Women & Sex

The gold at Fort Knox was no more zealously guarded last week than Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey's long-awaited book. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. At the University of Indiana in Bloomington, newspaper and magazine writers were allowed to pore over galley proofs on one condition: none but their editors must be told what is in the book until Aug. 20. Summaries of not more than 5,000 words may then be published. Finally (the exact date is still a secret), Kinsey (and W. B. Saunders Co.) will publish the book itself.

Kinsey's timetable, and his elaborate briefing sessions in Bloomington, were to make sure that his findings would be presented as accurately as possible in the lay press. Not necessarily by coincidence, Kinsey was also creating the greatest fanfare in publishing history for a book that was not yet even on the presses.

Said Dr. Kinsey last week, mindful of critics who assailed Sexual Behavior in the Human Male as harmful and useless: "Reproduction, or sex, is one of the great forces of life. Most everyone talks about sex . . . Before we can learn why humans behave sexually as they do, we've got to find out just what it is that they do."

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