex (Chaperon
2002; de Beauvoir 1949). The title of Dagmar Herzogs (2006) The reception of
the Kinsey reports in Europe, on the other hand, is somewhat misleading as it has
its main emphasis on Germany, with some evidence from France and a mention
of Switzerland. The reaction to the reports in Italy has not been studied to date.
Yet they had a considerable impact in the 1950s (the translations appeared in
1950 and 1955 respectively) and their inuence continued to be felt in
subsequent decades. Kinsey became a kind of shorthand for any study or survey
of sexuality, so that when, for example, Gabriella Parca published her collection
of letters from women to fotoromanzi (photographic story magazines) in 1959, Le
italiane si confessano, it was hailed as an Italian Kinsey report, simply because it
touched on matters relating to sexuality and despite the fact that it was very
different in intent and design from Kinseys original studies (Morris 2006; Parca
1959). Similarly, when Indro Montanelli chose to protest against the Merlin law
and the closure of state brothels with the publication of his book Addio Wanda, he
wrote it supposedly from the authoritative point of view of the American
sociologist, albeit with a change of vowel, giving it the subtitle Rapporto Kensey
sulla situazione italiana (Montanelli 1956). Over the years, Kinsey and his reports
continued to be a point of reference in the Italian media as elsewhere; in
Repubblica in 1985, for example, he was still being quoted as an authority when
judging how many homosexuals there were in Italy (Martinetti 1985).
By analysing reactions in Italy to the Kinsey reports the impact of the
bomba kappa (K-bomb) as it was called across a range of mainstream
newspapers and magazines, this article offers a rare insight into Italian attitudes
towards sexuality and sexual norms in the 1950s and into the early stages of the
process that would lead to the sexual revolution of later decades.
1
For most
Italians at the time, sexual matters were taboo, shrouded in euphemism, or
reserved for priests or (in the case of very few) for psychoanalysts. Indeed, the
Penelope Morris
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journalist Jean-Francois Revel remarked on the secret nature of sex in Italy in the
1950s (qtd. in Gundle 2011: 193). Those references to sexuality that did appear in
the public sphere tended to be connected with the long-running debate about
prostitution and Senator Lina Merlins attempt to close state-controlled brothels,
or associated with scandals such as the Montesi case (Bellassai 2008; Gundle
2011). Yet at the same time as being the country of sexual propriety, the family
and Catholic morality, Italy had another image, particularly in the way it was seen
from abroad, which, building on a long-established association between Italy and
love and romance, and growing at least partly out of the development of
Hollywood on the Tiber and the much-reported sexual escapades of foreign
actors, characterized Italy as the land of Latin lovers and sexual freedom.
This article shows the way in which both of these versions of Italy in the
1950s appear in the reviews of the Kinsey reports, as Italians considered the
value of this American research and what it might mean for them. It argues that
the published responses to Kinsey reveal not so much a split between
conservatives and liberals, between conformist and non-conformist publica-
tions, as might be imagined, but rather a society in which deeply ambiguous
attitudes towards sexuality were closely enmeshed with notions of national,
regional or ethnic identity. In an analysis that is sensitive both to gender and to
the place of emotions in a rapidly changing Italian society, the article examines
the way in which these notions, and particularly the frames of reference implied
not only by the term Italian, but also European and Latin, are used to
establish the sexual otherness of Kinseys America and, ironically, to attempt
in various ways to close down further public discussion of Italian sexuality.
The fact that these were reports written by an American academic studying
American sexual behaviour, meant that reactions to them in Italy necessarily
implicated that complex set of attitudes and stereotypes that made up the Italians
understanding of American national character and of their own by contrast.
Moreover, they appeared in what was a crucial period in the relationship between
the two countries, following the triumph of the Christian Democrats in 1948 and
the establishment of the Marshall Plan. For many Italians in the post-war period,
the United States offered the ideal to aspire to, modernity in all its forms. In a
sense, it was seen as the future and there was pervasive view that whatever was
happening in America would inevitably arrive in Italy too (Bellassai 2012;
DAttorre 1991; Gundle 1991). At the same time, many others in Italy saw the
growing consumerism and shifting mores, the Americanization of Italy, as a
danger to the very fabric of Italian society. As Bruno Wanrooij indicated (1991:
199), it was not so much a rejection of modernity per se, as a specic fear of the
damaging effect American inuence could have on Catholic faith and morality.
