“All of My Lovers Fit Into This Scale”: Sexual Minority Individuals’ Responses to Two Novel Measures of Sexual Orientation

ABSTRACT

Previous qualitative research on traditional measures of sexual orientation raise concerns regarding how well these scales capture sexual minority individuals’ experience of sexuality. The present research focused on the critique of two novel scales developed to better capture the way sexual and gender minority individuals conceptualize sexuality. Participants were 179 sexual minority (i.e., gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, queer, asexual) individuals who identified as cisgender (n = 122) and transgender (n = 57). Participants first completed the new scales, then provided qualitative responses regarding how well each scale captured their sexuality. The Sexual-Romantic Scale enabled the measurement of sexual and romantic attraction to each sex independently (same-sex and other-sex). Participants resonated with the way the Sexual-Romantic scale disaggregated sexual and romantic attraction. Although cisgender monosexual (lesbian/gay) individuals positively responded to the separation of same- and other-sex attraction, individuals with either plurisexual (bisexual, pansexual, or fluid) or transgender identities found the binary conceptualization of sex/gender problematic. The Gender-Inclusive Scale incorporated same- and other-sex attraction as well as dimensions of attraction beyond those based on sex (attraction to masculine, feminine, androgynous, and gender non-conforming individuals). The incorporation of dimensions of sexual attraction outside of sex in the Gender-Inclusive Scale was positively regarded by participants of all identities. Findings indicate that the Sexual-Romantic and Gender-Inclusive scales appear to address some of the concerns raised in previous research regarding the measurement of sexual orientation among sexual minority individuals.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender identity
• monosexual
• plurisexual
• sexual minority
• sexual orientation

Funding

This research was supported by a research grant from the American Institute of Bisexuality awarded to the first author.

Notes

^1. We use the term plurisexual to refer to identities that are not explicitly conceptualized based on attraction to one sex and leave open the potential for attraction to more than one sex/gender (e.g., bisexual, pansexual, queer, fluid). We use the term plurisexual instead of non-monosexual throughout the article because it does not linguistically assume monosexual as the ideal conceptualization of sexuality.

^2. When referring to individuals’ identities, we use transgender as an umbrella term to refer to identities of people who do not identify with the sex/gender they were assigned at birth, and to also represent individuals who do not identify as transgender but describe their transgender experience as a status or medical history.

^3. We use the term verisexual to replace nonasexual or sexual so as not to reinforce the normative assumption of sexual desire.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a research grant from the American Institute of Bisexuality awarded to the first author.