The Kinsey Scale
Taken from a handout developed by Jamie Washington in 1990.
There have been a number of reputed studies on homosexuality in recent decades. The most widely discussed material, however, came from the work of Dr. Alfred Kinsey and his associates in the late 1940's and early 1950's. His results have more recently been supported by further research by Masters and Johnson, as well by several other researchers.
The most revealing point from these studies is that there is a broad spectrum of sexual orientation, not just two lifestyles: heterosexual and homosexual. Instead of picturing sexual orientation as an either/or issue, Kinsey developed a seven point continuum based on the degree of sexual responsiveness people have for members of the same and opposite sex. The continuum is as follows:
| 0 | exclusively heterosexual |
| 1 | predominantly heterosexual, incidentally homosexual |
| 2 | predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual |
| 3 | equally heterosexual and homosexual |
| 4 | predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual |
| 5 | predominantly homosexual, incidentally heterosexual |
| 6 | exclusively homosexual |
Kinsey suggested that is is necessary to consider a variety of activities in assessing an individual's ranking on the continuum: fantasies, thoughts, dreams, emotional feelings, and frequency of sexual activity.
Therefore, many "heterosexuals," in fact, would fall somewhere between numbers 0-3 because they occasionally think/dream/fantasize about sexual activities with members of the same sex and/or occasionally act on these feelings.