The Kinsey scale offered at the time a different perspective on what the human mind is, specifically in relation to sexuality. Predominantly homosexual, incidentally heterosexual. Predominantly homosexual, more than incidentally heterosexual.ĥ. Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual.Ĥ. Predominantly heterosexual, incidentally homosexual.Ģ. The scale devised by Kinsley has 7 levels from heterosexuality to homosexuality, and includes the category in which people who do not experiment with sexuality would go.
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, the norm. The same was true of pure homosexuality, although this idea was not so unacceptable for obvious reasons. Men’s Sexual Behavior (1948) and Women’s Sexual Behavior (1953), yielded data that at the time questioned what was known about human sexuality and the very nature of the genders.įrom the information provided 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 an abstract concept that serves to build a scale with two extremes. The so-called Kinsey report, divided into the books However, it was precisely this that led to the rapid spread of his ideas around the world, and his writings and reflections were translated into many languages. The study, which was based on thousands of questionnaires given to a wide variety of men and women, was highly controversial and aroused strong opposition from conservative institutions. You can imagine what the defense of the Kinsey scale meant during the 40’s and 50’s. If this conception of sexuality is provocative today, We can all have a bisexual part, more or less evident, and that, more than defining our identity, is a simple preference with thresholds or limits not always too clear. In short, the Kinsey scale shattered the qualitative classification into a quantitative description in which things are measured as temperature is measured with a thermometer. Simply put, the people he included in his research did not fit easily into the patterns of heterosexuality: intermediate states of sexual orientation were much more common 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, through various intermediate categories. The ideas of homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual are too restricted and limiting. The reasons? For 15 years, he conducted an extensive study that led him to conclude that However, during the first half of the 20th century the biologist and sexologist Alfred Kinsey inflicted serious wounds on this dichotomous conception of sexuality. These two sexual options would be inventions, artifacts created by culture and not supported by biology. įeminism and the gender studies associated with anthropology strongly defend the idea that, historically, sexual orientation has been understood as something understandable from two positions: heterosexuality and homosexuality, one being the denial of the other. This gradualness is reflected in what is now known as the Kinsey scale.
However… to what extent is this way of classifying sexual tendencies faithful to reality? Is there such a clear and categorical differentiation between homosexuality and heterosexuality?Īlfred Kinsey broke this dualistic conception of sexual orientation by proposing a model according to which there are many intermediate degrees between heterosexuality and homosexuality. When we consider the sexual condition of people, we take into account two categories: homosexuality and heterosexuality, which can be combined to form bisexuality. Kinsey Scale: Rethinking our sexual orientation We like to classify things into good and bad, we judge people very quickly during the first few minutes we get to know them, and we only take into account the nuances in special cases, when the situation requires it.
Many cognitive psychologists believe that human beings have a clear tendency to perceive and interpret reality in the simplest way possible.
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