Abstract
This article addresses the history of sociological sex research and its reception in Sweden and Finland. It describes the background and implementation of the first study in Sweden in 1967, and how the methodology of this study was adopted in Finland in 1971. Both of these studies were followed up in the 1990s with surveys that documented the changes in sexuality, 1992 in Finland and 1996 in Sweden. As the studies were labelled ‘Kinsey studies’ of their respective countries, the article examines the effect that the work of Alfred Kinsey's research group had on them. In particular, the article pays attention to the role of homosexuality in the studies and their reception, both in the mainstream media and in lesbian and gay organizations’ magazines. The article argues that, even though the studies recognized their position on the continuum of sex research stemming from Kinsey's work, they did not have a similar role in normalizing homosexuality. On the contrary, the studies showed diminishingly small numbers of homosexual respondents, even in the 1990s, when lesbian and gay rights were rapidly developing, and the studies were used to argue against equality and minority rights.
Introduction
By the late 1960s, the idea of ‘Swedish sin’ had encapsulated the image of Sweden as a country where sexuality was, for better or for worse, liberated from societal constrains. As a result, in 1967, when Sweden became the first country in the world to conduct a population-level sociological survey on sexuality, the international interest was significant. The fact that such a study was even carried out contributed to the understanding of Sweden as a sexually liberated country. This Swedish survey attracted an early follower when Finland, in 1971, conducted a similar study, and follow-ups trailed these studies in both countries in the 1990s. While these studies were widely discussed domestically at the time of their publication – and the Swedish study even received international exposure – they have not yet been evaluated historically. In this article, I place these studies within the history of sex research. 1 As the contemporary media referred to these studies as Swedish and Finnish ‘Kinsey studies’, I evaluate how the studies joined the continuum established by the work of Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s and 1950s United States, but how they, too, departed from it in important ways, in particular in their treatment of homosexuality.
There is a clear influence of Alfred Kinsey's work on both of the studies and like Kinsey, these studies focused on analysing what was normal and common in sexuality (on Kinsey's focus on the normal, see Sutton, 2021). My analysis contributes to the studies conducted on the legacy of the work of Kinsey and his research group (see e.g. Drucker, 2014; McLelland, 2018). As analysed by Lena Lennerhed (1994), Kinsey's work had a major impact in the Swedish 1960s debates on sexuality. My study takes this discussion further by addressing the position of Kinsey's work in sex research of the time as well as in public discussion around it. Donna Drucker (2013: 123; 2014: 131) has analysed how Kinsey's studies produced an equation between common sex and good sex, and a similar dynamic, where the normal becomes normative, was at play in these studies. One of Kinsey's notable legacies was the normalization of (in particular male) homosexuality (e.g. Terry, 1999: 297–304). In contrast to this, I demonstrate how the first Swedish and Finnish studies departed from the Kinsey heritage as they focused on heterosexual sex. Hence, the title of my article; these studies ranked low on the Kinsey scale that describes an individual's sexual preference towards their own or the other sex on a scale from zero (completely heterosexual) to six (completely homosexual; Kinsey, Martin, and Pomeroy, 1949: 638; see also Drucker, 2010).
Recent years have seen a globalization of the research on the history of sexual sciences, but much of this work has focused on the 19th and early 20th centuries (see e.g. Bauer, 2015; Fuechtner, Haynes, and Jones, 2018a, 2018b; Leng and Sutton, 2021). My article complements this research by analysing the position of the quantitative and sociologically aligned study of sexuality in the post-Second World War Nordic societies. I address small European countries that have been influential and even considered as forerunners in issues related to sexuality and gender. Moreover, the Nordic welfare states have a long history of the use of scientific and expert knowledge in politics, and this aspect was heightened during the post-war decades (Östling, Olsen, and Heidenblad, 2020; see also Lundqvist and Petersen, 2010). In the climate of the 1960s, sociology was perceived as best equipped for understanding modern society (on sociology in the 1960s radicalism in Sweden and Finland, see Saksholm, 2020; on sociology in Swedish gender role research, see Olsson, 2011). In this atmosphere, it was only logical to study sexuality as well from a sociological perspective ‒ as Hekma and Giami (2014: 13–14) point out, surveys on sexuality were a phenomenon of the 1960s. I address these two studies together as they were products of the same process, the Finnish study clearly following the model set by its Swedish predecessor. Whereas the first studies were rather similar in their focus on heterosexuality, their follow-ups in the 1990s tried in different ways to include also same-sex experiences, but these attempts were not very successful. Therefore, my analysis provides an opportunity to address the difficulties in utilizing population-level surveys in covering homosexual experiences. Addressing these studies together sheds light on the transnational connections and exchange that has occurred in sex research.
By covering the reception of these studies, I contribute to the discussion on the position of research-based knowledge in societies in general and the relationship between sex research and its audiences in particular. As Laura Doan (2019) has analysed in her work on early 20th-century British sexology and its public dissemination, this relationship is complex and multi-directional. Kinsey's studies offer a great example of how a large number of people was needed to contribute to the study, and how the studies have had an afterlife in the media and the public culture (on Kinsey's homosexual interviewees, see e.g. Minton, 2002: 162–75; on Kinsey's impact on post-war American culture, see e.g. Reumann, 2005). As homosexuality was only marginal in the Swedish and Finnish studies, their reception reflected this omission and negatively affected the public discussion on homosexuality. Therefore, contrary to how lesbian and gay movements have used the Kinsey studies to argue for equality (e.g. on Western Europe, Herzog, 2006; on Denmark, Edelberg, 2022: 58), activists in Sweden and Finland could not use these studies in a similar manner. On the contrary, I argue that the particular forms of knowledge production on sexuality that these studies developed contributed to the marginalization of homosexuality.
