Editing Sexual orientation (section)

===Kinsey scale===

The [[Kinsey scale]], also called the Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale, was first published in ''[[Kinsey Reports|Sexual Behavior in the Human Male]]'' (1948) by [[Alfred Kinsey]], [[Wardell Pomeroy]], and [[Clyde Martin]] and also featured in ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Female'' (1953).<ref>{{cite book|last=Kinsey|title=Sexual Behavior in the Human Female|year=1953|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=978-4-87187-704-6|page=499|display-authors=etal}}</ref> The scale was developed to combat the assumption at the time that people are either heterosexual or homosexual and that these two types represent antitheses in the sexual world.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kinsey|title=Sexual Behavior in the Human Male|year=1948|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=978-0-253-33412-1|display-authors=etal}}</ref> Recognizing that a significant portion of the population is not completely heterosexual or homosexual and that such people can experience both heterosexual and homosexual behavior and psychic responses, Kinsey et al., stated:
{{blockquote|text=Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior, the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex. |sign=Kinsey et al. (1948) p. 639.}}

The Kinsey scale provides a classification of sexual orientation based on the relative amounts of heterosexual and homosexual experience or psychic response in one's history at a given time.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kinsey|title=Sexual Behavior in the Human Male|url=https://archive.org/details/sexualbehaviorin00kins|url-access=registration|year=1948|page=[https://archive.org/details/sexualbehaviorin00kins/page/639 639]|publisher=Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders Co.|display-authors=etal}}</ref> The classification scheme works such that individuals in the same category show the same balance between the heterosexual and homosexual elements in their histories. The position on the scale is based on the relation of heterosexuality to homosexuality in one's history, rather than the actual amount of overt experience or psychic response. An individual can be assigned a position on the scale in accordance with the following definitions of the points of the scale:<ref>{{cite book|last=Kinsey|title=Sexual Behavior in the Human Male|url=https://archive.org/details/sexualbehaviorin00kins|url-access=registration|year=1948|pages=[https://archive.org/details/sexualbehaviorin00kins/page/639 639–41]|publisher=Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders Co.|display-authors=etal}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Rating !! Description
|-
| 0 || ''Exclusively heterosexual''. Individuals make no physical contact which results in erotic arousal or orgasm and make no psychic responses to individuals of their own sex.
|-
| 1 || ''Predominantly heterosexual/incidentally homosexual''. Individuals have only incidental homosexual contacts which have involved physical or psychic response or incidental psychic response without physical contact.
|-
| 2 || ''Predominantly heterosexual but more than incidentally homosexual''. Individuals have more than incidental homosexual experience or respond rather definitely to homosexual stimuli.
|-
| 3 || ''Equally heterosexual and homosexual''. Individuals are about equally homosexual and heterosexual in their experiences or psychic reactions.
|-
| 4 || ''Predominantly homosexual but more than incidentally heterosexual.'' Individuals have more overt activity or psychic reactions in the homosexual while still maintaining a fair amount of heterosexual activity or responding rather definitively to heterosexual contact.
|-
| 5 || ''Predominantly homosexual/only incidentally heterosexual.'' Individuals are almost entirely homosexual in their activities or reactions.
|-
| 6 || ''Exclusively homosexual.'' Individuals who are exclusively homosexual, both in regard to their overt experience and in regard to their psychic reactions.
|}

The Kinsey scale has been praised for dismissing the dichotomous classification of sexual orientation and allowing for a new perspective on human sexuality. Despite seven categories being able to provide a more accurate description of sexual orientation than a dichotomous scale, it is still difficult to determine which category individuals should be assigned to. In a major study comparing sexual response in homosexual males and females, [[Masters and Johnson]] discuss the difficulty of assigning the Kinsey ratings to participants.<ref>{{cite book|last=Masters and Johnson|title=Homosexuality in Perspective|year=1979|isbn=978-0-316-54984-4|url=https://archive.org/details/homosexualityinp00mast}}</ref> Particularly, they found it difficult to determine the relative amount heterosexual and homosexual experience and response in a person's history when using the scale. They report finding it difficult to assign ratings 2–4 for individuals with a large number of heterosexual and homosexual experiences. When there are a substantial number of heterosexual and homosexual experiences in one's history, it becomes difficult for that individual to be fully objective in assessing the relative amount of each.

Weinrich et al. (1993) and Weinberg et al. (1994) criticized the scale for lumping individuals who are different based on different dimensions of sexuality into the same categories.<ref name="Weinrich 1993 157–168">{{cite journal|last=Weinrich|first=J.|title=A factor analysis of the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid in two disparate samples|journal=Archives of Sexual Behavior|year=1993|volume=22|issue=2|pages=157–68|doi=10.1007/bf01542364|pmid=8476335|s2cid=34708645|display-authors=etal}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Weinberg|title=Dual Attraction|year=1994|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-508482-5|display-authors=etal|url=https://archive.org/details/dualattractionun00wein}}</ref>  When applying the scale, Kinsey considered two dimensions of sexual orientation: overt sexual experience and psychosexual reactions. Valuable information was lost by collapsing the two values into one final score. A person who has only predominantly same sex reactions is different from someone with relatively little reaction but much same sex experience. It would have been quite simple for Kinsey to have measured the two dimensions separately and report scores independently to avoid loss of information. Furthermore, there are more than two dimensions of sexuality to be considered. Beyond behavior and reactions, one could also assess attraction, identification, lifestyle, etc. This is addressed by the [[#Klein Sexual Orientation Grid|Klein Sexual Orientation Grid]].

A third concern with the Kinsey scale is that it inappropriately measures heterosexuality and homosexuality on the same scale, making one a tradeoff of the other.<ref name="Sell 1997 43–58">{{cite journal|last=Sell|first=R.L.|title=Defining and measuring sexual orientation: A review|journal=Archives of Sexual Behavior|year=1997|volume=26|issue=6|pages=643–58|pmid=9415799|doi=10.1023/A:1024528427013|s2cid=29774549}}</ref> Research in the 1970s on masculinity and femininity found that concepts of masculinity and femininity are more appropriately measured as independent concepts on a separate scale rather than as a single continuum, with each end representing opposite extremes.<ref>{{cite book|last=Bem|first=S.L.|title=Bem sex-rol inventory professional manual|year=1981|publisher=Consulting Psychologists Press|location=Palo Alto, CA}}</ref>  When compared on the same scale, they act as tradeoffs such, whereby to be more feminine one had to be less masculine and vice versa. However, if they are considered as separate dimensions one can be simultaneously very masculine and very feminine. Similarly, considering heterosexuality and homosexuality on separate scales would allow one to be both very heterosexual and very homosexual or not very much of either.  When they are measured independently, the degree of heterosexual and homosexual can be independently determined, rather than the balance between heterosexual and homosexual as determined using the Kinsey Scale.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Shively|first=M.G.|author2=DeCecco, J.P. |title=Components of sexual identity|journal=Journal of Homosexuality|year=1977|volume=3|issue=1|pages=41–48|doi=10.1300/j082v03n01_04|pmid=591712}}</ref>