What’s more, the American Psychiatric Association listed the “condition” as a mental health disorder. That same year, an Indiana University researcher, Alfred Kinsey, along with two colleagues presented the Kinsey Scale in a book titled, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. It was a ground-breaker for two big reasons: One, it took the notion that a person was either straight or gay and threw it out the window. Instead, it used a heterosexual homosexual rating scale to measure sexual orientation. Two, it was a big step toward the truth that being homosexual or bi is not a mental illness but a form of non-traditional sexual activity.
How The Kinsey Scale Came to Be
Kinsey’s premise in conducting his research was this: the human male and human female, and their sexual orientation, attractions, thoughts, and feelings, were not exclusive to straight or gay preferences. Instead, they fell within a range of combinations.
After conducting thousands of interviews, Kinsey and his colleagues published their research findings, including the following results:
- An average of 37% of males had had a gay experience between their adolescence and old age years.
- Almost 46% of men interviewed reported some type of sexual reaction to both genders, whether they followed up on those reactions or not. Their sexual orientation was obviously somewhat mixed.
- Far fewer women were interviewed, but among them, 13% had had a same-sex experience, and about 6% of females from ages 20-35 were either bisexual or exclusively homosexual. Kinsey later published a fuller report, Sexual Behavior of the Human Female, in 1953, delving much further in female sexual orientation.
- Kinsey concluded that about 10% of the population in the U.S. was gay in the late 40s and early 50s. This percentage of exclusively homosexual reporting may have been skewed somewhat by the population the sex researchers interviewed.
Kinsey realized that he needed to report what his research showed on a continuum and so developed the “Kinsey Scale,” in order to describe sexual orientation in a simple and clear way.
The Kinsey Scale Details
Based upon the interviews, Kinsey and his two colleagues, Wardell Pomeroy and Clyde Martin, concluded that people cannot be categorized with a single sexual orientation such as straight, gay, or bisexual. They can be combinations of these, and these combinations can change over time. So, his team developed a seven-point scale ranging from 0 – 6, along with an “X” for those who had never had socio sexual contacts. This came to be known as the Kinsey Scale. Ultimately, his work resulted in the set up of the Kinsey Institute on the Indiana University campus.
Here is a brief rundown of the seven variables in the Kinsey Scale. Everyone interviewed was placed on this scale, and thus the percentage results in the final Kinsey Reports.
- “0” is for those who identify as exclusively heterosexual, with no thought or sexual attraction to others of the same gender. Their sexual orientation was fully straight, and sexual behavior was confined to contacts or reaction to the opposite sex.
- “1” are those who are mostly straight but may have a slight sexual attraction to same-sex others
- “2” is someone who is mostly straight but who has an attraction to same-sex others or has engaged in some homosexual activity. As a whole, though they describe sexual orientation as primarily heterosexual.
- “3” describes someone who prefers both heterosexual homosexual sexual behavior, engaging in sexual activities with both genders. Their sexual orientation identity is fully bisexual and may or may not be equally heterosexual and homosexual.
- “4” identifies as homosexual but with more than a slight attraction to those of the opposite sex. They engage in at least some homosexual behavior.
- “5” self-describes as gay but has a slight attraction to the opposite sex. They do not engage in homosexual behavior but have such mental reactions
- “6” is a fully gay person with no attraction to the opposite sex. This sexual behavior is purely homosexual.
- “X” refers to someone who identifies as “asexual,” having had no socio sexual contacts. This does not mean that a person will not identify possible sexual identities at some future time.
If you want to use this scale yourself to see where your sexual orientation might fall, there is no official Kinsey Scale “test” to take that will give you a score. You just look at the descriptions and place yourself on the scale.
You are probably asking, “so what?” The only answer is that you are contributing to some pretty old and outdated research if you want to share “who” you are with the folks at KinseyInstitute.org. Yes, the Kinsey Institute still exists. They do important further research on sexual behavior and sexual orientation. Fortunately, they have advanced far beyond their start with an outdated heterosexual homosexual rating scale.
What the Kinsey Scale “Looks” Like
Here is a graphic that gives a great visual of the Kinsey Scale:
By now, you can see that this research sits in the “Stone Age” of studying human sexuality. In fact, it is almost meaningless today.
Why The Kinsey Scale Has Little Meaning Today
We can thank Kinsey for starting a discussion about non-straight sex and society’s better understanding of it. But given where we are today, this Kinsey Scale test is way too simple and limited.
- It only has four categories – gay, straight, bi, and no sex at all. When we think about all of the sexual preferences and orientations today, the Kinsey Scale is too outdated for the LGBTQIA+ community to find any meaning in it. If you are trans, for example, how does this scale even relate to you? There is no gender identity factor.
- It tries to combine straight, gay, bi, and asexual attractions and behaviors into relationships with one another. If you have sexual event with a same-gender person, it should not be related to one you have with the opposite gender. They are separate sexuality related measures.
- It tries to combine actual behavior with attraction. You could be attracted to a same-sex person and never act on that attraction, and vice versa.
- It avoids any discussion of the romantic aspect of sexual relationships, both heterosexual and homosexual
The Kinsey Scale does not give any real insights into the current LGBTQIA+ community of today, such as homosexual categories or the sociosexual contacts that span such a wide range of sexual behaviors.
There are Some Issues with the Research Itself
In 2013, Dina Spector, contributor to Business Insider, published an article on the research of Kinsey, and issues that surrounded his work. The points she made were probably valid. Most important was this: While the Kinsey team interviewed thousands of men about their sexual histories, past and current sexual attraction, with both the same and/or opposite genders, this initial sex research was conducted on a large number of prisoners - probably not reflective of American society as a whole. And the original Kinsey reports were not validated by peer reviewed studies.
Other research practices have been questioned. In a PBS article, titled “Kinsey: Teaching and Research,” it was noted that the initial Kinsey Reports included Kinsey himself and some of his research assistants as study subjects. This is not good research practice.