This is a sexual, romantic attraction, or both, towards nonbinary people. There are many different sexual and romantic orientations, such as skoliosexual. While it can be useful for people who identify as straight, gay, bisexual, and to a lesser extent, asexual, it may not be helpful for others. The Kinsey Scale does not account for all orientations. There are some limitations to the Kinsey Scale, some of which the Kinsey Institute recognizes. People taking part in Kinsey Scale tests will therefore sit somewhere along this spectrum of sexual or romantic orientation. A person may have more than a slight sexual or romantic attraction towards the opposite sex or gender.Įxclusively experiencing sexual or romantic attraction to the same sex or gender.Įxperiencing no sexual or romantic attraction. Mostly experiencing sexual or romantic attraction to the same sex or gender. A person may have a slight sexual or romantic attraction towards the opposite sex or gender. A person may have more than a slight sexual or romantic attraction toward the same sex or gender.Įqual sexual or romantic attraction toward both opposite and same sex or gender. Mostly experiencing sexual or romantic attraction to the opposite sex or gender. A person may have a slight sexual or romantic attraction toward the same sex or gender. A Kinsey 2 or 4 might be someone who relates more closely to bisexuality and could think of themselves as being “bisexual with a preference.” A Kinsey 3 would be someone closest to the typical conception of bisexuality and would have an equal attraction to men and women.Exclusively experiencing sexual or romantic attraction to the opposite sex or gender. Likewise, a Kinsey 5 would be the same, but predominantly homosexual. This type of person might consider themselves straight until they meet the right person. Other numbers indicate varying degrees of bisexuality.Ī Kinsey 1 is a person who’s predominantly heterosexual, but is incidentally homosexual. A person who’s a Kinsey 0, as some users say, would be completely straight according to the instrument, whereas a Kinsey 6 would be completely gay. People can declare that they are a certain value on the scale when they want to be more accurate in describing their sexual identity. However, these numbers are also used as a tool of self-identification. Sexologists often use the term and the numbers from the scale in research studies and as a formal research tool. If anything, the scale acts as an accessible jumping off point for understanding sexuality as a continuum. While some take issue with the scale, some social scientists and individuals alike continue to find it useful while recognizing its limited nature. There have been attempts at devising a new scale, of which over 200 exist. As a result, the framework of the Kinsey Scale seems outdated, since it doesn’t account for emerging sexual orientations or genders. Now, in the new millennium, sexual identities like pansexual and polysexual have been more widely adopted, as have gender identities such as trans and intersex. This coincides with increasing public awareness and acceptance of sexualities (other than heterosexuality), and it was somewhat amplified as celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres were coming out. A score of 0 represents “exclusively heterosexual,” 6 is “exclusively homosexual,” and 3 is “equally heterosexual and homosexual.” Other academics picked it up soon after, and, by 1953, they had begun calling it the Kinsey Scale.īy the 1970s, the term enjoyed wider adoption within academia, and by at least the early to mid-1990s non-academics began to use it too. In these studies, known as The Kinsey Reports, sexologists asked people an inventory of questions about their sexual history and assigned them a number on a scale of 0–6, which corresponded to a description of their sexual behavior. It was also included in a subsequent work, Sexual Behavior of the Human Female, in 1953. The Kinsey Scale, first known as the Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale, was created in part by sexologist Alfred Kinsey and used in a study first published in Sexual Behavior of the Human Male in 1948.