Visualizing Sexuality As A Spectrum

By Stephanie Barnes

Charts and scales can help better explain many things in life, and sexuality is no different. One of the most popular scales used to understand sexuality is the Kinsey Scale, which was created to help describe a person’s sexual orientation. Though not without its limitations, this scale can be a useful way for some people to make sense of their sexual orientation.

What is the Kinsey Scale?

The Kinsey Scale is a visual representation of sexuality along a spectrum ranging from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual. Originally called the Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale, the Kinsey Scale was created by Drs. Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy, and Clyde Martin and first introduced in their book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948.

“The scale was created as a way to ‘measure’ someone’s sexual orientation beyond simply heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual, based on a spectrum-like scale where ‘exclusively heterosexual’ was on one end and ‘exclusively homosexual’ on the other,” explains Anne Hodder-Shipp, multi-certified sex and relationships educator and founder of Everyone Deserves Sex Ed.

At the time, Kinsey’s research found that most people fell somewhere between the two, Hodder-Shipp notes. This, and much of Kinsey’s research, was considered subversive and groundbreaking for its time.

That said, today the scale is considered to have some limitations, both in terms of its ability to accurately represent the vast array of experiences of sexuality and because it excludes nonbinary folks. Not everyone will feel like they fit into one of these seven categories, and that’s OK.

How it started.

The Kinsey Scale was named after Alfred Kinsey, who is widely considered one of the 20th century’s most significant sex researchers, according to sexologist Carol Queen, Ph.D. It’s no stretch to say that without his work, today’s sexual landscape would look very different and less diverse.

Kinsey, who was an entomologist, was hired at Indiana University to teach sex education, but there wasn’t much to draw from. So, with the help of a team of grad students, he began doing his own research, much of which ultimately changed the world of sexual education and understanding.

The Kinsey Scale was developed in an attempt to show how sexual orientation (specifically, heterosexuality and homosexuality) existed on a continuum, or spectrum. A common misconception today, Queen adds, is that “Kinsey was trying to codify a binary way of looking at sex. This is ahistorical, though.”

“People did think in binary, either/or terms in those days to a significant degree,” she notes but adds, “Among other things, the Kinsey scale illustrates how significant bisexuality is since everything in the middle of the scale could be called bisexual.”

How the Kinsey scale is used.

As mentioned, the Kinsey scale is used to categorize a person’s sexual attraction between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual. The scale runs from zero to six and includes an additional category labeled X, which attempts to represent asexuality.

Here’s what each label represents:

• 0: Exclusively heterosexual behavior or attraction
• 1: Predominantly heterosexual and only incidentally homosexual behavior or attraction
• 2: Predominantly heterosexual but more than incidentally homosexual behavior or attraction
• 3: Equally heterosexual and homosexual behavior or attraction
• 4: Predominantly homosexual but more than incidentally heterosexual behavior or attraction
• 5: Predominantly homosexual and only incidentally heterosexual behavior or attraction
• 6: Exclusively homosexual behavior or attraction
• X: No socio-sexual contacts or reactions 

(Note: Some versions of the scale use the term “slightly” instead of “incidentally,” and “mostly” instead of “predominantly.” So for example: “Mostly heterosexual and only slightly homosexual.”)

Pros & cons of the scale.

We know much more today about sexual orientation, attraction, and human sexuality, and so while the Kinsey Scale was groundbreaking for its time, it also has its limitations. Like everything else, it has its pros and cons.

Pros:

1. It acknowledges the spectrum of sexuality.

The Kinsey Scale does an excellent job of debunking the “either/or” thinking surrounding sexuality. It was the first scientific scale to put forward the idea that sexuality is a continuum and isn’t limited to being just heterosexual or homosexual. As Queen points out, the scale shows that sexual orientation can exist on a spectrum, and much of the spectrum thinking we do today—the ace spectrum, for instance—owes a lot to this conceptualization.