Indeed, Marco Barbanti (1991: 161, 163) refers to the obsessively moralistic
nature of 1950s Italy and to the close connection between religious values and
national values, brought together under the banner of tradition, according
to which the Italian family was at the core of national identity. The United States,
by contrast, was seen as a country of degraded morals in which the family was
Reception of the Kinsey reports in Italy
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constantly threatened by divorce, sexual incontinence and intergenerational
struggles. In fact, it was not just practising Catholics who expressed these kinds of
concerns; Communists too, though dismissive of religion, were often deeply
traditional when it came to the family, gender relations and sexual morality and,
unsurprisingly, tended to blame unwelcome changes in Italian society on
American inuence (Bellassai 2001).
The Italian translations of the reports were produced by Bompiani, a
publishing house known for bringing American texts to an Italian readership and
for its keen interest in contemporary society (Forgacs and Gundle 2007: 1034).
When they appeared, the impact was immediate and found full voice in Italys
daily newspapers and in the burgeoning family periodicals of the 1950s
publishing boom such as Espresso, Epoca, LEuropeo, Oggi and Settimana Incom.
Such magazines, like the newspapers quoted in this article, appealed to a
relatively educated readership. Their emphasis was on photojournalism and
current affairs, and whilst some were generally less conformist than others (as was
the case of LEuropeo compared with the royalist Oggi, for example),
fundamentally they were all were selling a new lifestyle that looked towards
the United States, but had to temper an enthusiasm for modernity with a careful
regard for the sensibilities of the ruling Christian Democrats and of a highly
inuential Catholic Church.
It is no surprise, therefore, that some greeted the reports with outrage and
indignation; a mishmash of lth and pseudoscience as one journalist described
the report on female sexuality (Giornale letterario 1955, quoting the response
from Azione Cattolica). As in the United States, not everyone responded in this
way; there was a relatively warm reception from some parts of the medical
profession, and some reviews simply describe the studies in a very neutral
fashion, summarizing the ndings with little commentary (see, e.g., Acconci
1956; Mocci 1956; Ventura 1959). It was far more common, however, to give
very little real detail of the content of the reports but rather present a series of
arguments setting out what was wrong with them. A particularly interesting
article for the purposes of this discussion appeared in Oggi in 1953 (Che cosa
pensano del rapporto Kinsey), after the publication of the second volume in
the United States, in which a range of representatives of different professions
including priests, doctors, actors, writers, and academics give their views of
the reports. Whilst it is very far from obvious that the interviewees have
actually read Kinseys work, the responses are overwhelmingly negative. This is
hardly surprising given the rather conservative nature of the magazine itself, but
they are typical of the kind of objections that appeared elsewhere.
A signicant area of criticism, expressed very frequently, does not address
Kinseys methodology or conclusions, but rather simply maintains that it is
wrong even to discuss such matters in public. It was ne for specialists to carry
out research and for experts to discuss this research amongst themselves,
conned to their own spheres, but the general public was not ready or
sufciently educated to cope with such ideas; they were too susceptible to their
Penelope Morris
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corrupting inuence. Not unknown in other countries, this argument had a
particular prominence in the reviews published in Italy. It chimed, of course,
with the authoritarian and, at times, patronizing attitudes expressed at the time by
some members of the Catholic Church and nds ample expression in the series of
responses quoted in Oggi and mentioned above. According to the Jesuits of
Rassegna critica, in their Letture di Milano, serious scientists should not have
allowed such data into the public sphere where they stir up confusion, doubts
and anxiety in an unprepared public, a view echoed by Luigi Gedda, the
president of Azione Cattolica. A similarly paternalistic view is also expressed by
most scientists and doctors. The gynaecologist Piero Malcovati, of Milan,
comments that there is a problem with the statistics but also that these
investigations should have been limited to the medical surgery, like a
confessional (Che cosa pensano 1953) because the public is not ready or
sufciently educated. This view is shared by the psychologist Antonio Miotto
(1955: 19), who fears that the general public will just look for spicy descriptions
and novelties, which, in turn, will provoke an unhealthy curiosity. Marino
Parenti, the well-known bibliophile and man of culture, states that his
preference would have been to have published the reports in Latin as they pose a
danger for (uneducated, presumably) Italian society in particular: by provoking a
morbid curiosity, they lead to a violation of that sense of modesty and reserve
which so much part of the family tradition of our society (Che cosa pensano
1953: 20). Works like Kinseys, declares Gino Gullace (1953: 23) in a similar vein,
end up causing ever greater damage to the nations sense of morality. It was
views like these that Cesare Musatti, the renowned professor of psychology at
Turin University and author of the introduction to the Italian translation of the
report on male sexuality, knew he had to counter, aware that Kinseys detractors
in Italy would see the divulgation of the reports as constituting a social danger
because of the alleged attraction of sin and vice and their tendency to lead
to perversion (Musatti 1950: x).
