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You have to remember that, at the time, homosexuality was considered illegal in most parts of the world, including the US and the UK. It also meant that once you exhibited some type of homosexual behaviour – even if you didn’t identify as a homosexual or experienced same-sex attraction – then you could find yourself in some very hot water. For many, Kinsey’s insistence that humans could be more than either gay or straight was an affront to everything they knew about themselves. Understandably, upon its release, Kinsey’s research was met with a lot of controversy. As such, Kinsey sought to normalise the idea that sexual orientation is more akin to a spectrum than a strict binary. Instead, he saw that many people exhibited all types of sexual behaviour, even if it contradicted the labels with which they identified. In short, Kinsey believed that sexual orientation was not as rigid as most people believed at the time.
The sooner we learn this concerning sexual behaviour the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex”. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. “Not all things are black nor all things white…only the human mind invents categories to force facts into separate pigeonholes. “The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats”, wrote Kinsey in the report. X – No socio-sexual contacts or reactions
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As explained by the Kinsey Institute, the reports showed that “sexual behaviour, thoughts, and feelings towards the same or opposite sex were not always consistent across time”.Īs such, the Kinsey Scale broke free from what was the traditional categorisation of sexual orientation at the time – heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual – and instead presented the following broader seven-point rating system:ġ – Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexualĢ – Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexualĤ – Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexualĥ – Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual Considered some of the most influential scientific books of the century, the Kinsey Reports sold almost 1 million copies and were translated to 13 languages.Īccording to Discover Magazine, Kinsey’s research found that 37 per cent of men had been in a same-sex experience by the age of 45, while 13 per cent of women had had a same-sex encounter. Together with Sexual Behavior of the Human Female (1953), the two books became collectively known as the Kinsey Reports. The Kinsey Scale is a visual representation of the research findings that Kinsey and company published in Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948). Kinsey (white shirt) working with his staff on the final phases of his book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Behavior (Getty) What is the Kinsey Scale? Armed with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Kinsey and his team pored over hundreds and thousands of sex histories to study sexual relationships and sexual behaviour in the human world. At this point, he began teaching sexual education classes to graduate, senior, and married students, where he would also hand out questionnaires for his research on sexual histories.īy 1947, Kinsey established the Institute for Sex Research (now known as the Kinsey Institute). It wasn’t until the early 1930s that Kinsey became interested in the study of sexuality. Prior to his work on human sexual behaviour, Kinsey spent 20 years as an entomologist, collecting and identifying dozens of species of gall wasps.
But over 70 years later, does Kinsey’s work still hold up? Is the Kinsey scale still a reliable representation of the spectrum of sexual orientation? Or has it become a relic of the past? Who was Dr Kinsey?ĭr Alfred Charles Kinsey was an American biologist and professor at Indiana University. Kinsey’s highly controversial work ushered in a new era of studies on sexuality, thus earning him the title of “father of sexology”. Also known as the Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale, the seven-point scale was created to represent the team’s findings from years of research – that human sexuality was not as black and white as it was originally thought to be. In 1948, American biologist Dr Kinsey and associates Wardell Pomeroy and Clyde Martin developed the Kinsey Scale. In a way, we have Dr Alfred Kinsey to thank for that. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably heard the phrase “sexuality is a spectrum”.