2. It highlights bisexuality.

The Kinsey Scale emphasizes the existence of bisexuality and the many ways a person can experience it in its categories one through five. Kinsey’s research at the time found 37% of the men interviewed had some kind of same-sex experience between adolescence and adulthood, and this number jumped to 50% for unmarried men by the age of 35. Among women, 13% had a same-sex experience. This data was groundbreaking for its time and made it clear that human sexuality was vast.

“It really helped make bisexuality visible, as well as helping bring homosexuality out of the closet. In my day (the ’70s, when I came out), the gay movement very openly acknowledged its debt to Kinsey,” Queen says.

3. Aids in understanding.

Queen says the Kinsey Scale can help a person (or a clinician working with people around sexuality issues) understand their own or their client’s sexual experience, help them visualize their sexual orientation if they find it helpful to do so, and show that this experience is on a continuum and there may be room for them to explore different options than they have so far.

Cons:

1. Excludes nonbinary folks.

The Kinsey Scale “maintains the sex and gender binary,” Hodder-Shipp points out. Describing people’s behavior as exclusively some mix of “heterosexual” or “homosexual” depicts gender and sex in binary terms, making the Kinsey Scale less useful for those who are nonbinary. Some trans and intersex people may also find these categories limiting, not fully nuanced enough, or exclusionary.

The scale wasn’t intentionally meant to exclude these groups of people, Queen notes; it is in many ways an artifact of its time, and language to describe gender diversity was simply in its infancy at the time the scale was developed.

2. Focuses on behavior rather than identity.

The Kinsey Scale focuses on behavior rather than identity. So rather than describing how much a person identifies as heterosexual or homosexual, it describes how heterosexual or homosexual their pattern of sexual behaviors has been. This distinction matters a lot to some people: For example, a lesbian who only came out later in life may largely have a history of having sex with men, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a lesbian.

According to Queen, Kinsey didn’t think it was appropriate to use orientation terms as anything but adjectives—he did not want us to use these words to define ourselves, but so far he has lost that battle with history, she says. “Still, when we think about why he felt so strongly, it might point to the fluidity of identity, or the way people can engage in all sorts of behavior that doesn’t match their ‘label,’ and when we look at our history of behaviors and attractions, those are really useful insights.”

3. Doesn’t consider romantic attraction.

The Kinsey Scale focuses on sexual attraction without distinguishing between sexual and romantic orientations, sex and relationship coach Azaria Menezes points out. For some people, there’s a difference between who we’re sexually attracted to and who we’re romantically attracted to, but this isn’t accounted for on the scale.

4. Oversimplifies sexual orientation.

In general, many people today argue that the scale can feel like an oversimplification of how many people experience sexual attraction. “Though it did technically create new sexual orientation ‘categories,’ the scale still simplified sexual attraction in ways that can feel arbitrary and even confusing,” Hodder-Shipp says.

“Like, what does it mean to be ‘incidentally’ homosexual or heterosexual? Where do I fall on the Kinsey Scale if I’m not really heterosexual but also definitely not homosexual? What if I feel lovey-dovey feelings toward pretty much any gender, but only sometimes feel sexually attracted to one gender?”

5. Can pressure people into categories they don’t resonate with.

Some people don’t desire to label their sexual orientation or attraction at all, Menezes points out. Not everyone feels comfortable being identified as a number on a scale, and with only seven points, the options are limited. And since there is so much new information when it comes to sexuality and seemingly infinite ways to experience sexual attraction, the Kinsey Scale may not quite “fit” anymore.

Other scales and variations.

Today, there are several other scales that try to present a visual representation of sexual orientation and identity. Two of the more popular and inclusive ones are the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid and the Storms Sexuality Axis.

• The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid is a direct riff on the Kinsey Scale. It was created by Fritz Klein in 1978 and has seven categories, including sexual behavior, sexual attraction, sexual fantasies, lifestyle preferences, and more. It works by having each respondent rate their preferences in each category across three different points in time—past, present, and ideal—which improves upon some of the limitations of the Kinsey Scale. The Klein scale also does a better job of including the ace spectrum, as well as other gender identity scales of today, says Queen.
• The Storms Sexuality Axis was developed by Michael D. Storms and plots eroticism on an X and Y axis, with heterosexuality on the Y-axis and homosexuality on the X-axis. While it expands on Kinsey’s ideas, it also allows for more inclusivity and considers infinitely more categories of bisexuality as well as asexuality.