The primary sources that I have utilized for this article consist of the studies’ main research publications, two from Sweden and two from Finland, press sources, and the archival records of Utredningen rörande sexual- och samlevnadsfrågor i undervisnings- och upplysningsarbete (USSU). This committee sat in Sweden during the period 1964–74 and was responsible for the first Swedish study. To cover the studies’ reception, I have analysed the press discussion from the databases in the digital newspaper archives of Kungliga Biblioteket, the Swedish National Library, and, in Finland, I have studied the publisher WSOY's press clippings archives at the time of conducting my research available on their premises at Porvoo, but later transferred to the Finnish National Archives. 2 To address the opinions of lesbian and gay activists on these studies, I have utilized the Finnish lesbian and gay magazines 96, for the discussion of the first study, and SETA, for the follow-up. From Sweden, I have covered Följeslagaren, Revolt, and HOMO to find references to the first study, and Kom ut! and QX for the follow-up. 3
I begin my article by addressing the developments in the 1960s that led to the first Swedish study in 1967 and analyse the choices made in preparing and conducting this study. Then I address the Finnish study that followed in 1971, and discuss the differences between these studies. I also analyse the role given to Kinsey's work in the studies and describe how they covered homosexuality. Before moving to discuss the follow-ups, I focus on the reception of the first studies and the brief mentions of homosexuality in the press. The 1990s studies aimed at widening the scope from only heterosexual experiences while depicting the changes in sexual practices and attitudes. I address these studies in chronological order to demonstrate the flow of influences and analyse how these studies still held heteronormative assumptions, and how their reception reflected this. I sum up my article with a discussion on how these studies and their reception both joined the continuum set by the Kinsey studies and departed from it.
Studying the changing youth sexuality in the 1960s Sweden
The image of the 1960s has been defined by ‘sexual revolutions’ (see e.g. Hekma and Giami, 2014). While the concept of revolution as well as its temporal placement in the 1960s are problematic to say the least (e.g. Lennerhed, 2014), in a number of Western countries questions related to sexuality were discussed vividly during that decade. As a sort of a prelude, already during the 1950s Sweden served internationally as an example of the changing position on sexuality in Western societies. An article in American Time magazine in 1955 established the idea of ‘Swedish sin’. It painted a much-exaggerated picture of the Swedish welfare state, especially highlighting Swedish sex education in schools as the most scandalous aspect of the country's permissiveness. During the late 1950s, other articles followed in similar tone, establishing the reputation of Sweden as a land of free sex. (On the Time article and its followers, see Hale, 2003.) Swedish films, in turn, utilized this imagery of Swedish sin in their promotion (Arnberg and Marklund, 2016).
During the early 1960s, the discussion on sexuality intensified in Sweden in the form of what Lena Lennerhed (1994, 2014) has called Swedish sexual liberalism. According to Lennerhed, this debate focused on the liberation of heterosexual youth and offered a new approach especially to premarital sexuality; the discussion was largely depleted by the mid 1960s (see also Jansson, 2020: 181). However, the sexual liberal discussion had some longer-term consequences. For instance, as demonstrated by Glenn Sandström (2018), the attitudes towards divorce changed during the latter part of the 1960s, leading to the liberalization of the divorce law in 1974. In addition, the legislation that had banned the production of pornographic magazines was lifted in 1971 (Arnberg, 2009: 475). The changes during the 1960s were largely limited to widening of possibilities of heterosexuality. Even though Sweden had already decriminalized homosexuality in 1944, during the sexual liberalism of the 1960s, homosexuality was more of an issue in the general discussion on sexuality than the result of lesbians and gays’ public organizing for their own cause (Lennerhed, 2000). Jens Rydström (2011: 42) has described how the homophile movements in the Scandinavian countries had ‘stagnated’ by the end of the 1960s, and only at the beginning of the next decade did a new generation of activists take over.
The study that is often called the world's first study on sexuality on the level of a national adult population was conducted in Sweden in 1967 and its findings were published in 1969 (Zetterberg, 1969a). 4 This study was organized by a governmental committee, USSU, which operated during the period from 1964 to 1974. The committee was established following a 1962 school reform that had revealed the inadequacies in current sex education, and its main goal was reforming sex education (Lindgren and Backman Prytz, 2023: 5). School sex education had been a topic of heated debate since Sweden had made it compulsory in 1956 (on the changing rationale of sex education, see Sandström, 2001: 128–59; on the sex education reform within the wider context of sexual guidance, see Tillema, 2021: 185–91; on reforming sex education in Scandinavia, see Nordberg, 2020). Establishing governmental committees to produce official reports on a topical policy question has been a particular Swedish form of using expert knowledge in political decision-making (Edenheim, 2010: 35–6). The role of social science research in the work of these committees has been essential (Premfors, 1983), as has, in turn, the role of committee work in the development of Swedish sociology (Larsson and Magdalenić, 2015: 52).
