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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sexual Preference (book) | 8/14 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book) | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Scientific and academic journals, 1981–1982 === Sexual Preference received a positive review from J. Kenneth Davidson, Sr. in the Journal of Marriage and Family, mixed reviews from the sociologist John DeLamater in Science and the sex researcher James D. Weinrich in The Quarterly Review of Biology, and negative reviews from the psychologist Clarence Tripp in the Journal of Sex Research and the sociologist Ira Reiss in Contemporary Sociology. The book was also discussed by DeCecco in the Journal of Sex Research and Bell in Siecus Report. Criticisms made of the work included that its authors' conclusions were based on an unrepresentative or dubiously representative sample of homosexuals, and that their reliance on path analysis and adult recall of early childhood feeling was problematic. Davidson wrote that Bell et al. were aware that their work would be criticized on methodological grounds, and that they carefully addressed potential criticisms. He suggested that media reports had distorted their views about the possibility than homosexuality has a biological basis, writing that they acknowledged that their study did not provide the data to resolve this issue. Although he considered it regrettable that it took them more than a decade to publish their analysis of their study's data, and believed it was "directed more toward the lay reader than to the professional community", he found their work valuable for its exploration of the possible biological basis of homosexuality. DeLamater believed that Sexual Preference benefited from Bell et al.′s "eclectic theoretical basis", which drew from the psychodynamic model, social learning theory, sociological models that emphasize the importance of peer relationships, and labeling theory. However, while he accepted their claim that their study was methodologically superior to prior work on homosexuals, he still found it problematic for many reasons and hesitated to endorse its conclusions. In his view, the path analysis involved "arbitrary classification and sequencing of variables". Weinrich wrote that while Bell et al. had a "more than adequate sample size", the sample had at times been broken down into smaller groups, and some of their conclusions about those groups had to be considered tentative. Weinrich concluded that they effectively challenged environmental theories of sexual orientation, and that attempts by critics to dismiss their conclusions about such theories were unsuccessful. He based this conclusion partly on personal communication with Hammersmith, however, noting that they did not explain their procedures for verifying their findings well in Sexual Preference and its statistical appendix. He also suspected that they had relied on dubious information from heterosexuals about the sexual orientation of their siblings, and considered their review of evidence on the possible biological basis of homosexuality inadequate.
Tripp wrote that Sexual Preference would likely be seen as "a shock and a disappointment", since its authors abandoned or misrepresented many of Kinsey's methods and conclusions. He criticized them for ignoring Kinsey's warning to make careful observations and "avoid theory", and for attempting to test the validity of psychoanalytic theories, which he considered already discredited by professionals. While he nevertheless believed that they had rendered a valuable service by showing that psychoanalytic theories are unsupported, he rejected their argument that since psychoanalytic ideas are incorrect the origins of sexual orientation must be genetic and hormonal, noting that in order to draw that conclusion they had to ignore the work of sex researchers such as Frank Beach. He also accused them of citing low quality and unreplicated hormone studies, ignoring evidence relating homosexuality to early puberty, and replacing inductive with deductive methods. In the same issue, they replied to Tripp, accusing him of misrepresenting their data analysis and their conclusions and making "ridiculous criticisms" of the scientific method they had employed. Tripp responded in a later issue, accusing them of making personal attacks, and attempting to refute them on specific points. Reiss concluded that Sexual Preference helped suggest "the likely worth of ideas", but that given its shortcomings there was no way in which its authors could definitively resolve the issues they explored, despite their claim to "once and for all" discredit some ideas about homosexuality. He wrote that the study employed questions that were "vague" and "open-ended", and that its authors had an "arbitrary and rigid conception" of what could be done with their data, lacked "theoretical development" in its handling, and deliberately minimized the importance of the predictor variables they used to test psychoanalytic and other theories. He found their conclusion that sexual orientation has a biological basis unconvincing. De Cecco dismissed both Sexual Preference and Bell and Weinberg's previous study Homosexualities, writing that while their authors presented them as definitive, they suffered from the "theoretical blindness" that has dominated research on homosexuality in the United States since the early 1970s. He contrasted Bell and Weinberg's work unfavorably with that of European thinkers whom he credited with "provocative theoretical speculations": the philosophers Michel Foucault and Guy Hocquenghem, the gay rights activist Mario Mieli, the sexologist Martin Dannecker, and the sociologist Jeffrey Weeks. Bell wrote that he was astonished by his finding that "parent-child relationships" are less influential in the development of sexual orientation than has often been thought. He related his findings to the theme of androgyny.