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Kinsey scale

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Title: Kinsey scale  
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Subject: Sexual orientation, Bisexuality, Homosexuality and psychology, Human female sexuality, Non-heterosexual
Collection: 1948 Introductions, Bisexuality, Scales, Sexology, Sexual Orientation
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Kinsey scale

Kinsey scale of sexual responses, indicating degrees of sexual orientation

The Kinsey scale, also called the Heterosexual–Homosexual Rating Scale,[1] attempts to describe a person's sexual experience or response at a given time. It uses a scale from 0, meaning exclusively heterosexual, to 6, meaning exclusively homosexual. In both the Male and Female volumes of the Kinsey Reports, an additional grade, listed as "X", was used to mean "no socio-sexual contacts or reactions". The reports were first published in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others, and were also prominent in the complementary work Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).[1]

Contents

  • Overview 1
  • Table of the scale 2
  • Findings 3
    • Kinsey reports 3.1
  • Later developments 4
  • See also 5
  • References 6
  • External links 7

Overview

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 emphasizing 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.
— Kinsey, et al. (1948). pp. 639, 656)

Table of the scale

Sexual orientation
Male and female symbols overlaid
Sexual orientations
Non-binary categories
Research
Non-human animals

The Kinsey scale ranges from 0, for those who would identify themselves as exclusively heterosexual with no experience with or desire for sexual activity with their same sex, to 6, for those who would identify themselves as exclusively homosexual with no experience with or desire for sexual activity with those of the opposite sex, and 1-5 for those who would identify themselves with varying levels of desire for sexual activity with either sex, including "incidental" or "occasional" desire for sexual activity with the same sex.[2]

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 No socio-sexual contacts or reactions

Findings

Kinsey reports

  • Men: 11.6% of white males aged 20–35 were given a rating of 3 for this period of their lives.[3] The study also reported that 10% of American males surveyed were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55" (in the 5 to 6 range).[3]
  • Women: 7% of single females aged 20–35 and 4% of previously married females aged 20–35 were given a rating of 3 for this period of their lives.[4] 2% to 6% of females, aged 20–35, were given a rating of 5[5] and 1% to 3% of unmarried females aged 20–35 were rated as 6.[6]

Later developments

There have been similar studies where the scale is from 0 to 10. In such studies, the person would be asked a question such as "If 0 is completely gay and 10 is completely hetero, what is your orientation number?".[7] Furthermore, the additional X grade used to mean "no socio-sexual contacts or reactions" is often today described as asexuality.[8][9]

The Kinsey Scale does not address all possible sexual expressions. Others have stepped forward to define it further. In 1980, Michael Storms proposed a two dimensional chart with an X and Y axis.[10] This scale explicitly takes into account the case of asexuality and the simultaneous expression of hetero-eroticism and homo-eroticism.[11] Fritz Klein, in his Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, included factors such as how orientation can change throughout a person's lifetime, as well as emotional and social orientation.

Kinsey, Storm, and Klein are only three of more than 200 scales to measure and describe sexual orientation.[12] For example, there are scales that rate homosexual behaviors from 1 to 14, and measures for gender, masculinity, femininity, and transsexualism.[13][14]

Today, many sexologists see the Kinsey scale as relevant to sexual orientation but not comprehensive enough to cover all sexual identity issues. They suggest that sexual identity involves at least three different spectra, sexual orientation being only one of them (two others being biological sex and gender identity).[15]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b
  2. ^
  3. ^ a b Kinsey, et al. 1948. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Table 147, p. 651
  4. ^ Kinsey, et al. 1953. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Table 142, p. 499
  5. ^ Kinsey, et al. 1953. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, p. 488
  6. ^ Kinsey, et al. 1953. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Table 142, p. 499, and p. 474
  7. ^ Sexuality Now: Embracing Diversity (2006) – Janbell L Caroll
  8. ^ (Male volume, Table 141; Female volume, page 472)
  9. ^
  10. ^
  11. ^
  12. ^
  13. ^
  14. ^
  15. ^

External links

  • Kinsey Institute home page
  • Kinsey's Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale
  • An operationalized version, the Kinsey Scale Test.
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