How to interpret the Kinsey Scale of Sexual Orientation

Note: Mods, I think this belongs in IMHO because I’m looking for opinions on how other folks would interpret this. However, I do realize that this is a subject that can turn into a debate quickly, even though that’s certainly not my intent. Feel free to move this as required.

In this thread by Qadgop the Mercotan several of the millions (myself included) are posting their sexual orientation based on the Kinsey Scale.

I have listed myself as a 0 (exclusively heterosexual) on this scale. However, given that I have had a few sexual experiences that (incidently, IMHO) involved other males, I’m wondering if I’m interpreting the intent of this scale correctly. .

It seems you are supposed to take both actual experience and fantasy into account when evaluating your Kinsey ranking, so I’ll give a little detail about both to give you an idea of the source of my confusion.

As an 11-year-old boy who had just discovered deliberate masturbation, a friend of mine and I had several sessions of masturbating in each other’s presence. There were a few times when this also included mutual masturbation (I did him, he did me), and once or twice when we “sucked” each other. I put that in quotes because we were a couple of completely inexperienced 11 year olds who had no clue about what we were doing. This almost oral sex consisted of putting the other guy’s penis in your mouth for about thirty seconds and holding it there. Since this didn’t do anything for either of us, we gave it up as a ridiculous idea even though we had heard rumors about how good “blow jobs” were supposed to be.

Now that certainly seems to qualify as homosexual behavior, and there is no doubt I enjoyed it. However, for my part, I was just an extremely horny 11-year-old boy (I’m sure that’s redundant) looking to get off. For me, the fact the only person I could do that with was a boy was a nuisance to be put up with, not something I was looking for. I was always fantasizing about girls when doing this, usually about Yolanda, a girl in my class who had gotten actual boobs that summer. So while it undoubtedly was sexual contact with a boy, I would have much preferred a girl.

Years later, during my first marriage, the now ex-wife and I had several threesomes, both MFM and FMF, and a few foursomes. Obviously, with two (or more) men and one woman all coupled (tripled? :slight_smile: ) together at once, you’re going to have some contact with the other guy. It never occurred to me to shy away from this, and a few times it was pretty intimate contact, although no direct sex between the guys.

For my part, I enjoyed the MFM experiences more than the FMF ones. But not because I was turned on about the other guy, but because my lady enjoyed it so much more. She just loved the feeling of two or more guys, and it turned me on to see her so turned on, if you see what I mean.

As far as fantasies are concerned, I don’t remember ever having a fantasy about just another guy. I’ve had many fantasies about threesomes, foursomes, etc, but they always center around the women, and how fun it is to drive them wild while having a good time myself. As near as I can tell the other guys are necessary to the action in these scenarios but are not the object of any sexual desire on my part, just as with my real life experiences.

So in a nutshell, I’ve had a little sexual contact with the same sex, but in my mind this was incidental to the experiences as a whole, and my fantasy life and emotional involvements seem to be exclusively for the opposite sex. So I counted myself a 0 on the Kinsey scale.

But what do you think? Am I interpreting the scale correctly, or should I be a 1 or higher?

based on the criteria in my thread, I’d rate you as a 1.

Ok, you’re the doctor. :slight_smile: If you want to mark me as such in your survey, it’s cool with me.

But to clarify, while I’ve been thinking that the intent and/or desire (which for me has always been aimed at the opposite sex) was the thing that mattered, the kind of experiences I’ve had would qualify me as “incidentally homosexual”, at least in Kinsey’s thinking. Is this correct?

I can see where that makes sense. Any other opinions?

As I mentioned in the other thread, I consider Kinsey “0” and “6” to be theoretical extremes. I think calling youself a “0”, an exclusive hetersexual, would have to mean that the sum total of homoerotic thoughts and experiences in your life added up to a big fat “0” – and that means never even having had a fleeting thought like “I wonder what it’s like to be gay?” So no, I don’t think you’re a “0”. I don’t think anyone is a “0”. But if anyone is, it ain’t you. By anyone’s standard you’ve had consensual incidental homosexual experiences, if not desires, so you’re a “1” at least. And since I consider “1” to be the practical heteosexual endpoint and the place to stick people with no real homoerotic experience, under my interpretation of the scale I’d personally be inclined to label you as a “1.5”.

Hum, I classify myself a 6 on that scale. I have had exactly one very minor heterosexual experience which was driven by sheer curiosity and not desire. I have never had any fantasies involving women, nor desires. To be very blunt and not meaning to offend, I find the idea of sex with a woman quite repulsive. However, I was curious to see what, ehm, certain parts really looked like. I am not keen to repeat the experience.

Well, to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever had a thought like that. At least not in the sense of having any desire to try it.

1.5 huh? (cue cheesy 70’s tv theme song) Movin’ on up… :slight_smile:

This is interesting, because I guess I’ve always figured that it was your emotional components that defined your sexuality. I’ve never had any desire to have sex with just a man, and I can’t imagine myself in a romantic relationship with one. I’m not repulsed by the thought, it’s just that the desire is effectively zero.