The bottom line.

The Kinsey Scale was incredible and ahead of its time, but in many ways, it may not quite fit how we talk about sexuality and sexual identity today. It’s not a one-fits-all situation, and you absolutely don’t have to fit or identify within the Kinsey Scale.

If you do find yourself identifying with the parameters set on the scale, Menezes suggests “taking what you love and leaving the rest.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

The decades-old classification system for the study of sex may still have value, but new frameworks offer more.

By Sophie Putka

Alfred Kinsey’s imprint on the world of sexuality has — and continues to — inspire criticism, fascination, even outrage. It’s a captivating legacy for a man who spent the first half of his career studying the gall wasp.

Depending who you ask, Kinsey — the creator of the Kinsey Scale of sexual behavior along a continuum — either ignited a radically progressive understanding of human sexuality; created a scale that doesn’t come close to encapsulating the range of human sexuality; or even, according to one critic, “spent his lifetime ripping down the institution of the family.”

First published in 1948, Kinsey’s eponymous scale classified people according to their degree of attraction or sexual behavior toward the same or other sex: 0 being “exclusively heterosexual” and 6 being “exclusively homosexual” — with a big swath of gray in between. But for the first time, scientific inquiry had acknowledged that there weren’t just two options.

And though it’s unlikely that a visit to a therapist will earn you a number on the Kinsey Scale today, the legacy of Kinsey lives on in new models of sexuality. But they’ve outgrown him, too. Professionals and researchers say that sexuality is tied up with many other factors — and isn’t necessarily a point on a straight line. Today’s understanding still relies on so much of what Kinsey described, but adds so much more.

Kinsey’s Brave New World

One thing is undisputed: Kinsey’s work was unlike anything his world had ever seen before. In the 1940s, homosexuality was considered a felony in every state because of what were called “sodomy laws.” It wouldn’t be until 1962 that the first state changed that. It wasn’t until 1973 that the bible of psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), removed “homosexuality” from its list of diagnoses.

“It’s been just enough decades now that it’s hard for people who were born since 1980 to understand the world in which the Kinsey Reports dropped kind of a bomb,” says Carol Queen, a sociologist, educator, co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Sex & Culture and staff sexologist at Good Vibrations.

Kinsey and his team meticulously collected the accounts of over 11,000 people and their sexual behavior in one-on-one interviews. He ran statistical analyses based on his methodical data collection. Some of his methods have been called into question — such as his omission of sample data from non-white people — and others would have been unheard of today.

Exactly what happened, and whether it should serve to discredit some of his research, is hard to verify today, but accounts include his correspondence with a pedophile to collect descriptions of child sexual behavior, or encouraging and filming sexual relationships between his staff.

With the reports that came from this research — Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953 — Kinsey shattered the idea of sexual behavior as binary, showing that the sexual habits of thousands of Americans were as varied and diverse as a field of wildflowers.

Kinsey found that 37 percent of men had had a same-sex sexual experience by age 45. Women, too, turned out to be sexual beings with same and different-gender attraction and behavior — 13 percent had had a same-sex experience. The Human Female report caused such a backlash that Kinsey’s funding from the Rockefeller Foundation was cut. The scale’s function, when it first appeared in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, was as a way to visualize the information in the text.

“That somebody doesn’t have to be only one sexual orientation, that’s super basic now, right?” says Queen. “It was not super basic back then … Your life could be destroyed if you were discovered to be homosexual, and plenty of people’s were.”

Where the Scale is Off

Current scholars of sex and sexuality don’t deny the Kinsey Scale’s place in history, but can easily identify its blind spots today. “The Kinsey scale … served a really important purpose in moving the field forward at a time when people thought about sexuality in a simplistic, binary, two-categories kind of way,” says Brian Feinstein, an associate professor of psychology at Rosalind Franklin University, whose research focuses on bisexuality and sexual and gender minority health. “But I think at this point that it is largely kind of outdated, and I don’t think it’s sufficiently nuanced to capture the complexity of sexual orientation and sexuality.”