Already in USSU's very first meeting in November 1964, the members discussed the need to conduct a broad sociological study on sexuality, ‘something like the American Kinsey studies’, to form a basis for the committee's recommendations. 5 Choosing this kind of form for the study reflects directly the impact of Kinsey's work in the 1960s Swedish discussion (Lennerhed, 1994: 54–62), but it also reveals the broader appeal of American-style and quantitatively aligned sociology in Sweden during the post-war decades (Larsson and Magdalenić, 2015: 24–33). In their second meeting in early 1965, the committee members outlined the targets for the study: it should measure the level of knowledge on sexuality, and ask about attitudes as well as about what the Swedes’ sex lives were actually like. In addition, the study should give an opportunity to compare the experiences and attitudes of different age groups. 6 At an early stage of planning, Svenska institutet för opinionsundersökningar (SIFO), the Swedish national opinion polling institute, was contacted as a possible conductor of the study. 7 This may have been because USSU's discussions emphasized the need to have representative data, the kind that was acquired with methods used in opinion polls. Despite the committee's view that they were producing a local version of Kinsey study, the Swedish study differed from Kinsey's methods already in how the participants were chosen. In his work on male sexuality, Kinsey aimed at understanding the sexual behaviour of different subgroups of Americans, and he used a large number of voluntary interviews and ‘one hundred percent samples’ of carefully selected smaller groups (Kinsey, Martin, and Pomeroy, 1949: 82–105; see also Drucker, 2013: 116–17). Another notable difference was that Kinsey had studied men and women in separate studies, whereas in Sweden the adult population was covered in one study.
Finally, USSU chose Professor Hans L. Zetterberg as a leader and ‘scientific guarantee’ for a study that would meet the committee's specific needs. 8 Professor Zetterberg was a theoretically aligned sociologist who had worked for most of his career in the United States and was not, according to his own description, involved in the Swedish ‘battles over sex’ that had raged following the introduction of sex education in schools (Moskin, 1969: 50). Zetterberg was also a co-owner of SIFO, which had developed a model for sampling called miniatyr Sverige, or mini-Sweden, which served USSU's need to cover the whole country. The model included a number of municipalities around the country, and within them, the participants for the study were chosen randomly (Zetterberg, 1969a: 14). 9 The questions to be included in the ‘sociological study’, as it was called in the meeting minutes, were addressed several times in the committee during summer and autumn 1966, and SIFO tested the questionnaire in trial studies. As USSU's work paralleled that of a committee on abortion, there was close cooperation between them, and the study included questions proposed by the abortion committee. 10 Considering individual questions, the committee pondered most those that inquired about specific sexual techniques, and concluded that even though the questions may raise criticism, they provided essential information for sex education work among adults. 11 However, the questions concerning different intercourse positions seemed to be on the limits of what was possible to address in a survey study. USSU's chair Ragnar Lund raised the topic once more just days before the survey interviews started, in January 1967. The meeting minutes state that the committee was united in perceiving the questions as important and did not want to give the possible exaggerated press coverage too big of an influence. 12
The final survey form (printed in Zetterberg, 1969a) contained a section on general attitudes towards societal questions, among them on attitudes towards sexuality, such as whether the respondent saw that sex without love was wrong, or that the young should learn about contraceptives. As the range of topics was wide, the questions extended from the status of children born outside of marriage to the possible change to right-hand road traffic, discussed in Sweden at the time. When the study was conducted, the interviewer posed these multiple-choice questions verbally. The latter part of the study was an anonymous form filled in without the interviewer's involvement. This section started with questions about sexual knowledge, such as the functions of the reproductive organs, or the experts’ opinion on the harmfulness of masturbation. Then the questions moved to personal experiences of intercourse, the use of contraceptives, the details of the latest intercourse and satisfaction over one's sex life. The final sections included questions on the first experience of intercourse (aimed only at those under 30 years old), attitudes towards sexuality, and questions on forms of sexual activity other than intercourse, such as petting. The final question was if the respondent has had or wished to have a sexual experience with a same-sex partner during the last 30 days. Otherwise, throughout the form, the questions were limited to heterosexual relationships.
The USSU meeting minutes from the time after the survey was completed reveal that Zetterberg was lagging behind the original schedule in preparing the publication of the results. 13 This may have led to that the final publication addressed only a fraction of the questions covered in the study. The committee also needed to hurry the publication of the results, because someone had leaked the results to the American magazine Look that was about to publish them before they were public in Sweden. 14 Once the results were out, the press referred to the study as the ‘Swedish Kinsey study’, echoing how the committee had defined its task at the beginning of its work in 1964. Zetterberg himself had explicitly contradicted this idea already in the instructions to the interviewers, emphasizing that this study was sociological, contrary to Kinsey's study, which he described as narrowly biological or sexological (Zetterberg, 1969a: 14).
Following and departing from the Swedish model in Finland
The Finnish study conducted in 1971 was not a work of a governmental committee, but it, too, reflected how during the 1960s sexuality had become an issue of public discussion. Helén and Yesilova (2006: 264) describe how ‘the sex radicals’ in Finland criticized in particular the restrictions on abortion and contraception. Following the liberalization of the Finnish abortion law in 1970, the official numbers of terminated pregnancies spiked, which made developing sex education urgent (Keski-Petäjä, 2012). Due to its interdisciplinary position between the medical and the sociological fields, the Finnish study struggled to find funding, and it started with a small grant from the publisher. Finally, the study secured support from the state's medical and social science research boards as their first jointly funded project (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 49–50, 502–4).
In the 1960s Finnish sociology, survey had been a dominant form of study and even though the critique towards it started to gain ground, following the Swedish predecessor made choosing survey to study sexuality an obvious choice in Finland (on the methodological trends in Finnish sociology, see Alastalo, 2005: 73–100). The Finnish survey followed the innovation of Zetterberg's study, that of combining face-to-face interviews with self-filled questionnaires. In the USSU archives there are no traces of contacts between the committee and the Finnish team of researchers, but the report of the Finnish study describes how, in the autumn of 1970, they consulted Maj-Brith Bergström Wahlan, then secretary general of USSU, about the studies on sexuality conducted in Sweden (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 597). The Finnish study, however, utilized different means for choosing the respondents, systematic sampling from the population registry. The level of secrecy of the Swedish report referred to as a ‘secret society’ (Zetterberg, 1969a: 11) was similar in Finland: the study was kept out of the media before it was conducted, as it was believed that publicity would hinder its completion. Moreover, in both cases the respondents were not informed before the interviewer's visit of what the survey would be about. In Sweden, the study was described as covering social values, abortion, sex education, sexual lives, leisure, and religion (ibid.: 15), whereas in Finland the topic of sexuality was omitted altogether and the study was described as ‘medical-sociological study’ (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 521).