But it seems pretty clear that based on all that, Kinsey still would have considered me a 1 at least. Very interesting.

Ugly

I think desire is the most important thing, but experience has to count for something. How much it counts is a matter of opinion, but I think incidental homosexual (or heterosexual) activity, if consensual, is enough to push someone at least a little bit away from being as straight (or gay) as you can possibly be. Of course, if it really is incidental then I wouldn’t call the person bisexual either – I mean, for all practical purposes they’re still straight (or gay), just not perfectly so. But who expects perfection?

It may interest you to know that some sex researchers feel that it is inaccurate to try to assign a number or label to a person’s lifelong sexuality. Past, present, and future experience and desire is a lot of data to boil down into one Kinsey number. While I don’t think a little adolescent experimentation counts for nothing, I also don’t think there’s any real reason why it should define your sexuality for the rest of your life. If I were you, I might prefer to think of myself as falling somewhere between “1” and “2” in the past but a solid “1” (or even somewhere from “0” to “1”, depending on your interpretation of the scale) at present and for the forseeable future.

Saying no one can be a 0 is exactly as ignorant as a homophobe saying no one is really gay, they just haven’t met the right woman to “make a real man out of them.”

So now its not enough to be cool about whatever anyone’s orientation may be (as I am), I’m supposed to lie about my heterosexuality in order to be politically correct? Screw that.

RKJUgly - You say you are a heterosexual man who has never had thoughts of other mles but who has had sexual encounters that involved other males. Surely this puts you higher on the scale than another heterosexual man who has never had thoughts of other males and who has never had sexual encounters that involved other males?

Kalashnikov, did you realise that they are also saying that the other end is true too - that there is no 100% straight person, and also no 100% gay person, but that everyone falls into differing degrees in between? This isn’t an anti-heterosexual thing, it’s based on the assumption that there is no 100% in anything.

I rate myself as a 5, for about the same level of experience with heterosexual sex that RJKUgly has with homosexual sex. No real emotional content, just a willing friend and an experimental interest. Oh, and a threesome.

Heterosex has never interested me at all, but I don’t find the very concept of sleeping with a woman repulsive; if keeping my cover in a supersecret spy mission requires me to bump uglies with the fairer sex, I can certainly do my best for my country. But I’ll be thinking of big buff hairy guys when I do so, that’s for sure.

Lamia is expressing the opinion that the Kinsey 0 and 6 ratings are theoretical; I disagree. And, apparently, so does the Kinsey Institute. If you look through their page on the prevalence of homosexuality, you’ll notice frequent references to small but existent quantities of exclusive homo- and hetero-sexuals. And since the scale is Kinsey’s creation, I’ll defer to Kinsey’s authority on what it means. It seems silly to use a scale from zero to six, but to only let people use one through five.

From what I’ve heard, females are much more likely to have bisexual thoughts and fantasies. I believe it. I’m just waiting to find the right girl to experiment with (if I can talk my boyfriend into it).

Maybe this will help you some, RJK.

While some of your experiences could certainly be labeled homosexual in physicality, you didn’t expressly (or even particularly) desire a man to suck on you, etc. In terms of activity I’d label you a 1, maybe higher, but in terms of desire I’d go much further down (ack. Bad Pun Police are coming, I know…) than that, since it seems to me from your OP that your desire lays almost completely within the female human spectrum. That your attraction to men rose when your female partner was being pleased by one just tells me you’re not a jerk;)

If there were a scale for experience and a scale for desire I rather imagine your two scores would be quite separated, as your desire would be fairly close to, if not exactly at, 0, while your “experience” score would be posibly up past 1.

Oh, and re: MrVisible’s comment on being repulsed by the idea of sleeping with a woman, I know I’ve read several accounts on this board of people knowing someone who said “You know, I’d be so attracted to you except you stuck it in a woman/had a dick inside you…”. To them, it would seem, the concept of sex with a member of the opposite gender is that icky.

Ehm, I was the one who said he was repulsed - MrVisible indicated that he wasn’t. :slight_smile:

This is an interesting topic. But for me, the real issue is not so much “how to interpret the kinsey scale?” as it is “how could the Kinsey scale be improved?” Kinsey’s scale is certainly an improvement on “Pick one: straight, gay, or bi” (which is an improvement on “you’re either straight or gay”), but it’s still pretty darn limited in describing something as complicated as sexuality and its many permutations.

Take for example a group of men who receive a 2 rating–

One ‘2’ may have had significant homosexual experiences in his youth, including a close, physical and emotional relationship with a classmate in high school, but never as an adult;

another ‘2’ may feel very attracted to men, fantasize about it, check out cute guys, etc., but not have acted on his desires for religious reasons or because he’s married or scared or whatever;

a third ‘2’ might have earned his rating by having many homosexual experiences as an adult, but only as anonymous or one-night stands and only for physical pleasure, without any emotional connection;

another ‘2’ may have participated in 3-somes with his wife (MFM), for her pleasure and excitement, but never consider doing it without her present;

another ‘2’ might enjoy the emotional connection and relationship with a man but not feel aroused or physically interested in the sex acts.

