Male Sexuality and Alfred Kinsey's 0–6 Scale: Toward “A Sound Understanding of the Realities of Sex”

Abstract

Using a 0–6 scale, Alfred Kinsey demonstrated that the complexity of human sexuality could best be represented on a continuum rather than as a binary. Kinsey developed the scale from models created by his predecessors in human sex research. A primary intention of the scale was to eradicate sexual identity categories altogether in order to eliminate sexual identity-based persecutions and to promote equal rights. As proponents and opponents of homosexual rights both depended on constructions of sexual identity to advance their agendas, Kinsey's ideal was never realized. The scale nonetheless continues to challenge postmodern associations of identity and sexuality.

Keywords:

• Alfred Kinsey
• male homosexuality
• masculinity
• scale
• identity

The author thanks Robin C. Henry, Colin R. Johnson, Clark A. Pomerleau, and Jeremy Rapport for their feedback on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

1. Wardell B. Pomeroy (1982; see pp. 261–264) states that Kinsey was the sole author of the Male volume and I, therefore, refer to Kinsey as the sole author.

2. It is not certain that Kinsey was restricting his view of strongly sexed masculinity wholly to consensual acts, but the following discussion proceeds from that premise. The sex history interview questions about sex acts imply that they were done with consent but do not specifically ask about it. The interview team did not ask interviewees about violence used by or against them related to sex acts, unless they were in prison for sex offenses. (See Brewer, 1985, pp. 86–87, 100, 130.)

3. This point is especially controversial for Kinsey's critics. Kinsey did not publicly address the difficulty or the ethics of taking at face value the “older subjects'” reports that the children had orgasms, though he correlated them with observations of child orgasm by parents and medical practitioners. Kinsey obtained the histories of parents before obtaining the histories of their children and received parental consent before taking a child's history. On Kinsey's child interviewing technique, see Kinsey (1948).

4. Kinsey did not detail his thinking on the basis of emotions in the Male volume except to state repeatedly that men were conditioned by their experiences. He devoted a chapter in the Female volume to sexual psychology. With available evidence, he could do no more than speculate that some sex differences, possibly including emotions, were brain-based. (See Drucker, 2008, pp. 182–184; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953, pp. 642–689.)