Pick a Number, Any Number

What’s your Kinsey Scale rating?

I have been best friends with Sam (not her real name) since we were 4 years old (16 years and going strong) and we even came to McGill together. She always dated boys growing up, up until her first year of university. During second year, our mutual friend, Jess (not her real name), who is a queer female, told Sam that she had feelings for her. I expected Sam to let Jess down gently, but instead she seemed to consider the possibility of them together. They stated dating and have been together for over a year now. At the time, I think that Sam was just as shocked about her sexuality as I was, and decided to do some research on her sexuality.

While researching, she came across the Kinsey’s Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale, she sent it to me, and told me she thought that she was at a level 2. The scale shows that people do not fit into neat and exclusive heterosexual or homosexual categories, and ones sexuality is not merely black and white. The scale is a method of self-evaluation based on your individual experience, and the rating you choose may change over time. There are six categories, as follows:

0- Exclusively heterosexual with no homosexual 1- Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual 2- Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual 3- Equally heterosexual and homosexual 4- Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual 5- Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual 6- Exclusively homosexual

In a study entitled Initial Stages of Validation by Penile Volume Assessment That Sexual Orientation Is Distributed Dimensionally, McConaghy and Blaszczynski (1991) studied twenty men seeking treatment for compulsive sexual behaviours, who reported a dimensional distribution of heterosexual and homosexual feelings, rated by a questionnaire on 11-point scales. Their penile volume responses to movies of nude women and men were assessed. Significant correlations were found between individual subjects’ penile volume and questionnaire assessment of heterosexual/ homosexual feelings, which provided physiological validation of the Kinsey questionnaire.

This scale seems to be a step in the right direction. Not seeing the world in only black and white terms is beneficial, because in many cases, most things in this world do not fit into discrete categories. However, I do believe that more work has to be done in making the questionnaire more comprehensive, encompassing things such as gender identity and biological sex.

References:
Kinsey’s Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale. Retrieved from: http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/ak-hhscale.html

McConaghy, N., & Blaszczynski, A. (1991). Initial stages of validation by penile volume assessment that sexual orientation is distributed dimensionally. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 32,(1).

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