For one, Kinsey’s scale sits along a single axis: it’s a line, and implies that the more one is attracted to one sex, the less attraction there is to the other. “We now know that that’s not really the case. You can be very attracted to both sexes or not attracted to either sex,” says Brendan Zeitch, an associate professor at the University of Queensland’s School of Psychology, who has studied the genetics of human sexuality. “It doesn’t really capture the full range of what’s going on.”

As John Sylla of the American Institute of Bisexuality and Chicago University’s law school put it, “Just because I like Chinese food [that] doesn’t mean I dislike Italian food. Just because I like one sex [that] doesn’t mean I dislike a different one.”

Then there are factors of sexuality that Kinsey conflated, but that don’t always overlap. Sexual attraction — to whom you’re attracted — and sexual behavior — how you actually behave — don’t always agree, but Kinsey lumped the two together on his scale, which ostensibly is a measure of both combined. Kinsey also excluded sexual identity — how one labels oneself — which is now considered a third layer altogether.

For example, today one might identify as “gay” in a same-sex relationship simply out of convenience, even if they feel attraction to other sexes besides their own. Or one might feel attracted to the same sex but have never acted on it, and meanwhile, label themselves as “straight.” In these scenarios, sexual behavior, sexual identity and sexual attraction don’t match up.

There are also problems when it comes to the limiting framework of binary sex within which the scale sits. The scientific community understands sex itself as more than just a set of XX or XY chromosomes. If it were as simple as that, intersex people would not exist. Gender may not line up with a given sex, further complicating Kinsey’s neat scale.

A More Complex Understanding of Sexual Reality

Today, it’s generally understood that sexuality exists in shades of gray, but modern frameworks go beyond the single-line continuum Kinsey provided toward a concept of sexuality that contains much more. New tools have emerged in the years since his breakthrough.

One is called the Storms Sexuality Axis from 1980, which expands Kinsey’s concept to a two-axis scale that accounts for attraction to same or opposite sexes, but also levels of “asexuality” and “bisexuality,” thus partially accounting for what Kinsey overlooked. 

Moshe Rozdzial is a psychotherapist and sex therapist at GLOW counseling in Denver, with a focus on LGBTQ+ issues. He says that one newer tool he works with is the Klein Grid, conceived by Fritz Klein in 1978, who went on to found the American Institute of Bisexuality. The tool encompasses numbered scales for sexual attraction and behavior, but also incorporates social relationships, sexual identity, and lifestyle among other factors in the past, present and future.

Rozdzial says he uses the Klein scale to help clients understand themselves better, and there’s no limit on even the seven factors Klein included. He’ll add questions of his own, on politics, for example. “Nobody’s watching over my shoulder and saying, ‘oh, you can’t add anything to this,’” he says. “It’s just the starting point of … a conversation about how each person is intersectional in all the ways of their existence, including their sexuality and their sexual orientation and attraction.”

Tools and Labels Have Their Uses

One might wonder why today, with our quickly evolving tapestry of sexual alignments, we’d need tools of this kind to begin with. Haven’t we moved beyond graphs and charts?

Queen says that identifying with a word to describe one’s identity allows people to find community. “For so many of us who didn’t feel safe … finding our people has been lifesaving,” she says. “And the Kinsey Scale helped us think in those terms, even if we’re doing it this year, where there are forty sexual orientations that the name for didn’t exist back then.”

According to Feinstein, we can use tools like these today to, in part, help identify problems like health disparities and fix them. “Being able to capture a person’s sexual orientation in a way that is sort of concrete, and being able to collect that data, ultimately ends up informing the research that goes into helping to promote policies that are more equitable,” he says. Research on sexuality can contribute to issues like marriage equality or HIV treatment, he adds.

For others, the Kinsey Scale serves to remind us of the many things we still do not know. “The Kinsey Scale is basic, but it does a good job of teaching us and reminding us [of] that Shakespeare quote: ‘there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” Sylla says. “We live in very exciting times with increasing knowledge and acceptance of diversity, and more freedom to explore our potential.”

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