Others chose to criticize the processes involved in Kinseys investigations; in
fact, many of the reviews and articles that clearly object to Kinsey on moral
grounds actually sidestep moral and philosophical questions and instead choose to
put the emphasis on science, aiming to discredit his methodology. Their criticism
centred on the way that Kinsey used statistics and his method of sampling. There
were objections to statistical sampling in principle: What good are ve thousand
cases for a judgement that is supposed to hold true for all 180 million Americans?
asks Padre Alfonso Orlini of the Generale dellOrdine dei Francescani Minori
Conventuali (Che cosa pensano 1953: 19). Whilst the idea that it is possible to
get statistically signicant samples is accepted these days, such views were in fact
also echoing more expert opinion which, both at the time and since, has voiced
scepticism about Kinseys ndings. Kinsey was not aiming at the statistically
representative, but rather, as a taxonomist, wished to record the full range of
behaviours; but this remains an area where his reports are criticized (Gathorne-
Hardy 1998; Gunsolo 1953; Lombardi 1955; Mander 1953). Also common to
Reception of the Kinsey reports in Italy
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the articles in the Italian press are the doubts expressed about his interviewing
method. But who would take part in such investigations, Padre Alfonso Orlini
continues, if not people who already have no shame and have sunk so low into a
life of vice that they can talk about it without blushing? In the same article, the
Jesuit Padre Rotondi makes a similar point: My mother and my sisters, for
example, would have certainly turned their backs on Mr Kinsey (Che cosa
pensano 1953: 19). This cannot possibly be an effective way of getting at any
kind of universal truth, such comments imply, as only a person of dubious
morality would engage with a scientist in this way.
An additional problem, it is suggested, is that testimonies are unreliable
because people tell lies; they suppress their memories or, as the psychoanalyst
Emilio Servadio puts it, they give answers that are unconsciously distorted
(Che cosa pensano 1953: 20). In this respect, it was felt women were
particularly untrustworthy. An anonymous journalist writing in LEuropeo
(1953: 20) comments that women are unlikely to speak the truth on this
subject because of their natural feminine reluctance. The lawyer Gino Sotis,
meanwhile, doubted the value of the whole enterprise because of the extreme
delicacy of the material, and considered that the answers were not trustworthy
because the subject was surrounded even in America by an innitude of
complexes (Che cosa pensano 1953: 20).
The phrase even in America is important of course. Indeed, the objections
listed above tend to be presented as related to the Italian national temperament,
or symptomatic of national differences between Italy and the United States.
Sometimes this involves a fairly subtle process of othering; simply by always
including and repeating the adjective americano, the reports are distanced from
the Italian context. At other times, it is taken as given that American has
negative connotations, as when Alberto Cavallari (1953: 27) in Epoca refers to
the absurd and all-too-American Kinsey Report. Interestingly in such cases,
and wherever there is a much more outward statement of difference, there is
also a tendency, no doubt for rhetorical purposes, not to undermine the science
but rather assume that the reports present an entirely accurate picture of
behaviour in America. For the gynaecologist Emilio Rossi, the reports were
simply an indication of American degeneration (Che cosa pensano 1953:
21).
One of the most negative in its attitude towards America, and reective of
Cold War antagonisms and Communist efforts to stake their claim on the moral
high ground (Bellassai 2001), is the scathingly ironical piece that appeared in
LUnita` written by the journalist Michele Lalli (1954). Apparently, he opines,
Dante and Petrarch were wrong to see women as women rather than just
females or mammals like any others. Scornful of America and its scientists, he
declares that Kinsey found most of the testimonies which are crammed into his
book on the walls of public toilets (Lalli 1954: 4).
2
According to Lalli, Kinsey is
suggesting humans just follow base animal instincts and, having interviewed a
few thousand women, Kinsey feels he is in a position to say that women, all
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women, are nothing more than animals. In Lallis view, in contrast with the
homely and comforting images of America portrayed in lms and on magazine
covers, an investigation like his lays bare the true face of the USA and it is the
face of beasts and of the jungle (Lalli 1954: 4).
