Does anyone else hate the Kinsey scale?

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I don't hate it, but when it comes to my own sexuality I don't feel like it adequately describes it. I could be considered a Kinsey 5, but that can mean a whole lot of things. It could mean I'm strongly attracted to women and like men enough to occasionally have relationships with them. It could also mean I've been sort of attracted to two women in my life and faintly attracted to one guy.

There's also the question of whether I was experiencing attraction to someone or not. In middle school I was trying to convince myself that I had a crush on the class clown. I wasn't sure if I like him or not. Looking back on that moment I just liked his sense of humor and occasionally teasing him.

Unfortunately things are more complicated now. There was this guitar player. He liked me. He seemed cool and I enjoyed his guitar playing. I started to get nervous around him and occasionally blushed or laughed when people mentioned him.

I don't want to be attracted to him because I don't want to be bi. Actually I'm fine with the bi label. I proudly identified as bi for about a year. I just don't like the idea of liking men for some reason. Maybe because I feel emasculated or degraded. Hopefully it's because I don't like them in the first place. I spent my early teen years trying to convince myself I was into guys.

As long as you think of the Kinsey Scale as a mere framework, then I think it's okay.

Obviously, it does not adequately describe individual people.

I think it works for people who feel attraction normally. Since I don't feel attraction normally it doesn't work for me.

well I think the Kinsey scale was a great achievement for sexuality awareness and research but that was like 1950 and there has been so much more research since then. I like the fluid scale approach, sorry I don't know specifics, but basically there are many axes, sex, gender, orientation, thoughts, actions, etc. and all the axes are situated in a timeline graph.

I guess scales are important for statistical purposes but I would try to not get caught up in them, because no matter how complicated they can get in order to render an individual, they will never be able to.

There is some tendency here on WP for people to rely too much on statistics, and not enough on real-life experiences.

What can I say, the Kinsey scale is apparently irrelevant to me as it insists on basing everything to do with sexuality on a binary gender system I am outside.

Exactly. As another comment pointed out, it was the 1950's. One of the effects of the Cold War on our cultures was a great increase in seeing everything as a binary, even if it meant simply taking a dumbbell curve (or two overlapping bell curves) and simply truncating all but the peaks. Also, there's the history of pre-war Hirschfeld in Berlin vs the post war "lavender scare". Kinsey was a product of his time.

A more modern, descriptive generalizing scale that has started gaining acceptance in the last few years among researchers is not only more accurate & easily quantified, but eliminates the problem of labels & self labeling:

Q: What sex/gender were you assigned at birth?
(Male) 1 - - - - - - - - 10 (Female) (Neither) (Both)
Q: What sex/gender do you identify as right now?
(Male) 1 - - - - - - - - 10 (Female) (Neither) (Both)
Q: To What sex/gender are you attracted?
(Male) 1 - - - - - - - - 10 (Female) (Neither) (Both)

And yes, this still ignores that some people may be spiky, that is highly female in some attributes and highly male in others (and neither in others, and both in others). But it is a step forward in shifting our larger understanding away from the assumption of a single sex=gender=attraction male/female binary.

I didn't tell anybody what they "are." I was just speculating.

That's allowed, right?

If she would have said that she likes to be intimate with girls, I would have had a different response.

Think of it not as a scale on which you occupy one point, but a scale in which you can occupy a range. Sexuality is fluid - up to a point - for many people. I probably range between being a 3 and a 6. Sometimes however I think we shouldn't bother with labelling ourselves at all, as frankly, does it really matter that much?

And if I might add? Strictly speaking there is a separate, somewhat independent scale for each and every aspect of attraction/enjoyment. Everything, ranging from the purely biological, such as smell/pheromone receptors to visual models of perfection has it's own scale and doesn't have to correlate with any of the others! Also, they intersect in really interesting ways. As a blunt example, if someone's neurological reactions (both biological and learned) to male vs female smells & pheromones is neutral, they are far more likely to be attracted to both, so that attribute drops of out being a determining factor.

In the end, there are reasons that every person is seen as a beautiful, dynamic (within their personal ranges), unique individual. Categories such as gay, lesbian, straight, bi, poly, etc. are super gross generalizations that make discussion easier, but they also can tend to limit thinking.

Binary thinking is still very common. It certainly didn't end with the Cold War.



This question wouldn't work for Gender Fluid people.



This question would be troublesome for people with a fluid orientation. It also dosn't really work for pansexual people, since there is no 'all/any'.

The questions would also be troublesome for people who don't see 'sex' and 'gender' as being the same thing.

I should have mentioned that there are more complex versions for when more precision is needed. Still this version is a huge step forward compared to the assumption of a static binary of just 5-10 years ago. It would seem the inertia is in place for this one to replace the usual short list of sex/gender + three sexualities in fairly short order. Looking even further out there does seem to be a growing understanding in published papers that people each have somewhat context sensitive ranges rather than a single dot on a line representing each given attribute.

Had no idea what it was till I saw this topic so I quickly looked it up

It is far to binary to accurately describe or depict sexuality like where would asexual be where would pan sexual be its far too two sided when there are far more sexuality possibilities than this can describe

People trying to over simplify something that can't be simplified

I dunno, I think the Kinsey Scale works pretty well, but it's not a be-all end-all scale for measuring human sexuality, because it's a fluid thing that can ebb and flow over time. I think it's a lot better than just lumping people into "gay" "straight" or "bisexual" though.

That all said, it's not an ideal scale for individuals who are non-cisgendered or asexual.

My favorite way of measuring my sexuality is using percentages that don't have to add up to 100. A lot of people like to measure their sexuality with percentages that add up to 100. An example would be 40% gay and 60%. I prefer to identify as 30% gay and 1% straight.

I identify as 30% gay because I think my same sex attractions are similar to how a 30/70 person would experience them. I identify as 1% straight because I'm not sure if my straight feelings are real. Right now it feels wrong to identify as 1% straight for some reason.

It doesn't account for nonbinary genders or seperate sexual and romantic orientations. Since I mostly identify as female and my sexual and romantic orientation seems to match it's not much of an issue for me. People with those issues can figure out their own scale.

Yeah, I can't even Meyers-Briggs. I've always thought the definition of an integer was the only real anathema to that of a human. Of course it's clear to me why people might be drawn to quantifying the qualitative but I take issue with it when it makes people feel they're the end-all be-all of rationality. My mom does that, I can appreciate the ambition but that's the sort I'd rather see directed at actually building things.