Presumably, because of the secrecy that made declining participation difficult and due to the public trust in authorities, the studies’ response rate in both countries was very high. While there are different ways to count the rate (in detail, see Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 530–2), following the method utilized in the Swedish study, its response rate was 90.5% (Zetterberg, 1969a: 15), and in Finland, it was 92.9% (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 532). The total sample interviewed was 2156 people in Sweden and 2354 in Finland. In Sweden, the interviewers were professionals of SIFO, and the interviewer was paired with respondents of the same gender (Zetterberg, 1969a: 12). In Finland, local nurses, who were all women, conducted the interviews (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 517–20). Graham Fennel (2002: 46) has noted that while employing nurses as interviewers may have helped to reach the high response rate, it could have also contributed to the ‘degree of normative responses’, as the participants may have hidden more undesirable sides of their lives even when the written answers were anonymous. In addition, in both these surveys the respondents were asked about their basic knowledge on reproduction and sexuality before the questions on sexual experiences. This may have contributed to the idea that there were right and wrong, or more and less desirable, answers also to the questions on personal experiences.
The Finnish survey interviews started with questions on the respondent's personal background, life situation, and health (the interview form is reprinted in Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974). The interviewer also asked women about their periods and visits to the gynaecologist. Likewise, the interviewer asked all respondents about ideal number of children in a family and with which contraceptive methods they were familiar. The self-filled form started with questions about social class, income and religion, and then moved to attitude questions about sexuality. In addition, the study covered the respondent's self-image, had questions about pregnancies for women, and about marriage happiness to those who were married. Before inquiring about sexual experiences, the form presented statements that measured the respondent's knowledge about sexuality. The questions about experiences ranged from the first intercourse to contraceptives and sexual problems.
As Lena Lennerhed (1994) has analysed, the primary focus in the Swedish debate on sexuality during the 1960s was on young people and their changing attitudes towards sexuality, which was also reflected in the sex research of the era. In the Swedish study, this focus was visible in how those aged between 18 and 30 were oversampled, and some questions were presented only to them (Zetterberg, 1969a: 12). Likewise in the report, the respondents were divided into a younger generation, those between 18 and 30 years, and an older generation, between 30 and 60 years (ibid.: 14). In contrast, the Finnish study did not have a similar emphasis on the young, and the share of the population that was oversampled was women in fertile age. This choice was partly due to the study's link to an international research on family planning. It likewise reflects the focus on sexual health that Helén and Yesilova (2006) have portrayed as characteristic for Finnish sexual policy after the 1960s debates. The researchers regretted more the fact that they could not include older age groups than their omission of minors: they perceived that the experiences of the young could be examined with the responses of older participants who reported on their experiences during their youth (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 46). This reveals how the researchers in Finland, unlike their Swedish counterparts, did not assume that youth sexuality would have experienced significant recent changes.
The Finnish study addressed in detail its position on the continuum of sexology and sociological sex research. In this description, Kinsey's work had its own section where the researchers described his work as unforeseen in terms of both its breadth and how it was able to show what sex lives actually were like, instead of describing how they should be. The researchers also addressed the critique on Kinsey's work for its lack of representative random sampling, but pointed out that conducting a representative study on sexual behaviour would have been impossible in the United States in the 1940s and that without Kinsey's work it would be impossible even now (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 9–11). Echoing Zetterberg, Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo also cited the critique of Kinsey's work as reducing sexuality to that of measuring the number of orgasms (ibid.: 11–13). In evaluating Kinsey's undeniable importance, the researchers pointed out how his work was tied to American history – or, as they describe it, lack of history: ‘Only a newly minted superpower can produce books that cover the whole humanity in their name, but in their content only white Americans, and as far as women are concerned, even limited almost exclusively to the middle class’ (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 13). 15 This quote echoes how, in its Western European reception, Kinsey's work was perceived as describing a distinctively American form of sexuality (Herzog, 2006).
In his foreword to the Finnish translation of the Swedish study, Kimmo Leppo (1970: 12) pointed out that, compared to Kinsey's work, Zetterberg's study was limited in its focus solely on heterosexual sex. Indeed, even though USSU had listed homosexuality as one of the themes that the study should cover, the form included only one question about sexual experiences with a same-sex partner. In addition, Zetterberg addressed these results only very briefly in a section focused on those who do not have sexual experiences (Zetterberg, 1969a: 33) and included the responses in the statistical tables at the end of the publication (ibid.: 105–7). However, also the Finnish study concentrated on heterosexual sex. It included one attitude question on whether the respondent saw homosexuality as a private matter. Tuula Juvonen (2002, 2003) has analysed in detail the connotations of this question in Finland in the early 1970s, where, when sex between same-sex partners was decriminalized in 1971, the ‘encouragement’ to engage in homosexual acts was criminalized, making homosexuality officially a private issue. Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo (1974: 131) also noted this and described how the question measured the acceptance of this recent change.
