Kinsey Scale

[Tremaine]

Alfred Charles Kinsey birthday today - 23rd June 1894

Kinsey is generally regarded as the father of sexology, the systematic, scientific study of human sexuality. His Kinsey Reports—starting with the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948. In this he developed the The Kinsey scale attempts to measure sexual orientation, from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual). In the Kinsey Reports, an additional grade was used for asexuality. It was first published in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others, and was also prominent in the complementary work Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).

Introducing the scale, Kinsey wrote: Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. While emphasising the continuity of the gradations between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual histories, it has seemed desirable to develop some sort of classification which could be based on the relative amounts of heterosexual and homosexual experience or response in each history... An individual may be assigned a position on this scale, for each period in his life.... A seven-point scale comes nearer to showing the many gradations that actually exist."

The scale is as follows:
Rating Description
0 Exclusively heterosexual
1 Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual
2 Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual
3 Equally heterosexual and homosexual
4 Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
5 Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual
6 Exclusively homosexual
X Asexual

Perhaps we should adopt this scape rather than the 0 - 100% used here

 

[Joseph]

ehhh and the point of removing the % bar is?....

I would rather go into thinking if sexuality handles both sexual attraction and emotional attraction and if such things shouldn't be split as sexuality is a very complex matter.... but going from the 100% scale to a 1-7 one,.... nah, pointless

 

[TheMarchHare]

First of all. Gotta love Kinsey.

Secondly, Joseph, at this point it's only a matter of presentation.. the % bar on here evolved out of the Kinsey theory itself, it's just a slightly different way of categorizing oneself.

Anyways, with all that said, I'm an avid supporter of the Kinsey theory... then again, I am a psychology student, so that makes sense.


Happy birthday Kinsey!

 

[D_Jerry_Atric]

Where's the option for multiple choices?

I like the guy and his studies but his research was biased and flawed.

Try reading other studies done on human sexuality and sexual orientation and you'll see that his findings on who is homosexual/bisexual/queer are way too high for what they really are.

 

[B_Nick8]

One confusion arises when I have to decide whether to answer this question historically or consider the now and presume ahead.

 

[mitchymo]

1. straight
2. straight-bicurious
3. bisexual
4. gay-bicurious
5. gay

Surely this is enough choice for anyone?

 

[B_Nick8]

Surely this is enough choice for anyone?

No; "curious" isn't a useful construct after a very short time. Then, to some reasonable degree, the "question" has been answered; at some point how curious can you still be? After that, you simply move forward with new knowledge.

 

[B_henry miller]

I'm a 2 or a 3.

I think the percentage thing is easier because a lot of people don't know about Kinsey, but probably everyone knows the concept of percentage.

 

[mitchymo]

No; "curious" isn't a useful construct after a very short time. Then, to some reasonable degree, the "question" has been answered; at some point how curious can you still be? After that, you simply move forward with new knowledge.

Then surely you become bisexual or stay straight or gay once your curiosity has been answered so my 5 choice solution is the simplest and still workable

 

[Countryguy63]

somewhere between a 2 and 3

 

[Jake90]

One confusion arises when I have to decide whether to answer this question historically or consider the now and presume ahead.

Yes I have the same problem and can we define 'incidentally' please?

 

[Wish-4-8]

I go by what I am thinking about when I am not thinking. What I focus on automatically without thinking about it. And it is exclusivly women. I dont really checkout guys, I dont look at their crotches like some other thread suggested that straight men do, I dont even wonder. Although, I do like to see well endowed guys with a girl in porn. I dont even like to see his face. Just the girl working on the big cock.

In fact, I dont like to see guys that "have no business in porn", or less endowed. So go figure.

 

[B_Nick8]

Then surely you become bisexual or stay straight or gay once your curiosity has been answered so my 5 choice solution is the simplest and still workable

My point exactly. You were the one with the "--curious" construct.

After curious, you become either more or less bi-sexual (and, I generally feel, with a leaning) and you go forward with that.

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

1. straight
2. straight-bicurious
3. bisexual
4. gay-bicurious
5. gay
Surely this is enough choice for anyone?

I could accept this with no problems, all the more so because people can remain 'curious' for a long time ... either not investigating what they're curious about, or investigating and not making up one's mind, either through genuine uncertainty or denial.

It might be better to speak of 'leanings' in the secondary direction rather than 'curiosity.'

So then, keeping your five-stage range, you could offer:

1 Straight
2 Straight with bisexual leanings
3 Bisexual
4 Gay with bisexual leanings
5 Gay

Anyway ... a thought, mitchymo.

 

[TheMarchHare]

1. straight
2. straight-bicurious
3. bisexual
4. gay-bicurious
5. gay

Surely this is enough choice for anyone?