Even Cesare Musatti, in his thoughtful and otherwise carefully argued
introduction, displays some ambiguities in this respect. He argues that an
understanding of human behaviour requires a knowledge of the whole
phenomenology of sexual life, and that that Kinseys pioneering study
represents a very signicant contribution to questions of considerable scientic
and cultural interest, relevant to all those who take an interest in the
psychological, sociological or biological life of human beings (Musatti 1950:
xv). Having argued for its general relevance, however, he somewhat
undermines this view by adding: It is important to stress that the conclusions
of this research, which is based purely on the US, cannot automatically be
applied to other national groups or cultural areas (Musatti 1950: xxi). In fact,
Kinsey himself tended to argue against the possibility of generalizing the
conclusions of the studies and planned to extend his investigations to other
countries. The impression given by Musattis introduction, however, is that he
was caught between presenting the reports as relevant and important to an
Italian readership, and baulking at the idea that the ndings might all apply
equally to the Italian context. This impression is compounded by the fact that
the example he chooses to give of where there might be differences is in the
incidence of homosexuality, and particularly the claim that 22.9 per cent of men
had had homosexual experiences, whilst 6.2 per cent were exclusively
homosexual. That his scepticism was reserved for one of the areas of greatest
taboo in Italian society suggests that, even despite his sympathy for the approach
and nature of the research, he could not believe that these particular gures
could hold true for Italy. He does not really offer any counter-evidence for these
possible large differences; it would seem rather that such gures clashed too
strongly with his ideas about the nature of Italian sexuality (Musatti 1950: xxi).
For Professor Alberto Canaletti-Gaudenzi, a statistician, the reports
implicate a different aspect of national character. Despite his profession, he
does not pose a strictly technical objection, but comments that the kind of
study Kinsey has carried out is more relevant in America given the more
standardized and uniform nature of life in America compared to that in Italy
(Che cosa pensano 1953: 1920). This may have been a comparative view of
the two societies which was based on the statisticians professional expertise,
but it is also striking that it brings up the very familiar trope of Italian
individualism. Identied by many as a perennial fault in the Italian character
(Patriarca 2010), here it is taken as fact and used neutrally just to underline the
inappropriateness of such a study to the Italian context.
Another area of common agreement regarding the perceived shortcomings
of the report, and one that again involves ideas of national character, centres on
the way that the Kinsey reports fail to address the question of love. Again and
Reception of the Kinsey reports in Italy
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again in the Italian press, it is noted there is a complete absence of an
investigation into the emotions of sexuality and the affective bonds between
human beings. Where has love own? asks Giorgio Scerbanenco (Che cosa
pensano 1953: 20). During his European tour, at a widely reported press
conference in Paris, Kinsey was asked why there was no reference to it. His
answer, as widely reported in the Italian press, was that if he were studying the
physics of music, he would not discuss the relative merits of Beethoven and
Chopin, and that love is like music. I recognize that there is an art of love, he
is quoted as saying in one Italian report, but I only wanted to study the science
of the phenomenon (Kinsey e lamore 1955: 7). The famous professor did
not convince the majority of his public, comments another Italian journalist,
adding that in France as in all Mediterranean countries so they say in Paris
love does not lend itself to scientic examination (Mander 1955: 2). Herzog
agrees that Kinseys answer did not satisfy his European critics, noting that in
Germany and France this absence was put down to the lovelessness, frigidity
and puritanism of Americans and their dysfunctional sex-lives, typied by their
fondness for petting a subject that receives an ample treatment and provokes
considerable curiosity in reviews outside America. In the reviews of Kinseys
reports in Italy, America is seen as either absurdly puritan or shockingly
libertarian. Certainly it is seen as dysfunctional here too, and Kinseys decision
to separate sex and emotion is seen as symptomatic of that. Antonio Cavallari
(1953: 27) said of the report on female sexuality in 1953 that by neglecting
psychological and emotional factors, it shows itself just to be an arbitrary
abstraction, and Gianni Granzotto (1953: 13), in an article that is measured and
far less tendentious than many, nevertheless observes that Kinseys reports lack
the most important and decisive spark: the feelings and emotions which cannot
be translated into gures. For Domenico Bartoli (1953: 3), the unbalancing
effect of love and its mixture of feelings and instincts mean that leaving out
psychology and emotions is an articial simplication, which may be useful to
scientists but is useless, dangerous in fact, for the general public because of
the misunderstandings that can follow. In Miottos (1955) view, this separation
invalidates the whole enterprise: the basic premise of the research is mistaken,
because in human beings sexual behaviour is naturally integrated with the
phenomenon of love and that involves too many psychological and moral
attitudes to be expressed and explained in purely physiological terms.
