What's the Kinsey scale actually mean?

[deremarc]

I'm one whose husband "may" be bi. In the past he has had sexual fantasies and sex with both sexes. At present, just sex with me (so opposite sex), and he truly would see his ideal as being heterosexual.

That puts him (I know I took this test for him which is not accurate) but at about a 1 or 1 1/2.

So, if you "are" bisexual, but would prefer not to be, how much does that skew your results?

[ScifiBiJen]

The Kinsey scale puts a lot of value on having DONE a lot of bisexual/homosexual acts. I consider myself to be 100% bisexual... but I've never done anything with a girl as yet. I tend to score very low on the Kinsey scale (between 1 and 2) even though my ideal would be a 3 (equal with both sexes). The Klein scale is similar in measuring one's past actions, but it also weighs your current actions and your ideal situation more than the Kinsey scale does. Again, my heterosexual past keeps me around a high 1, low 2 score.

If you don't want to be bisexual AND haven't done much in the past, I think your score on either test would be pretty low, but a low score could come from several things, not just a desire to be straight.

That said, I don't hold much value for these scales. That's just me. I think it's more important what the person (in this case, your husband) is feeling at that time.
(Yes, I've seen your previous postings about how your husband isn't being as open as you would like about his potential bisexuality. While he might not be willing to take the Kinsey test himself, I don't know how much the score would help you anyway... sorry.)

[smokey]

0=exclusively hetrosexual...7=exclusively homosexual...4=throughly bisexual.

There are 5 numbers between 0 and 7 of varying degrees of bisexuality.

What's it mean? That there are far more bisexuals out there than people want to talk about and if we weren't so hung up on the duality of straight/gay there would be far fewer gays and far fewer closet bisexuals.

I personally think that every person (especially men) should experince sex with their own gender at least once in their lives...it is an enlightening experince.

[DiamondDog]

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. I don't really see myself in ratios/percents in the whole gay/het dichotomy. I just go by the fact that I've been sexually and romantically attracted to both men and women. I've met people who think of their bisexuality in the whole het/gay dichotomy (i.e.-80% het, 80% gay) but I can't do this and I have absolutely no idea how people can come up with ratios like that with something so complex as human sexuality, let alone their own sexuality.

I can't really go by the Kinsey scale, because I've been at different points on it with different people. I don't really go by the Kinsey scale because it just measures past sexual behaviour, not desire. I have been all over it, and fallen in love with both men and women. I have found that most people rate themselves too low. For example in the original study if you were a "1" on the scale it just meant that you had sex with someone of the same gender while drunk, if someone was forced to do it, or just once out of curiosity and never again such as how lots of guys that grow up to be het are sexual with boys as a kid and masturbate together or "experiment".

I also think that the scale is out dated in today's fluid sexual society, where our definitions of orientations are changing and becoming obsolete; but I see just why the study had to be researched/published in a time when all sexuality was "in the closet" so to speak.

The Klein grid (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_Sexual_Orientation_Grid and here: http://www.youthnetsouthampton.org.uk/breakout/kleingrid.php) makes sense to me but I don't obsess over what my number is, and last time I took it, it said that I was mostly equal but a bit more into men. I've had times where I've thought that I'm het and times where I thought I was gay but I know that I'm neither, and that I've never been het even if society tries to program us into thinking that we are that way.

I do know that it all boils down to the person. I'm attracted to people for things that don't have to do with their gender such as intelligence, humour, personality, communication, our personal chemistry, kindness or other aspects that have more to do with who they are as a person than their gender. The more I get to know a person on a personal/intellectual level the more I'm attracted to them, and turned on by them. But when gender does come into play I will admit that I'm attracted to men because they're men and women because they're women. I am also very picky I'm a lot more picky with women than men as weird as that sounds. I can fall in love with both genders and I couldn't marry a woman and just "cut off" the idea of never being intimate with a man ever again, or just stick with one person only.

I actually have a copy of the Kinsey scale from the original study. I copied it verbatim from the study which I looked at two years ago. I see it as being outdated and rather unimaginative in that you can't really put all of human sexuality into 7 categories. Should I paste it?

[DiamondDog]

ok here's the scale straight from the source itself. I copied this verbatim from the study. Adjust the numbers for the scale that's on this site and how people here rate themselves.

0.Individuals are rated as 0's if they make no physical contacts which
result in erotic arousal or orgasm, and make no psychic responses to
individuals of their own sex. Their socio-sexual contacts and
responses are exclusively with indivduals of the opposite sex.

