I dislike the Kinsey scale.
As in, I HIGHLY DISLIKE the Kinsey scale. But mostly that comes from people using it without really understanding the research that spawned it. While it was revolutionary at the time, especially in helping people understand and relate to the idea of a non-dichotomous sexuality, I think it has far outlived it’s uses. It is now used to superficially define us.
For all that it was once revolutionary, it is still mostly LINEAR. X was originally used to mean ’Individuals … [who] do not respond erotically to either heterosexual or homosexual stimuli, and do not have overt physical contacts with individuals of either sex in which there is evidence of any response’ (Kinsey “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female”, page 472).
At first that might sound like asexuality, but Kinsey goes on to say ‘It is not impossible that further analyses of these individuals might show that they do sometimes respond to socio-sexual stimuli, but they are un-responsive and inexperienced as far as it is possible to determine by any ordinary means’. Because of the far greater number of women who were rated at X in every age group, there is an undertone of an idea that they were simply ‘unawakened’ to sex, although he does make an effort to consider otherwise.
Sexuality is not linear, it’s not discrete. Instead, it’s a multi-dimensional plane (or…whatever a multi-dimensional thingy looks like, multi-variate math was not my strong point) that is continuous and varied.
Long answer is long.