Such views found an echo in expert opinion in Italy the social scientist
Luciano Safrio (1958: 258), for example, criticizes the reports lack of socio-
psychological context and Kinseys failure to take account of emotions but the
emphasis in the mainstream press was again on national characteristics.
Commentators suggested that it was typical of Americans to imagine that a
division between love and sex was possible, whilst in Italy such an error, as they
saw it, would not have been committed. It is interesting that such a distinction is
made just at a time when, as Chiara Saraceno (1988) notes, romantic love and
the affective bond between couples had increasing importance within marriage
Penelope Morris
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and Italian society more generally, a clear sign of the changing relationship
between the sexes (see also Morris 2007). So, whilst the debate is framed in
terms of xed national characteristics, it may also have been inuenced by a
historically specic conception of the importance of this emotion.
However, it should be noted that it was not simply a matter of contrasting
Italian and American characters. In differentiating between Italians and Italian
mores and Americans and American behaviour, there is a tendency in fact to
draw on three overlapping, but not identical, discursive categories, denoted by
the geographical, but also cultural, labels of European, Latin and (to a lesser
extent) Mediterranean. It is striking that a number of articles set up the
opposition not between Italian and American, but between European and
American. This is partly a function of the way that Kinseys volumes are
reported and the way that they were marketed, particularly when Kinsey
himself toured Europe, with interviews and articles shared between newspapers
and magazines, and views expressed elsewhere (including London and Paris)
relayed and echoed. However, it is also a deliberate contrast drawn between
perceived national or regional characters. According to this opposition,
Europeans are characterized as already knowing everything about sex; this is
the educated, wise old Europe (Cavallari 1953) compared with the young,
immature United States of America. Europe had no need for statistics such as
those presented by Kinsey, or for the kind of knowledge that they provided.
What Kinsey tells us about sexuality has been known for millennia (Granzotto
1953) and the reports reveal nothing extraordinary (Marcabruno 1956).
Indeed, it is not only a matter of maturity but also of instinct, nature and a
sense of harmony. So whilst Il Messaggero (Emilio Cecchi sta curando una
ristampa 1950: 3) refers to the American merciless taste for self-discovery and
the detached and gelid tone of the Kinsey reports, Ellermo (1954) in Il secolo
compares European and American women (using Kinsey as a reference point)
and declares the Europeans to be more moral, but at the same time more
natural. Taking the example of cinema, the journalist notes the role played by
strict censorship in America, whilst European cinema is not governed by the
same preoccupations, and love, whether legitimate or not, is described openly
with the greatest artistic integrity (Ellermo 1954: 3). In American lm-making,
the article continues, half of them are trying to excite the erotic desires of
women whilst the other half are desperate to dampen them down and the
result of these puritan laws has been to ll women with taboos to such an
extent that they are no longer able to perform the most natural of acts (Ellermo
1954: 3). European women, by contrast are not hypocritical: in a word, in
Europe, love is not essentially that great sin that Americans would have us
believe it is (Ellermo 1954: 3). In Europe, so the argument goes, there is both a
mature and a natural understanding of the place of love and sex in society, and
the contrast is between a society that functions and one that does not.
The identication of Europe and Europeanness with love was hardly new,
of course, and Luisa Passerini (1999: 1) has analysed the way that the two
Reception of the Kinsey reports in Italy
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discursive traditions on Europe and on love have come together at various
points, with one central encounter between the two . . . reected in the
stereotype that the Europeans invented courtly/romantic love in twelfth-
century Provence (see also Passerini 2009: 17). As she notes, whilst in the
nineteenth century there was a continuing dispute about the possible Arabic
derivation of Provencal poetry and courtly love, from the end of that century,
another, contrasting, denition of Europeanness emerged in the eld of
concepts of love and became increasingly dominant in the rst half of the
twentieth century. According to it, the Other in terms of which Europe
dened itself was no longer only Asia, but also America, or rather the United
States. Texts by travellers, philosophers and writers of many kinds put forward
the idea often in threatening tones of allusion to the decadence of Western
civilization that the freedom of American women and the ease of gender
relations in the United States were setting an example that Europe would sooner
or later follow. Romantic love was predicted to disappear in America despite
being frequently invoked and translated into daily life (Passerini 1999: 3).