A...Men:tongue:

 

[D_T_Frothingill_Bellows]

haha how about we all have to have sex with a guy and a girl at the age of 18 and take it from there

LMAO.... sounds like a plan to me

 

[Tremaine]

haha how about we all have to have sex with a guy and a girl at the age of 18 and take it from there

LMAO.... sounds like a plan to me

But that would mean that I would have had to wait for 5 years before I started :tongue:

Surely it is down to what your dick reacts to - like do you walk along a street, into a bar or a shop and see someone and get turned on. Then are they same or opposite sex? Does it happen with both? Some more than others, as in more men or women?

Are you following the mores and dictates of your family and friends or do you follow your own course? Remember we are all affected by those around us to a greater or lesser degree. The more you are in a tight community, the more you are likely to either follow the 'rules' of that group or 'get out of it' and rebel.

I started the thread as I realised it was the anniversary of Kinsey's birthday - yesterday.

 

[mitchymo]

I could accept this with no problems, all the more so because people can remain 'curious' for a long time ... either not investigating what they're curious about, or investigating and not making up one's mind, either through genuine uncertainty or denial.

It might be better to speak of 'leanings' in the secondary direction rather than 'curiosity.'

So then, keeping your five-stage range, you could offer:

1 Straight
2 Straight with bisexual leanings
3 Bisexual
4 Gay with bisexual leanings
5 Gay

Anyway ... a thought, mitchymo.

If Nick8 is satisfied with this then i am satisfied with this :biggrin1:

 

[scottbud]

ehhh and the point of removing the % bar is?....

I would rather go into thinking if sexuality handles both sexual attraction and emotional attraction and if such things shouldn't be split as sexuality is a very complex matter.... but going from the 100% scale to a 1-7 one,.... nah, pointless

I Guess (to me at least) the point is to gauge the weighting of the pollers rather than the individual.

 

[D_Jerry_Atric]

One confusion arises when I have to decide whether to answer this question historically or consider the now and presume ahead.

Apparently you're supposed to go by your sexual history, like what you have done and who you have done.

I've been all over the Kinsey scale. That's what I meant about the multiple places comment earlier.

I was way more into the male gender before I was ever into the female gender; but I did have a few years where I was so sexually attracted to women I wondered if I was straight then later in the day or a few hours later, I'd be equal or just want men, and this is just sexual attraction and who I wanted to have sex with at the time.

If you go by the numbers on the scale I've been everywhere from a 2-6, although I started out not attracted to women/the female gender at all, and I go back and forth from being pretty equal, to being so into men that I do not want any sex at all with women and this lasts for a very long time but then I'll suddenly want a male lover/husband and we have a part time consensual female submissive/slave who we see every few years and switch and let her become my Mistress a bit, or just have a big Sadist switchathon where my husband fucks my mouth and the submissive/slave switched into Domme/Mistress "rapes" me with her cunt, marks me with leather kisses from a crop all while I'm tied spread eagle with rope and blindfolded on a bed!

Then I'll go outside gender and want to do kink/SM/bondage/B&D with people who are not men or women in that they're genderqueer or intersexed.

At one point I thought I was falling in love with women when in college but I just mainly wanted sex with them, non-vanilla sex I might add, and since I started dating/having relationships and being sexually active with men I've found them very highly satisfying and I fall head over heels in love with men and this does not happen with women. I don't get this sort of satisfaction with sex or relationships with women even if I do enjoy certain types of non-vanilla sex with them.

I also have a sexuality that revolves around certain male fetishes and I have very few fetishes for women but they are not as strong like feet, and as far as the fetishes for the male gender go, only biological men can fulfill them, and I've written more about them on this site before, and they are actual fetishes, as in they are sexual attractions to things that are normally non-sexual like uniforms, men's hands, facial/body hair on men, and men wearing leather gloves to name a few.

I don’t even really know what I’d be on a linear scale like the Kinsey Scale, since I’ve been on various points of it at different times with different people. Or how I can’t really box my sexuality into a number, percent, or ratio; but I just know what I like and what I don’t like, and it really does not bother me if I pass as being homosexual.

I like Kinsey and his research and I see why it was a necessary thing to drop like an Atomic bomb on the world; but I see his scale as being rather outdated and it doesn't really show the fluidity of sexuality, plus there's the whole idea of assigning a number to something as complex, infinite, and personal as that.

The Kinsey scale doesn't really take into account people who are virgins to both/either sex, or who have had sex with the same/opposite sex but then decided that they didn't like it or are not attracted to that sex/gender at all.

Also the Kinsey scale doesn't take sex dreams/fantasies that into consideration or really ask who you've had relationships with.

That's why I like the Klein grid a lot more since it does take these things into account.

see here (2nd link is interactive):
The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid

Breakout Youth Project