I’m sure many more examples of a kinsey ‘2’ could be added to this list. I guess my point is that even with 7 different options to choose from, there’s still a great deal of potential variation in what a given rating means from one person to the next. I’d be interested in seeing a scale that rates different components of sexuality separately, maybe a rating for current behavior, another one that considers a person’s past, another rating for emotional component, another for physical attraction.
But even that would still leave a lot of ambiguity. I know there are some men that feel attracted to another man based on his overall appearance, admiring his features, build, etc.; yet others might be only interested in the male genitals, finding them arousing but not caring a whit about what they’re connected to. And so on.

The bottom line, so to speak, is that as more elaborate, complex scales are developed to assess these many permutations, people may begin to recognize that sexuality finally cannot be nailed down or merely assigned a set of ratings. Perhaps then we will see that these labels or ratings are just that, that they have no more bearing on who a person is than his name does, and that infinite variety may exist for any name or label.

This makes a good deal of sense. After all, who knows what the future may bring, eh? If (almost) 47 years of history are any guide, I’m unlikely to change much at this point, but I guess I can’t totally rule it out.

And Pablito makes an excellent point about the scale itself being limiting. It beats the old two or three choices, but not by much. Even though I realize that if you are going to try to categorize something you have to limit the choices somewhere, it seems we could use a little revision here. I notice that many of the posters in Qadgop’s thread listed fractions, rather than one of the primary 6 choices. It seems there is a virtually infinite set of “flavors” to what were trying to nail down here. iampunha’s and Pablito’s suggestion of using separate ratings for different facets of our sexuality might be a good way to go.

This sums up my thinking pretty well, except I’d be on the other end, so to speak (damn this kind of thread does bring up opportunities for terrible puns, doesn’t it?). Ok, MrVisible, we’ll team up our spy missions, you take the buff dudes, I’ll try to distract the ladies, and between us we’ll have them licked. (sorry, couldn’t resist.)

So after going through all this, I think now that on Kinsey’s original scale I would have almost certainly been classed as about a 1. This really has been very interesting.

Ugly

I’d say that if you’ve had oral sex with the same sex then you’re not a 0. Maybe more like a 2.

I’m probably about a 2 or 3.

I think it all comes down to what “exclusively hetero/homosexual” means. I see “exclusive” as a very strong term, and I would only consider myself to be “exclusively homosexual” if I had never, ever, spent even a brief moment thinking about being heterosexual at all, even if the thought were only something like “Hey, some of my friends like guys, but I don’t. I wonder what it would be like if I were like them? Hmmm…well, I must say that now that I’ve thought about it I realize that I don’t find the idea very appealing at all!”

With this interpretation I think it should be obvious why I doubt that anyone really falls into the “exclusive” groups! I just can’t imagine someone with so little imagination, curiosity and awareness of self and others. But there are alternate possible and reasonable interpretations of the word “exclusive” that would allow plenty of people to honestly claim such labels for themselves. I can easily believe that there are people who have really and truly never been the least bit attracted to a member of the same sex, or a member of the opposite sex. If that is what is meant by “exclusively hetero/homosexual” then there must be plenty of people who fall into those groups.

If your boyfriend is anywhere near the apparent mean on this issue, it ought to take anywhere from 0.3 to 0.4 seconds of coaxing to get him to agree with your proposition.

I use the term “exclusive” in the second sense you gave. Sure, I have wondered what life would have been like had I been heterosexual, but always because I thought that things would have been much simpler for me when I was an adolescent and dealing with being gay in a very homophobic atmosphere.

So I did find myself sometimes wishing I were straight. But that has nothing to do with the sex of the people I was attracted to, who were always, exclusively male.

Having said that, I’d like to add that the majority of my gay friends have had sexual experiences with people of the opposite sex. I haven’t. So perhaps I am just an extreme? I don’t know, just as I don’t know why I am gay.

Personally, I know that being gay is not a choice, but I also believe that it is not genetic.

Now I’m all unsure about what I posted in the other thread.

Ok, so I’m gay, I know that much, but I have had the some sexual experience with girls–french kissing (actually, I’m not even sure that that’s considered sexual by most people, although it is by me). The farthest I’ve gone sexually (oral) is with a guy. The experience freaked me out, though, and for the past year and a half, I haven’t so much as kissed someone on the lips, though the desire is not gone.

I’m only attracted to guys sexually. The only way women come into my fantasies is if I force them in and hold them there, and it’s not pleasant. I’m utterly repulsed by the thought of full-fledged sex with a woman, although I can appreciate their (clothed) beauty, in the same way I can appreciate a work of art or South Florida’s beautiful snow-capped mountains.

And yet, although it sounds like I’m contradicting myself, I don’t want to have sex with anybody.

Uh, if anyone could get through all that, am I a 6 or not? Maybe I should label myself as n/a. Help?