According to Passerini, after the First World War, the idea of Europe played
an important role in the efforts to avoid a second world war and to establish
values which could bridge the gap between those of the USA and Soviet Russia
(in the 1920s) or those of Fascism and Stalinism (in the 1930s). In this context,
the theme of the Europeanness of love attitudes took on a new meaning, as a
central aspect of the effort to save European civilisation from its own
decadence, a notion reinforced by two inuential publications: C. S Lewiss
(1936) The Allegory of Love and Denis de Rougemonts (1939) Lamour et
lOccident. The two texts conveyed in different ways the same basic idea that
romantic love is the supreme expression of the relationship between the sexes,
and was invented by Europeans in the rst two centuries of our millennium,
and became rapidly and enduringly successful, as if a need of the time were the
reafrmation of the centrality of love in European culture as the starting point
for a social regeneration (Passerini 1999: 3).
Whilst the articles analysed do not present the same idealism, which is hardly
surprising given the events of the intervening years, and there is far more
complex range of opinions on the nature and implications of American gender
relations (as is discussed below), there is still the same sense of the essential
centrality of love in European society, and of a kind of natural ownership of
this emotion.
The idea of an instinctive understanding of love and sexuality is reinforced
by a further sphere of identication and of binary opposition with the United
States, that of the Italians as Latins. In her book on Italian Vices, Silvana
Patriarca (2010) explores this term and traces its evolution. In the late
nineteenth century, Guglielmo Ferrero published a collection of essays entitled
LEuropa giovane, in which, as Patriarca (2010: 91) notes, the portrayal of the
Latins relied on the persisting image of the sensual southerner, ingenious but
not very energetic, but, in contrast to other accounts, far from connecting
Penelope Morris
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these traits to the milder climate of southern Europe, Ferrero explained them in
a racial way and particularly by linking them to the hyper-sexuality of the
South. Thus the idea developed that it was the sexual precocity and sexual
xation of the Latin nations that accounted for their inferior level of willpower
and energy relative to the young peoples of Europe (English and Germans
especially) (Patriarca 2010: 912).
A different stereotype emerged in the period following World War II,
however; in contrast with the association between the Latin peoples and the
vices of indolence and decadence, the positive image of the Italiani brava gente
stereotype provided a positive and self-absolutory image of national character
once the hyper-assertive and aggressive versions associated with right-wing
patriotism and fascism were no longer acceptable (Patriarca 2012: 215).
Patriarca describes it as a
diminutive self-image that seemed to valorize those very traits that earlier
nationalists despised: the sentimentality of the Italians, their lack of a strong
national identication, even their indolence, were now virtues that made
the country inviting to the throngs of tourists who began to roam the
peninsula again from the 1950s onwards. (Patriarca 2012: 215)
A gure of particular fascination, if not virtue exactly, in the post-war period
was the that of the Latin lover, which Jacqueline Reich describes as the
imagined embodiment of the primitive whose unrestrained and exotic
passion contrasts sharply with the more civilised and restrained Northern
European or American society (Reich 2004: 27).
3
In the 1950s, the stereotype
constituted an important way in which Italy was seen from abroad
particularly by Hollywood and the way Italy was marketed as a tourist
destination.
The use of the word Latin implies a contrast with northern Europeans as
well as Americans, and, indeed, there is a tendency to lump the British (or
rather the English) in with the Americans, with references to anglosassoni. As a
way of setting Italian characteristics against those of the United States, however,
it can be rather hard to sustain. Giuseppe Prezzolini (1955), for example, in his
article on Matriarchy in the United States, rather ties himself up in knots
maintaining that the typical American housewife is Anglo Saxon as
compared with those of Latin descent.
The references to Latin peoples in the responses to Kinsey are all positive in
the way described by Patriarca as typical of the period following World War
II,
4
and, although the Latin stereotype is often seen as a foreign view of Italians,
there is no sense in these articles that this understanding of the Latin/Italian
character is one imposed from the outside and it goes unquestioned. The labels
of Latin and European are applied in a similar way to the extent that both
suggest an instinctive understanding of sexuality, but, there are also differences,
beyond the obvious geographical demarcation, as Latin inevitably implies
Reception of the Kinsey reports in Italy
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connotations of sensuality and lack of inhibition that European does not. In Il
Corriere della Sera, Bartolis (1953: 3) comment that on these questions, the
Anglo Saxon peoples have never had the tolerance (tolleranza) and the
humanity (umanita`) of the Latin peoples is a telling one, especially if
considered in the context of the debate on Lina Merlins attempt to close state
brothels. Whilst suggesting, once again, that Italians were at ease with matters
relating to sexuality, Bartolis combination of the apparently benign words
tolleranza and umanita` also brings to mind some of the arguments of the anti-
abolitionists who compared Italy favourably with other countries in which such
brothels no longer existed, and understood humanity in the sense of an
accommodation of the needs, or perhaps weaknesses, of men and a perception
that Italian traditions that tolerated this form of prostitution were closer to
what was natural and good for the health of both the individual and society in
general (Bellassai 2008). In Addio Wanda, Montanelli has Kensey conclude
that the retention of brothels was necessary to maintain the natural order that
was intrinsic to the Italian family, which in turn constituted the basis of the
Italian nation.