The limited discussion on same-sex desires demonstrates how the researchers were guided both by the understandings of what was important to study, but also by the very practical considerations of what was possible to cover with survey methods and what kind of questions the respondents were ready to answer. The Finnish researchers described how the questions about homosexual feelings and experiences were among the least answered in their trial studies (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 47; also Juvonen, 2002). Therefore, they included in the questionnaire only one question about homosexual orientation. This question asked whether the respondent's ‘sex drive’ was directed towards males or females and it was among the last questions on the survey form. It presented a five-stage continuum resembling the Kinsey scale, from drive solely towards men to solely towards women. However, in their brief discussion on the responses to this question, the researchers did not refer to Kinsey's classification (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 48). Moreover, they did not discuss the low percentage of those with exclusively same-sex desires: 0.6% of women and 1.2% of men. They noted only that many of those with same-sex desires had lived heterosexual lives, and assumed that reporting same-sex desires was likely due to a mistake in filling the form (ibid.). As noted by Juvonen (2002, 2003), this interpretation does not consider the fact that, as homosexual relations were criminal until the year of the study, many homosexual people may indeed have lived in heterosexual marriages.
Reflections of omitted homosexuality in the studies’ reception
The collective relief present in the Swedish press discussion on the results of the 1967 study was encapsulated in Göteborgs-Posten's title ‘Swedish Sin Was a Bluff’ (') – the Swedes were not, unlike the popular image would suggest, promiscuous, but on the contrary, they valued marital fidelity. In addition, the press noted that according to the results, Swedes wanted to learn about showing tenderness, and the study was regarded as evidence that there was unfilled sexual need in Sweden ‘regardless of the fact that we are sometimes described (abroad) as the land of sexual freedom’ (Therner, 1973). 16 Homosexuality was hardly mentioned in the press. This echoed its position in the study: Expressen noted at the end of their article that out of the 5% who had no experience of intercourse, a portion would have wanted to have a same-sex experience (Bergvall et al., 1969), and GT mentioned that there was a question about homosexuality in the study (Langbakk, 1969). The Swedish lesbian and gay magazines of the time did not note this study: of the magazines of the time, Swedish lesbian and gay organization RFSL's Följeslagaren would have been the most likely to address a topic like sex research, but its publication was on pause when the study came out. The pause was a result of the decline in the organization's activity during the decade (Petersson, 2000: 20), which also meant that there was no active voice on gay and lesbian issues in the mainstream media at the time when the study was published.
In Finland, as the study had been protected from publicity before its completion, the researchers made an agreement of reporting the results with the biggest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat that devoted four two-page articles to the study, and with two magazines that published detailed articles (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 601–2). The press referred to the research as the ‘Finnish Kinsey study’ and its results were, even before they were published, described to reveal the equality between genders as many newspapers and magazines reported on the study based on press releases and researcher interviews (e.g. ‘Suomalainen “Kinsey-raportti”’, 1973). However, none of the articles that compared the Finnish study to Kinsey's work and the international interest his studies had raised, made any comments on homosexuality as one of the major topics in the discussion. The study was described as revealing ‘how a Finn loves’ (Mervi, 1973), indicating a distinctive nature of Finnish sexuality. Moreover, in 1974, when the research report was published, a women's magazine even asked what will happen – ‘Will we now make love scientifically following the study?’ – referring not only to the documenting of but also to the normativizing role of a major survey (Hämäläinen, 1974: 45). 17
Overall, it seems that in Finland the researchers were able to better control the public discussion around the results than had been the case in Sweden. The press praised the study as extensive and informative: for example, the weekly magazine Apu stated that no one should speak in public about Finnish sexuality and sexual morals without reading the publication (Rautonen, 1974). In general, the Finnish press mirrored the researchers’ characterizations of sexuality as a potential source of happiness and Finland as a relatively liberated country on issues concerning sexuality. That said, the results were also used to question and challenge the image of gender equality and to advocate women's sexual independence (Eskanen, 1974). Homosexuality, however, was addressed only very briefly in the press. Articles reflected the researchers’ view of how homosexuality was one of the topics that the study was not able to cover (e.g. Salovaara, 1974). Women's magazine Jaana also mentioned that same-sex desires could have been difficult to reveal, even in an anonymous survey (Verkkala, 1973). Even though homosexuality had only recently been decriminalized, it was not a topic of wide public discussion. The only lesbian and gay association, Psyke, focused mainly on internal community building, and it was only in 1974 that SETA, a new organization with more open and political approach to lesbian and gay rights advocacy, was established (Juvonen, 2015: 36–7).
The only lesbian and gay magazine in Finland at the time – 96, published by Psyke – did not mention this study, even though it reported on new books on sexuality and studies that touched on homosexuality, both larger studies from abroad and smaller studies conducted in Finland. An issue of 96 from 1973, that was intended not only for lesbians and gays themselves but also for informing the heterosexual mainstream, addressed Kinsey's study as the most reliable source of information on how common homosexuality is. The article included a version of Kinsey's scale and cited the numbers that around 5% of men would be exclusively homosexual and some 10% would have as many homosexual as heterosexual experiences (‘Perusasioita’, 1973). This same issue listed literature on sexuality available in Finnish. Under the title ‘recommended general works’, 96 mentioned the Swedish study and described it as the first study on sexuality based on representative sampling. However, the journal also criticized the study's limitations: ‘Due to the method, the results reveal almost nothing about minority behaviour; e.g., it seems that there are hardly any homosexual people in Sweden!’ (‘Suomenkielinen sukupuolielämän tietokirjallisuus’: 40). 18
All in all, the reception of these studies echoed the researchers’ choices: their focus was on heterosexuality, and this was also what the press discussed. The press perceived these studies in both of the countries as providing a national perspective on sexuality, one that was in Sweden contrasted with the country's international reputation. The mentions of homosexuality were a bit more numerous in Finland, echoing how the Finnish researchers had seen homosexuality as an important topic of study and measured the acceptance of the recent decriminalization of homosexual acts. Of the lesbian and gay magazines of the time, only the Finnish 96 addressed these studies and noted how the Swedish study failed to cover same-sex experiences – the Finnish study a couple of years later was not even mentioned. In 96, the study that served as a tool for validation and as a useful source for public discussion was Kinsey's work, not that of his Nordic followers. Together both the wide discussion on mainstream press and the uninterest in lesbian and gay magazines show how these studies normalized the discussion on sexuality as exclusively focusing on heterosexuality.
