John Gagnon

John H. Gagnon (November 22, 1931 – February 11, 2016) was a pioneering sociologist of human sexuality who wrote and edited 15 books and over 100 articles. Whilst working at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University (1959-1968), Gagnon worked on the Sex Offenders Legacy project using the data gathered by Kinsey's team to produce the influential study Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types (1965) - a work cited by generations of scholars since including MAP pioneers such as Tom O'Carroll and Edward Brongersma. Most famously, Gagnon collaborated with William Simon to develop the work he is most recognized for: "Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality" (1973). Referenced by MAP sympathetic researchers' including Gayle Rubin, Beatrice Faust, Donald West, and Ken Plummer, the latter dubbed their book "quite probably the single most important general sociological study of sexuality that has ever been published." Gagnon was Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he taught and from 1968 to 1998. During that time, he dedicated himself to advancing the field of sociology through research.

As LeRoy G. Schultz pointed out, Gagnon (1965 below) described underage female sex partners in unlawful age-gap sex "as having a "collaborative" role in the offence in 7.8 per cent of 330 offences," and "as "encouraging" to the offender in from 66 per cent to 95 per cent of all sex offences" in an earlier study (with Paul Gebhard, 1964, cited below).

In 1965, he published Sexuality and Sexual Learning in the Child, an accessible and early essay on the changing social construction and symbolic significance of childhood.

Selected publications

• 1964 'Male sex offenders against very young children', American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 121, No. 6, December 1964, pp. 576-9. (With Paul Gebhard).

• 1965 "Female Child Victims of Sex Offenses," Social Problems. 13:2: Fall, 1965.

• 1965 Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types. New York: Harper and Row, 931 pp. (with Paul H. Gebhard, Cornelia V. Christenson, and Wardell B. Pomeroy).

• 1967 "Homosexuality, The Formulation of a Sociological Perspective," The Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 8:3: September 1967, pp. 177–185 (with William Simon).

• 1967 Sexual Deviance: A Reader, edited with an introduction written with William Simon. New York: Harper and Row, 1967, 310 pp.

• 1969 "On Psychosexual Development", in David A. Goslin, ed., Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research. New York: Rand McNally, 1969, pp. 733–752 (with William Simon). Reprinted in Trans-action. 6:5: March 1969, pp. 9–17. 1969, pp. 17–23.

• 1970. Sexual Encounters Between Adults and Children, SIECUS Study Guide No. 11, Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), New York. (with William Simon).

• 1973 Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality. Chicago: Aldine Books, 1973, 316 pp. (with William Simon)

• 1977 Human Sexualities. Glenview: Scott Foresman, 1977, 432 pp.

• 1984 "Sexual Scripts", Society. Vol. 22, No. 1, Nov. – Dec, pp. 53–60. (with William Simon).

• 1994 The Social Organization of Sexuality. Chicago; The University of Chicago Press. (Coauthor with Edward Laumann, Robert Michael and Stuart Michaels.) (Received the Gordon Laing Award for the book that added the most distinction to the list of the University of Chicago Press in 1995).