Interestingly, Kinsey formed the same opinion that Italians were at ease with
sex when he visited the country in 1955. Although when asked by Italian
journalists if he thought Latins were better lovers, Kinsey reportedly declined
to comment, when recounting his experiences to his staff on his return to the
United States, he was a good deal more forthcoming. Indeed, for Kinsey, as
related by his biographer Gathorne-Hardy, Italy proved to be his sexual Eden.
In his account, based largely on his experience of brothels and of cruising in
Italian cities, Italy was a country of sexual freedom and lack of inhibition. On
passing through Catania, he noted that All you have to do is to give one look
at it and see that it is teeming with sex (Gathorne-Hardy 1998: 428). Of
course, as well as being a highly unreliable assessment of Italian attitudes
towards sexuality, Kinseys views also go well beyond anything that was, or
indeed could have been, expressed in the Italian press. If such a relaxed attitude
existed, it was only amongst some Italians and not expressed publicly.
Indeed, the responses to Kinseys reports reveal a striking contradiction
between the notion that the reading public was too immature and insufciently
educated to be exposed to such information and the idea that Italians, in
themselves or as Latins/Europeans, were entirely at ease with sexuality and the
relationship between sex and love. In part, this could be seen as competing
discourses, such as that between the Catholic Churchs version of the Italian
character and the narrative of the Latin lover. However, the contradiction can
also be at least partially resolved if the description is seen to apply differently not
just to the educated and uneducated (journalists themselves were not vulnerable
to any harmful inuences, of course) but also to men and women. When fears
were expressed about the less educated, it would have been obvious, even if not
stated explicitly, that to a great degree this meant women. Traditional notions of
the weaker sex were still frequently voiced in this period, but it was also a time,
Penelope Morris
28
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as Bellassai (2012) has indicated, when the advance of women in society was
causing great unease and posing a challenge to traditional masculinity. Preserving
the innocence of women was also a way of keeping them in their place. In this
sense, references to a tolerant or relaxed attitude towards sexuality can also be
read as effectively applying just to men, and as an assertion of the status quo and a
tolerance of the double standards that many men enjoyed.
However, the picture that emerges from the reactions to Kinsey is rather
more complex, especially where it is implied that Italian women all Italian
women had more afnity with this natural act. Without ever going into
detail, there is a clear suggestion of a positive female sexuality. It is striking on
the other hand, that there is no appearance in these discussions of another
familiar gure of the time, also identied by Bellassai as a feature of male
insecurities, that of the donna-mantide (mantis-woman) or sexually voracious
woman of the Merlin debates. Instead, the contrast is always with the United
States, whether as Italians, Europeans or Latins, and the message is one of
reassurance: that there was no need to examine sexuality in Italy in those terms
and that the kind of society Kinsey portrayed, and the knowledge he was
imparting, was irrelevant to Italians either because it was nothing new or
because it simply did not apply to the Italian context. Any fears about the
changing role of women in Italy are apparently all transposed onto the United
States. Kinseys reports the report on female sexuality in particular, naturally
are taken as evidence that America is already a matriarchy, that men are already
emasculated. This was Giuseppe Prezzolinis interpretation, in Il matriarcato
negli Stati Uniti (Prezzolini 1955). It could serve as a warning perhaps, but it is
always clear that the Americans are emphatically other.
