The Kinsey scale of sexuality: are we all bisexual?

A theory that calls into question the traditional schemes about our sexual orientation.

Many cognitive psychologists believe that human beings have a clear tendency to perceive and interpret reality as simply as possible.

According to this view of our mind, we like to classify things as good and badWe judge people very quickly during the first few minutes we meet them, and only take nuances into account in special cases, when the situation requires it.

Kinsey Scale: reframing our sexual orientation

When we move on to consider people's sexual status, we consider two categories: homosexuality and heterosexuality, which can be combined to form bisexuality. However... ¿to what extent is this way of classifying sexual tendencies faithful to reality? Is there such a clear and blunt differentiation between homosexuality and heterosexuality?

A man named Alfred Kinsey broke this dualistic conception of sexual orientations by proposing a model according to which there are many intermediate degrees between heterosexuality and homosexuality. This gradualism was embodied in what is now known as the Kinsey scale.

Questioning dichotomous sexuality

Feminism and gender studies associated with anthropology defend the idea that, historically, sexual orientation has been understood as something that can be understood from two positions: heterosexuality and homosexuality, one being the negation of the other. These two sexual options would be inventions, artifacts created by culture and not supported by biology.

However, during the first half of the 20th century, biologist and sexologist Alfred Kinsey inflicted serious wounds to this dichotomous conception of sexuality. The reasons? For 15 years, he conducted an extensive study that led him to conclude that the ideas of homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual are too narrow and limiting..

Quite simply, the people he included in his research did not fit easily into the schemes of heterosexuality: intermediate states in sexual orientation were much more frequent than expected. Thus, according to Kinsey, there is a whole range of sexual orientation, a scale of various degrees ranging from pure heterosexuality to pure homosexuality, passing through several intermediate categories.

In short, the Kinsey scale shattered qualitative classification to enter into a quantitative description in which things are measured as one measures temperature with a thermometer. The idea is that we can all have a bisexual side, more or less evident, and that this, more than definingand that this, rather than defining our identity, is a simple preference with thresholds or limits that are not always very clear.

The history of the Kinsey scale

If this conception of sexuality is provocative today, you can imagine what was involved in advocating the Kinsey scale in the 1940s and 1950s.. The study, which was based on thousands of questionnaires given to a wide variety of men and women, aroused great controversy and aroused fierce opposition from conservative institutions. However, it was precisely this that caused his ideas to spread rapidly throughout the world, and his writings and reflections were translated into many languages.

The so-called Kinsey Report, divided into the books Sexual Behavior of Men (1948) and Sexual Behavior of Women (1953), yielded data that at the time questioned what was known about human sexuality and the very nature of the genders.

From the information given by 6,300 men and 5,940 women, Kinsey concluded that pure heterosexuality is extremely rare or, directly, almost non-existent, and that it should only be taken as a matter of course.and that it should only be taken as an abstract concept that could be used to construct a scale with two extremes. The same was true of pure homosexuality, although this idea was not so unacceptable for obvious reasons.

This meant that male and female identities had been constructed as part of a fiction, and that many behaviors that were considered "deviant" were, in fact, normal.

What does this scale look like?

The scale devised by Kinsley features 7 levels from heterosexuality to homosexuality, and includes the category where people who do not experiment with sexuality would go.

These levels are as follows:

X. No sexual relations.

Other conception of the human mind

The Kinsey scale offered at the time a different perspective on what the human mind is, specifically as it relates to sexuality. Traditionally, the sexual division of labor and gender roles have favored a very dichotomous view of what it means to be a man and a woman. have favored a very dichotomous view of what it means to be a man and a woman, and this line of research put a new perspective on what it means to be a man and a woman.and this line of research questioned this closed classification.

Thus, over the years, gender studies have taken the influences of this scale to point out the extent to which heteronormativity, which places heterosexuality at the center of what is considered normal, is an oversimplifying and unjustified social construct, which serves to exert social pressure on minorities outside this normalized sexual orientation.

The Kinsey scale, today

Kinsey did not make a seven-degree scale because he believed that this number of steps reflected the workings of sexuality, but rather because he he believed it was a good way to measure something that in reality is fluid and has no discontinuities..

That is why his work had a strong impact on Western philosophy, changing our understanding of sexual orientations and having a positive impact on the movements for equality and the fight against discrimination against homosexual people. However, the debate about what is the nature of sexual orientations and whether it is practical to understand them as a continuum or as watertight categories is still very much alive.

In fact, this debate has not been a purely scientific one, as the social and political implications of the Kinsey scale of sexuality mean that it is seen as an ideological tool.

Conservatives consider it a threat to the values of the traditional nuclear family and a tool of gender ideology (although in reality the Kinsey scale can be defended without adhering to this way of thinking). LGTBI groups see it as a good conceptual framework from which to study from which sexuality can be studied in a less rigid way than usual.

Modifying the approach to the study of homosexuality

In addition, this scale of sexual orientations downplays the importance of the idea of pure homosexuality and heterosexuality, reducing them to entelechies. social pressure to fit into these two categories is diminished.. In any case, the Kinsey scale has helped to set a precedent; the phenomenon to be studied is no longer homosexuality, seen as an anomaly or a deviation from what was considered to be "natural".

Now what is being investigated is the way in which homosexuality and heterosexuality interact, the relationship between the two. Before, only a rarity was studied, but today what we are trying to understand is a continuum. continuum with two poles.

In any case, it must be clear that Kinsey's research was full of limitations and was carried out using methodologies that today would be rejected; this is partly normal, given that this researcher was a child of his time, and many of the debates that have served to improve the quality of studies in behavioral sciences had not yet taken place when he developed his scale. What does remain valid today is the idea that sexual orientations cannot be categorized into watertight categories, and that their boundaries are fuzzy and to some extent unpredictable.

• Predominantly heterosexual, incidentally homosexual.

• Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual.

• Equally homosexual and heterosexual.

• Predominantly homosexual, rather than incidentally heterosexual.

• Predominantly homosexual, incidentally heterosexual.

• Exclusively homosexual.

Bibliographical references:
• • Bullough, V.L. (2004). Sex Will Never be the Same: The Contributions of Alfred C. Kinsey. Archives of Sexual Behavior. 33 (3): 277–286.
  • Galupo, M.P. (2014). Sexual Minority Reflections on the Kinsey Scale and the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid: Conceptualization and Measurement. Journal of Bisexuality. 14 (3–4): 404–432.
  • Kinsey, A.C., Pomery, W.B.; Martin, C.E. (1948). Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Rosario, M.; Schrimshaw, E.; Hunter, J.; Braun, L. (2006). Sexual identity development among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youths: Consistency and change over time. Journal of Sex Research. 43(1): pp. 46 - 58.
  • Ruse, M. (1988). Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.