by Dr. Susan Block.

America’s premiere sexuality research center, the Kinsey Institute, has been defunded, even as American Perma Wars—at home and abroad—are super-funded.

Bi-partisan billions keep rolling in for the War Machines—thanks to the Military Industrial-Congressional Complex, the Cops and the Gun Industry—that destroy lives at home and abroad, yet there’s nothing but slander and censorship, fire and brimstone for the sexology that saves lives.

Saying “yes” to Thanatos (the death impulse) and “no” to Eros (the erotic life force) is the Ammosexual Incel way. Sadly, it’s also become the American Way. Maybe it always was… at least since 1492.

I prefer the Bonobo Way of peace through pleasure, including sexual pleasures, though food, shelter, games and many other organic, sustainable, egalitarian pleasures can be shared along the Bonobo Way.

Unfortunately, not everybody sees things my way. It appears that GQP Hoosiers in the House went the way of anti-pleasure, anti-sex education and anti-Kinsey ignorance in February of this year, casting a 53-34 vote against providing the usual state funding for the institute that was as narrow as it was narrow-minded.

It was and is a sign of these “alternative facts”-driven times.

Founded within Indiana University by pioneering sex researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey whose “Kinsey Reports”—Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)—took a scientific approach to the study of human sexuality (Kinsey started as an entomologist), and helped to kickstart the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s, the Kinsey Institute is unparalleled.

Not that such accomplishments would impress the Christofascists who stripped the Indiana University Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction of all its state funding.

State Funding Stripper-in-Chief was Freshman Representative Lorissa Sweet (R-Wabash) who blithely slandered the late Kinsey as a “child predator,” claiming without evidence that the Institute “could” currently be “hiding child predators.” So *could* McDonald’s, the local church or police station, but hey, any excuse will do for the GQP to slash and burn a sexuality studies school with fiery accusations.

Representative Matt Pierce (D-Bloomington, including Indiana University) tried in vain to reveal a few facts that countered Sweet’s candy-coated fabrications, mainly that they are “old, unproven allegations,” “conspiracy fodder” and little more than “warmed over Internet memes that keep coming back.” Unfortunately, Pierce was unable to douse the flames of Sweet’s incendiary ignorance and save the Kinsey Institute’s state funding from going up in smoke. 

Under questioning, Sweet confessed that any and all investigations into alleged “child abuse” at the Kinsey Institute had been dropped for lack of evidence long ago. Normally, that admission would sink any wrongful allegation. But the new “normal” for a young GQP rising star with an erotophobic base to fire up is that facts don’t matter one Sweet bit. The neo-Puritan narrative is that most teachers are “predators,” all sex educators are the Devil with a chalk board, and schools like the Kinsey Institute certainly should not get funded for their Satanic chalk.

As a fellow sexologist who has long looked up to the Kinsey Institute, it’s disturbing to hear that this great leader in sexology lost their government funding, though reassuring that 1) Indiana University receives all its money from the state in a lump sum, which makes extricating Kinsey funds from others trickier than doing reverse cowgirl on water skis, and 2) Kinsey’s corporate financing will make up for the state’s shortfall anyway. Still, financial gymnastics aside, it’s just more bad news for American sex education and freedom of speech.

My own institute is not funded by any government or corporate entities—just by our private sex therapy services. This means we are often relatively broke, but it’s also one reason why we can “speak easy” at our “Speakeasy” about subjects that aren’t so easy to speak about (like sex), without government or corporate oversight. It’s also why evil YouTube AI censored and recently terminated my channel of 15 years.

Even more recently, a few days after META sent me a message of congratulations for surpassing 10,000 followers on my Facebook profile, it sent me a very different notice of termination for both my Facebook and Instagram accounts. Why? No reason, no trial, no evidence, just a firing squad of META Bots summarily executing my virtual self, letting my bodiless body fall into a mass grave filled with millions of other similarly suspended social media accounts.

It happened shortly after my show about Kinsey’s defunding aired which may or may not have “violated” guidelines and/or made someone feel “unsafe.” Yes indeed, Brothers and Sisters, in the name of making everyone feel “safe,” neo-Nazi, neo-Puritanical censorship, account terminations and crazed book-banning are rising like the all-consuming and very unsafe flames of violence, inequality and fascism.

This brings to mind the scorched fate of another great sex institute at the hands of those other Nazis (the original ones). A couple of decades before Kinsey was hunting gall wasps, the Hirschfeld Institute, directed by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, dubbed the “Einstein of Sex,” thrived smack in the center of Berlin during the wild Weimar period (1919 – 1933) between the Kaiser and Der Fuehrer. Life was a Cabaret in a way, and erotic adventurers like Christopher Isherwood (author of I am a Camera which became Cabaret), Cole Porter, the Gershwin Brothers and many more went to the Hirschfeld Institute in Weimar Berlin to study, socialize, humanize and revolutionize society.

Then it all went up in smoke as the Hirschfeld Institute was one of the first prominent German establishments to be destroyed shortly after the “terrorist” Reichstag fire which was the Nazi’s 9/11, aka an excuse to seize power. In their moral crusade against terrorists, sexual “degenerates,” communists, gays, Jews and, of course, *predators*, a giddy gang of enflamed Hitler Youth in swastikas and lederhosen burned all the books in the Hirschfeld Institute, except a few they kept for themselves (and thus for history). When you see newsreels of Nazis burning books, you are usually watching Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld’s great human sexuality library being consumed in a sacrificial bonfire to Der Fuehrer’s dominance over so-called decadence.

If Lorissa Sweet and her colleagues could have their way, they’d be dancing around their own American bonfire, maybe holding a barbeque, as all the books, documents and art of the Kinsey Institute went up in flames.  So maybe we should be grateful that she only verbally torched the Kinsey Reports?

The *good* news is that the Kinsey Institute is not burning, and it will go on without state government funding, at least for a while, as I will go on without YouTube and META… for a while.

Nevertheless, it’s a sign of the times that corporate control, book banning as a cottage industry, the rise of artificial ignorance (AI) along with human illiteracy, punitive social media censorship, increasing economic inequality and defunded studies are squeezing the life—Eros—out of education, as Christofascist crusaders, ammosexual incels and super-funded Perma Wars tighten their nonconsensual Thanatoxic grip around our erotic multi-cultural throats, and our humanities go up in smoke.

© May 25, 2023. Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sexologist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure and horny housewife, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950. Email her at drsusanblock@gmail.com and you will get a reply.