Attempts to include same-sex desire in the 1990s follow-ups
Just as the first studies were a result of the changing discussion on sexuality during the 1960s, their follow-ups conducted in the 1990s reflected changes in the public perception of sexuality. The AIDS crises in the 1980s raised awareness of how sexual behaviour was a relevant public health issue and contributed to a paradigmatic change from studies on reproduction to those with a focus on safer sex (Juvonen, 2002; Michales, and Giami, 1999). The Finnish study got its first follow-up in 1992, after 20 years, with Elina Haavio-Mannila, professor of sociology at the University of Helsinki, and sociologist Osmo Kontula, as its leaders. 19 In Sweden, it took almost three decades before the study was repeated in 1996 ‒ by then, the World Health Organization and the European Union had pushed Sweden to complete a comprehensive study on sexuality on a population level (Lewin, 1998a: 5).
In Finland, whereas the study in 1971 had focused on marriage, in 1992 the researchers wanted to add new topics, such as sexual harassment, sexuality at working places, and the experiences of sexual minorities (Kontula and Haavio-Mannila, 1993a: 17). Therefore, a majority of the questions posed in the survey were new, although one third was repeated from the previous study. In 1992, utilizing nurses as interviewers was no longer possible and, instead, the interviewers came from Statistics Finland (Tilastokeskus), which conducted the interviews following the method of combining face-to-face interviews with self-filled forms. Additionally, unlike in 1971, this time the respondents were notified in advance that they were chosen for the study. This was due partly to a longer interview period that would have made it impossible to keep the study secret, but the decision also reflected the changing understanding of research ethics and a heightened emphasis on participants’ informed consent. The researchers had planned to gather a larger sample than in the first study to be able to address homosexuality as well as other phenomena they described as part of the ‘secret world of sexuality’ (ibid.: 18). However, due to limited funding, the net sample size remained close to the first study, at 2964 respondents. The response rate of the study dropped significantly from its predecessor to 75.9%; the researchers explained the change with the general loss of interest in research participation and described the rate as comparable to other studies conducted at the same time (Kontula, 1993: 29).
The new Finnish study had a number of factors in both the research design and the phrasing of the questions that excluded people with non-heterosexual experiences, as Tuula Juvonen (2002, 2003) has discussed in detail. While the definitions of sexual experiences were in principle gender-neutral, the questions guided to interpret them as limited to heterosexuality: for example, the questions on sexual experiences were followed by questions on contraception and the positions of a man and a woman during intercourse. 20 However, there were also questions directly about same-sex experiences. Midway through the form the respondents were asked about sexual interest towards and sexual experiences with a same-sex partner. Then those who reported having these experiences were asked at what age the experiences took place, what acts these experiences included, and when the latest experience had occurred. In their analysis, the researchers acknowledged that the respondents might have left their same-sex sexual experiences unmentioned, or that lesbians and gays could have, at least ‘theoretically’, refrained from answering the study (Haavio-Mannila and Kontula, 1993: 258). Homosexuality was also mentioned in two attitude questions, as the study repeated the question from 1971 about considering homosexuality as private and asked respondents’ opinions about same-sex civil unions.
The Swedish follow-up study conducted in 1996 was also based on random sampling of the population register of those between 18 and 74 years of age, and it, too, combined interviews with self-filled forms. SIFO conducted the interviews as in 1967, but this time the analysis was done by a separate group of researchers specialized on sexuality. 21 While the method was similar to the first study, the response rate was significantly lower, only 59% of the net sample of 4781 interviewees, which, according to the report, was a rate usually seen in postal surveys rather than face-to-face interview studies (Lewin, 1998b: 39). The Swedish researchers made a strong effort to overcome the heterosexual bias of the first study. A test group of interviewees discussed the form with the researchers and pointed out unclear questions or those where their personal experiences did not fit within the formulations. Likewise, voluntary members of RFSL, the Swedish LGBT organization, trained the interviewers to ensure that the questionnaire could also cover people with same-sex experiences (ibid.: 33). The survey form explicitly outlined that the concept of sexual intercourse, samlag, included other forms of sexual activity than heterosexual penis-in-vagina intercourse. That said, several questions focused explicitly on penis-in-vagina intercourse and they used the same term with more inclusive questions. This may have led the participants to perceive the questions in general as more heteronormative than they were intended.
The widening scope of the study reflected the changing position of homosexuality in Swedish society, as discrimination based on sexual orientation had been criminalized in 1987, and same-sex civil unions had been allowed in 1995 (Rydström, 2011: 50–8). Despite the efforts made in the preparation of the form, however, the Swedish study did not glean any higher number of respondents with same-sex experiences or feelings than the Finnish study. In fact, the Finnish numbers were slightly higher with 4.2% of respondents reporting at least one same-sex experience during their life (Haavio-Mannila and Kontula, 1993: 254), whereas in Sweden the proportion of those who had sometimes had these experiences was 2.3% (Månsson, 1998: 175). Here, the Swedish study followed Kinsey's formulation by asking if the participant had ‘sometimes’ had same-sex contacts, whereas in Finland it was asked if this had ever been the case (ibid.: 167–9, 178).