In many ways, then, commentators discuss Kinsey and to some degree
sexuality in America, but avoid any kind of questioning or analysis of sexuality
in Italy: sex in Italy was either too dangerous to contemplate in public or else,
by contrast, so well known that there was nothing new to be discovered. In
one way or another, most reviewers encourage their readers to ignore Kinseys
work. Yet, of course, the very appearance of these reviews, the disclosure of
such vices and the apparent inevitability of all things American would have
prompted further comparison and reection on the part of the Italian
readership and inevitably played its part in the process of change in sexual
attitudes and mores that would become so much more evident in subsequent
decades. An investigation in Espresso towards the end of the decade, gave an
indication of the way that Kinseys reports and the responses to them in the
press had acted as a catalyst, encouraging Italians to turn the spotlight onto
themselves, and stands in stark contrast with the other articles analysed. Aiming
to study love relationships in young people, Gianni Corbi and Enrico Rossetti
(1958) lament the lack of an Italian Kinsey report, and the kind of attitudes that
had made such a study impossible. The lack of statistics, they say, has, until
now and not just in Italy, given credence to the myth of the sexual happiness of
Latin peoples and of their lack of complexes in relationships (Corbi and
Reception of the Kinsey reports in Italy
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Rossetti 1958: 13). For the authors of the report, it was an ancient myth and,
wondering what evidence there can be of this instinctive, simple and serene
race of people, they entitle this instalment The Unhappy Latin (Corbi and
Rossetti 1958). This was not yet anything like the kind of mirror that Kinsey
had held up to the sexual lives of Americans, but it was a strong indication that
the kind of views expressed by most of Kinseys reviewers were now
redundant, and that a genuine attempt to understand sexual mores in Italy had
to move beyond both the glib condence in the status quo and its double
standards, and the fear of change that insisted on silence.
Notes
1 Some reference will be made to medical reviews, but the intention is to consider
popular rather than professional reactions.
2 An exaggeration, but it was true that Kinsey had collected grafti from such places.
3 Reich makes the point that the gure of the Latin Lover dates back to much earlier
than World War II, however (Reich 2004: 27).
4 The word Mediterranean tends to be used in similar way, suggesting a shared passion
and instinct, an insight not available to northern countries.
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Passerini, Luisa (1999) Europe in Love, Love in Europe, London: Tauris.
(2009) Love and the Idea of Europe, Oxford: Berghahn.
Patriarca, Silvana (2010) Italian Vices: Nation and Character from the Risorgimento to the
Republic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Prezzolini, Giuseppe (1955) Il matriarcato negli Stati Uniti, La Provincia di Como, 20
November.
Pubblicazioni che non onorano lEditoria Italiana (1955) Il Giornale Letterario, 31
December.
Reich, Jacqueline (2004) Beyond the Latin Lover: Marcello Mastroianni, Masculinity and
Italian Cinema, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Queste le donne in America: sta per uscire il rapporto del dottor Kinsey sul
comportamento sessuale femminile (1953) LEuropeo, 23 August.
Reumann, Miriam G. (2005) American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender and National Identity
in the Kinsey Reports, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Safrio, Luciano (1958) Il rapporto Kinsey e le differenze di comportamento fra la
donna e luomo, in Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, Il pensiero americano contemporaneo, Milan:
Edizioni di Comunita`, pp. 22398.
Saraceno, Chiara (1988) La famiglia: i paradossi della costruzione del privato, in P.
Arie`s and G. Duby (eds) La vita privata: il Novecento, Rome: Laterza, pp. 3378.
Ventura, Mario (1959) Valore scientico del rapporto Kinsey, La Sicilia, 28 January.
Wanrooij, Bruno (1991) Pro aris et focis: morale cattolica e identita` nazionale in Italia
19451960, in Pier Paolo DAttorre (ed.) Nemici per la pelle: sogno americano e mito
sovietico, Milan: Franco Angeli, pp. 199216.
Appendix: Additional Articles on Kinsey
Articles on Kinsey/reviews of the Kinsey reports in Italian newspapers and
periodicals
Anon (1955) E Kinsey disse: Ecco come dove e quando gli americani amano,
Le Ore, 12 November.
Anon (1955) Il gallismo interessa Kinsey, Ultimissime Catania, 31 October.
Anon (1955) Kinsey fara` una inchiesta anche sulle donne europee, La
Nazione, 23 November.
Anon (1955) Kinsey non fa testo, LEuropeo, 13 February.
Anon (1955) Kinsey e la chiesa, LEuropeo, 23 October.
Anon (1955) Editoriali: Processo a Kinsey, Gioventu, 31 December.
Anon (1955) Kinsey in Europa, Settimana Incom, 10 December.
Anon (1956) Kinsey in ribasso, Settimana Incom, 3 March.
Anon (1956) Un importante studio sul comportamento sessuale femminile,
Nostro Mezzogiorno, 22 April.
Capelli, John (1955) Come si comporta la moglie americana prima, durante e
dopo il matrimonio, LOra Palermo, 3 May.
E.F. (1958) La crisi del maschio americano, Il Borghese, 4 April.
Freedgood, Anna G. (1953) Esame del Rapporto Kinsey, Oggi, 3 June.
Penelope Morris
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