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BDSM Dictionary : Kinsey Scale: history
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This entry is part of the BDSM Dictionary hosted by Informed Consent.
The Kinsey scale attempts to measure sexual orientation, from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual). It was first published in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others, and was also prominent in the complementary work Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).
Introducing the scale, Kinsey wrote: : "Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.
: While emphasizing the continuity of the gradations between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual histories, it has seemed desirable to develop some sort of classification which could be based on the relative amounts of heterosexual and homosexual experience or response in each history... An individual may be assigned a position on this scale, for each period in his life.... A seven-point scale comes nearer to showing the many gradations that actually exist." (Kinsey, et al. (1948). pp. 639, 656)
The scale is as follows:
{|class="wikitable"
!Rating
!style="text-align: left"|Description
|- style="background-color: #000000"
|style="text-align: center"|0
|Exclusively heterosexual
|- style="background-color: #000000"
|style="text-align: center"|1
|Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual
|- style="background-color: #000000"
|style="text-align: center"|2
|Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual
|- style="background-color: #000000"
|style="text-align: center"|3
|Equally heterosexual and homosexual
|- style="background-color: #000000"
|style="text-align: center"|4
|Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
|- style="background-color: #000000"
|style="text-align: center"|5
|Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual
|- style="background-color: #000000"
|style="text-align: center"|6
|Exclusively homosexual
|}
__NOTOC__Findings
<!--Anyone who has access to the reports please complete the findings for prevalence of Kinsey 0, 1, 2, and 4. The stats below were taken from http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/resources/ak-data... -->
(This entry in the BDSM Dictionary incorporates text from the Kinsey Scale article in Wipipedia.)
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