Overall, the results indicate that both these studies failed to invite other than heterosexual respondents, or, that the non-heterosexual respondents refrained from revealing their experiences. In his chapter on sex between persons of the same sex, Månsson (1998: 170) noted the possibility that lesbians and gays may have felt that the study did not concern them. Indeed, despite the aim for inclusiveness, the Swedish study had questions where same-sex desires were listed among different forms of sexual play or as a form of experimentation in heterosexual lives more than as a sexual orientation, and as something that the respondent may or may not find as acceptable (see ibid.: 171–2). These formulations may have added to the atmosphere that the study was directed to heterosexual respondents and that it did not take homosexuality seriously as a stable sexual identity. The main reports of the studies in both Sweden and Finland dedicated one chapter to homosexuality and addressed it as a separate issue from sexuality in general, perceived as heterosexual, which also illustrates how the focus had stayed on heterosexuality.
Traces of homosexuality in the reception of the follow-ups
As the Finnish press reported the results of the 1992 study, they emphasized the changes that had occurred during the two decades that had passed since the first survey. Compared to the reporting of the first study, now the researchers did not control the public discussion with prearranged articles. However, the public interest towards the study was no less enthusiastic than it had been 20 years earlier. For example, the evening paper Iltalehti devoted a full eight articles to the study's results. The press coverage focused on the increased pleasures and versatility of Finnish sex lives. The liberalization of sexuality that the study showed was even described as a revolution (Rajamäki, 1993), but still, it was emphasized that Finns valued faithful relationships. A topic that created some controversy in the media was the disparity in how men had reported significantly more sexual partners than women (Matilainen, 1993; Varteva, 1993). This controversy led to a debate on the methodological problems and the reliability of the study.
In general, the public discussion in Finland followed on the researchers’ view of their results ‒ as Kontula and Haavio-Mannila had not emphasized same-sex desires, they were not addressed in the press either. Several articles reported that homosexuality was among the topics that the respondents had listed as perverse: this was a result of a question at the very end of the self-filled form in which the participants could list what they considered as sick or perverse in sexuality. As these remarks in the press were so similar, it is likely that they originated from the researchers’ press release or their interview. While the intention behind addressing this topic may have been to point out that only a minority regarded homosexuality that negatively, it nonetheless framed homosexuality as something that the respondents can decide whether or not to accept. Those few articles that mentioned other topics about homosexuality had a similar tone. They emphasized the need for information on sexuality that would free ‘sexual minorities’ from prejudices (Pohjola, 1993), or reported that tolerance towards homosexuality has increased as a result of public discussion (Lindqvist, 1993). Only one article in the evening paper Ilta-Sanomat discussed in more detail the study's results on homosexuality and it, too, mentioned tolerance in the title of that section. The text cited the numbers of those who had reported their same-sex desires or a lesbian or gay identity. While the article had a rather nuanced view on homosexuality, it also included some interpretations based on the answers of very few respondents drawing far-reaching conclusions: ‘Gays can be found all around the country, but lesbians only in the capital area. Both gay and lesbian experiences concentrate in the upper social classes’ (Helpinen, 1993). 22
SETA, the magazine of the Finnish lesbian and gay organization, noted this study with Jukka Lehtonen's review. Lehtonen concluded that the study used sexuality as a synonym for heterosexual intercourse and the researchers had failed to consider the recent studies on lesbian and gay lives. He also criticized how the study reduced lesbian, gay, and bisexual lives into a form of sexual behaviour instead of an orientation and how the researchers drew conclusions based on a very small number of respondents, at the smallest only six individuals. Concerning tolerance, Lehtonen saw that the study painted a much too bright picture of acceptance of lesbians and gays: ‘In the paradise of Finland “only” one fifth of men lists homosexuality as perversion next to rape or sex with children’ (Lehtonen, 1993). 23 If the researchers used this number to highlight the positive change that had occurred, for those directly concerned it was a reminder of how far from actual equality Finnish society was. Indeed, it was in the early 1990s that lesbians and gays started to appear in the mainstream press more often, and in 1993, the first parliamentary motion allowing same-sex civil unions was filed (Juvonen, 2015: 49–52, 79–83; the law passed in 2001).
The results of the Swedish study published in 1997 were portrayed in the press as the new truth about sex in Sweden: ‘Here is your sex life, Svensson’, as an article in GT was titled (Vikman, 1997). However, compared with the reception of the first study, the reporting this time was less framed with Sweden's international reputation. As in Finland, the press noted that Swedish sex has become more varied than it had been 30 years ago, but that expectations for good sex had also become higher. However, contrasting with the Finnish press that highlighted the results showing the prevailing importance of faithfulness, in Sweden it was noted that one third of men had been unfaithful (Jarl, 1997). Even though the design of the Swedish study had emphasized the variety of sexuality and made room for addressing same-sex experiences, in the press same-sex sexuality held a very minor role and in the pictures, the ‘Svenssons’ were heterosexual couples. The press mentioned the proportion of the respondents who had same-sex desires or experiences, but did not discuss the topic further. Expressen pointed out that even though one in ten fantasizes about sex with a same-sex partner, very few have fulfilled their fantasies. In addition, the paper commented that, while women have more same-sex fantasies, men actually have more sex with other men (Nordstöm, 1997). Göteborgs-Posten pointed out that the relatively common fantasies of same-sex experiences were among the most surprising results of the study (Berg, 1997).