1.Individuals are rated as 1's if they have only had incidental
homosexual contacts which have involved physical or psychic response,
or incidental psychic responses without physical contact. The great
preponderance of their socio-sexual experience and reactions is
directed toward inviduals of the opposite sex. Such homosexual
experiences as these individuals have may occur only a single time or
two, or at least infrequently in comparrison to the amount of their
heterosexual experience. Their homosexual experiences never involve as
specific phychic reactions as they make to heterosexual stimuli.
Sometimes the homosexual activities in which they engage may be
inspired by curiosity, or may be more or less forced upon them by
other indivduals, perhaps when they are asleep or when they are drunk,
or under some other peculiar circumstance.

2. Individuals are rated as 2's if they have more t han incidental
homosexual experience, and/or if they respond rather definitely to
homosexual stimuli. Their heterosexual experiences and/or reactions
still surpass their homosexual experiences and/or reactions. THese
individuals may only have a small amount of homosexual experience or
they may have a considerable amount of it, but in every case it is
surpassed by the amount of heterosexual experience that they have
within the same period of time. THey usually recognize their quite
specific arousal by homosexual stimuli, but their responses to the
oposite sex are still stronger. A few of these individuals may have
all their overt experience in the homosexual, but their psychic
reactions to persons of the opposite sex indicate that they are still
predominantly heterosexual. This latter situation most often found
among young males who have not ventured to have actual intercourse
with girls, while their orientation is definitely heterosexual. On the
other hand, there are some males who should be rated as 2's because of
their strong reactions to their own sex, even though they have never
had overt relations with them.

3. Individuals who are rated as 3's stand midway on the
heterosexual-homosexual scale. They are about equally homosexual and
heterosexual in their overt experience and/or their psychic reactions.
In general, t hey accept and equally enjoy both types of contacts, and
have no strong preference for one or the other. Some persons are rated
3's, even though theymay have a larger amount of experience of one
sort, because they respond psychically to partners of both sexes, and
it is only a matter of circumstance that brings them into more
frequent contact with one of the sexes. Such a situation is not
unusual among single males, for male contacts are often more available
to them than female contacts. Married males, on the other hand, find
it simpler to secure a sexual outlet through intercourse with their
wives, even though some of them may be as interested in males as they
are females.

4. Individuals are rated as 4's if they have more overt activity and
or psychich reactions in the homosexual, while still maintaining a
fair amount of heterosexual activity and ore responding rather
definitley to heterosexual stimuli.

5. Individuals are rated as 5's if they are almost entirely homosexual
in their overt activities and or reactions. They do have incidental
experience with the opposite sex and sometimes react psychically to
individuals of the opposite sex.

6. Individuals are rated as 6's if they are exclusively homosexual,
both in regard to their overt experience and in regard to their
psychich reactions.

It will be observed that this is a seven-point scale, with 0 and 6 as
the extreme points, and with 3 as the midpoint in the classification.
On opposite sides of the midpoint the following relations hold:
0 is the opposite of 6
1 is the opposite of 5
2 is the opposite of 4

[DiamondDog]

I personally think that every person (especially men) should experince sex with their own gender at least once in their lives...it is an enlightening experince.

I agree with this; but while it's enlightening to us queer folk, most heterosexuals (aside from the ones that do it out of curiosity or because they have to try it) probably don't see it as being as enligtening as we do. Plus a lot of hets don't even try it once to see what it's like, because they have no desire to.

I know for a fact that while a lot of heterosexuals do it as kids/teenagers they aren't that into it as adults or don't see certain sex acts (that we'd consider to be sex) to actually be sex. I got a few of my het friends to experiment with me when we were this age and they were into it as kids/teenagers; but they're not into it now and get pissed off or really grossed out when I bring it up, even if it's something that we both consented to and wanted to do together at the time.

[deremarc]

What do you guys mean by enlightening?

[smokey]

I don't know about diamond dog but I think if you have sex with another man as opposed to just getting or recieving a blow job, but actually having sex including anal, it puts things in a different prespective. With another man you can experince the whole spectrum from dominace to passivity in one sexual session. I now know how a woman must feel...what being passive is like or what being taken is all about, how it feels to be penetrated. I have come to enjoy and embrace the feminine in me, and as a result I think it has made me a better lover to the women in my life.

[SLIMES]

0=exclusively hetrosexual...7=exclusively homosexual...4=throughly bisexual.

There are 5 numbers between 0 and 7 of varying degrees of bisexuality.

What's it mean? That there are far more bisexuals out there than people want to talk about and if we weren't so hung up on the duality of straight/gay there would be far fewer gays and far fewer closet bisexuals.

I personally think that every person (especially men) should experince sex with their own gender at least once in their lives...it is an enlightening experince.

It's either 0-6 as it was originaly or 1-7, not 0-7. Just a minor point that may have confused some people.