Kinsey scale

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The Kinsey Scale is a rating of a person's sexual orientation established by the sex researcher Alfred Charles Kinsey ; an attempt to grasp this complex matter with a single numerical value. It was published in the Kinsey Reports in 1948 and 1953.

construction

The scale ranges from 0 to 6, where 0 stands for exclusively heterosexual and 6 for exclusively homosexual . In between there are various forms of bisexual experiences, with 3 denoting equal proportions of heterosexual and homosexual experiences. In addition to the scale, there is also a category X for individuals who have no sexual contact and who do not show any obvious sexual reactions in a social context. Today this category is often understood as the classification of asexuals .

Kinsey scale

The classification is based not only on the number of sexual acts, but also on psychological experiences, which Kinsey expressly emphasizes in his explanations.

“For example, a husband with no real homosexual contacts, who regularly fulfilled his 'marital duties' but mainly fantasized about male partners, was not placed under 0, but under 2 or 3, depending on how strong or frequent his homosexual desires and fantasies are were. Conversely, a henchman with only one girlfriend but thousands of homosexual contacts could get the same placement under 2 or 3 if his actual sexual desires were directed towards that girlfriend and he served his male customers 'just for the money'. "

- Erwin J. Haeberle : Bisexualities, 1994

The scale gained a certain degree of international recognition in the period that followed and was reprinted in many textbooks and reference works. However, it was also often misinterpreted and only related to sexual acts. This can then also be found in some works, where sexual acts are classified according to quantitative criteria, but the Kinsey scale is used. For example, this can lead to a person with mostly same-sex fantasies and (accidental) opposite-sex sexual contact in the past year or in the past five years being classified as heterosexual "on the Kinsey scale" or vice versa.

Origin, background, conclusions

As early as 1941, with a total of 1,600 interviews, Kinsey showed a percentage grading between heterosexual and homosexual behavior based on 30 selected cases. He was faced with the still very complex problem that one cannot simply divide into “heterosexual” and “homosexual” as well as “active” and “passive” homosexuals and explain this simply endocrinologically , but that there are infinitely many intermediate levels of existing behavior there. Sometimes behavior changes in different phases of life and sometimes homosexual and heterosexual behavior also exist at the same time in one and the same phase of life. In 1948 he published his second, simplified version in the Kinsey Report. At the same time, however, he also makes it clear that what matters to him is not the number of (arbitrarily determined) subgroups, but rather depicting the smooth transition.

“Men do not represent two separate populations - heterosexual and homosexual. The world must not be divided into goats and sheep. Not all things are either black or white. It is a tenet of taxonomy that nature rarely has separate categories. Only the human mind introduces categories and tries to divide the facts into separate subjects. The living world is a continuum in all its aspects. The sooner we become aware of this in relation to human sexual behavior, the sooner we will come to a real understanding of the realities. "

- Alfred C. Kinsey : 1948, quoted from Haeberle

He no longer saw any reason to speak of “the homosexual”, as he did ironically seven years earlier.

“One would encourage clearer thinking on these matters if one did not label people as heterosexual or homosexual, but as individuals with a certain level of heterosexual experience and a certain level of homosexual experience. Rather than using these terms as nouns or even as adjectives for people, it is better to use them to describe actual sexual relationships or stimuli to which an individual reacts erotically. "

- Alfred C. Kinsey : 1948, quoted from Haeberle

If the explanation was followed, it also became clear that the question of the number of homosexuals in a population could not be answered in principle. It was only possible to indicate how many people could be assigned to which section of the Kinsey scale at any given time. In the following work he dealt with the division of people:

“It is a characteristic of human thought that it tries to dichotomize phenomena …. Sexual behavior is either normal or abnormal, socially acceptable or unacceptable, heterosexual or homosexual; and many people do not want to believe that there are gradations from one extreme to the other in these matters. "

- Alfred Kinsey : 1953

On the one hand, he was way ahead of his contemporaries with his radical views and, on the other hand, the necessary liberation struggle in the modern gay movement required “homosexual persons” who could then be organized as a large socio-political “minority”. “The lesbian woman” soon joined them and a new social group grew up. This fed from socio-political constraints and not from scientific insights. “The homosexual” remained a non-real figure composed of ideals. Homosexual research soon became more self-critical and today people talk more about diversity, openness, and flexibility.

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d Erwin J. Haeberle: Bisexualities - History and Dimensions of a Modern Scientific Problem , published in:
    EJ Haeberle and R. Gindorf: Bisexualities - Ideology and Practice of Sexual Contact with Both Sexes , Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, p. 1-39
  2. Stephan Hilpold: Interview with the sociologist Rüdiger Lautmann: "Not only sex" , Der Standard, May 30, 2005