The Swedish lesbian and gay magazine QX entitled their article on the research ‘Sex Study Without Answers’ (Voss, 1997) and summarized the main findings regarding homosexual experiences. At the beginning of the text, author Jon Voss pointed to the notable media attention that the study had received and how Dagens Nyheter, one of Sweden's biggest dailies, had even ‘triumphed’, in that the study had shown that only 0.5% had exclusively homosexual experiences. Voss contrasted this low figure to Kinsey's study, citing the famous share of roughly 10% of exclusive homosexuals (cf. Drucker, 2013: 123) and mentioning how Kinsey's results had become important in the struggle for sexual equality. Voss’ short article commented on how studies on sexual behaviour have been used to promote lesbian and gay rights but how the Swedish study offered tools to belittle their importance. RFSL's magazine Kom ut! likewise discussed the study's covering of homosexuality. Author Jack Ciesluk (1997) emphasized that the study was not able to answer the ‘eternal question’ about the number of lesbians and gays, but it showed how difficult the question was. The tone of this review was less critical than that of Lehtonen's on the Finnish study a couple of years earlier. Hence, it was likely more the attitude of the Finnish study and the lack of engagement with lesbian and gay studies than the actual numbers that raised criticism – unlike Elina Haavio-Mannila, who wrote about homosexuality in the Finnish study's main publication, Sven-Axel Månsson considered their study's limitations, cited recent Swedish and international research on homosexuality and refrained from drawing conclusions based on limited data. Moreover, several studies focusing on lesbians’, gays’, and bisexuals’ experiences were conducted at that time in Sweden, which may have made it easier to conclude that this study was simply limited to ‘the heterosexual world’, as Ciesluk phrased it.
As these studies were widely discussed in the press, their results concerning homosexuality were not left unacknowledged or without consequences. In Finland, the study's low numbers of lesbians and gays were used by the Christian conservative circles to argue that the law on same-sex civil union currently under political debate was unnecessary (Stålström, 1997: 153–5). In Sweden, RFSL had to answer questions about the low number of lesbians and gays showed by the study. In their response, the organization assumed that lesbians and gays might have declined from answering the survey and referred to other studies, including the Kinsey report, that have given much higher figures for same-sex experiences (Hellbom, 1997). 24 This article also mentioned the Finnish study and its number of around 4% with at least one sexual experience with a same-sex partner. Interestingly, when the Swedish study was reported in Finland in the largest daily, Helsingin Sanomat, the low number of lesbian and gay respondents was incorporated into the title, which said ‘Svensson Is a Real Man After All’ (Aarniva, 1997), and the subtitle reported how the study had revealed that the Swedes are not gay. This formulation circulated the persistent popular understanding that has tied homosexuality and Sweden together in Finland since the 1950s (Juvonen, 2006) and followed the way that these studies were perceived as revealing national characteristics in sexuality.
Conclusions: Kinsey's legacy, Swedish and Finnish style
While the first Swedish and Finnish survey studies on sexuality were indebted to the work of Alfred Kinsey, they also departed from it in important ways. Their focus was on heterosexual intercourse, and only in the 1990s did follow-ups broaden it to include homosexuality. This mirrored the changing position of homosexuality in these societies, and in Sweden, the study conducted in 1996 made a significant effort to include same-sex experiences. That said, the results still reflected mostly heterosexual experiences, as did those from Finland, where much less changes were made. The studies’ inability to first include questions on homosexuality and later to get the respondents to answer them, demonstrates the dynamic in sex research between the researchers’ intentions, their practical choices, and the interests of the public that is needed to answer the survey. As these studies were a part of the knowledge-based governing in the Nordic welfare states, they also show the limits of what this form of governing could achieve: The studies succeeded rather well in describing that sort of sexual behaviour that obliged the norms of its time, but not that of marginalized minorities. Interestingly, this was also the case in the 1990s in societies where several legal changes towards the recognition of lesbian and gay rights either were implemented or were well under way.
That said, homosexuality was not completely missing from these studies nor from their reception, it was simply in a marginal role. Overall, lesbian and gay lives have become publicly visible earlier in Sweden than in Finland. Somewhat contrary to this, Finnish press coverage of the first study in the early 1970s addressed the difficulty of documenting same-sex experiences more than the press in Sweden in the late 1960s. This could be because homosexuality was topical in Finland, as homosexual acts had been decriminalized recently, in 1971. The couple of years between the studies may have been significant, and had the Swedish study been conducted just a couple of years later, the discussion around it might have focused more on homosexuality, as lesbian and gay activism was growing more visible at the beginning of the 1970s. Likewise, when the follow-up was conducted in Sweden in 1995, it had just become possible for same-sex couples to form civil unions, which had made lesbian and gay rights an issue of public discussion, and there were also domestic lesbian and gay studies that the report could refer to. In comparison, in Finland in 1992, the discussion concerning a similar legal change was only just about to start.
The Swedish and Finnish studies focused, following Kinsey's example, on what was common in sexuality, rather than on exceptions or on sexual problems. However, this type of research was not merely descriptive but also productive. This normativity was noted in the publication of the first Finnish study, where the researchers described how a study that shows certain behaviour as common easily leads to an interpretation that it is also good and right: ‘Statistical facts become new yardsticks to which people compare themselves. Means become norms and percentages become gospel’ (Sievers, Koskelainen, and Leppo, 1974: 36). 25 Indeed, these Swedish and Finnish studies became a self-evident reference point in the media for what is common in sex, and in this position they contributed to the marginalization of those topics that the studies were not able to cover. Due to the studies’ heteronormative biases even in the 1990s, they did not offer material for public discussion on same-sex desires, let alone for reflecting the experiences of lesbians and gays. Activists could not use these studies to show how common same-sex sexual experiences were in the manner that they utilized Kinsey's studies in these countries as well as elsewhere in Western Europe and North America. In fact, these studies were even used for the opposite purpose, to underline what a small ‒ and thus insignificant ‒ minority lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and others with same-sex desires were. To sum up, it was a contribution to Kinsey's legacy in Swedish and Finnish style to conduct quantitative sociological studies, focusing on sexual behaviour, but only to normalize heterosexuality.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Kone Foundation.
Notes
Author biography
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