Human sexuality, despite being one of the primary drives of our species, is becoming increasingly difficult to define. You can ask a hundred people to define what human sexuality is to them, and you will probably get a hundred different answers.
People have trouble defining the concept as a whole, so it should be no surprise that people even have trouble defining their own sexuality. This is especially true in the modern era, where people are given free license to discover their sexuality, and don't feel the pressure to conform to only one of two gender roles.
This isn't a place where I want to get into debates about how innate or not sexuality is, or if it's a choice or not. I also don't want to discuss the morality of sexuality and different types of relationships and orientation. Why not?
Because no matter the stance I arrive at, there is one thing we can all agree upon: there are different sexual orientations out there. They exist, and they are fundamentally different in psychology than other orientations.
Instead of debating whether people are right or wrong in their orientation, it’s far more interesting to discuss sexual orientation at large. No matter how you regard it, it's clear that many of us live in wide area between the two "choices” of heterosexual male and heterosexual female.
Multiple studies have shown that there does indeed exist a spectrum of sexual orientation, which means that our own orientation isn't always a strict black or white dichotomy. There exists a vast grey area between the two, and none described it better than. Alfred Kinsey.
Alfred Kinsey was the worlds first sexologist, beginning his work in 1938 at the University of Indiana. He collected information about human sexuality through interviews with over 17,000 people throughout the course of his research. He and his team made many discoveries based on analysis of patterns, but his findings with the biggest impact were about sexual orientation: the perception of sexual orientation and the prevalence. He was the first to put forth the now widespread figure that ten percent of the population is homosexual.
His findings were encapsulated in his spectrum, typically called the Kinsey Scale, of sexual orientation, in which sexual orientation fell along a spectrum of zero to six. A zero would indicate that one is exclusively homosexual, while a six would indicate that one is exclusively heterosexual. Most people may still be zeros and sixes, but many more people that might not expect it somewhere between the two.
It may sound trivial, but it was revolutionary at the time because there were only three accepted modes of sexuality: heterosexuality,homosexuality, and bisexuality, and the latter two were mostly seen as psychological disorders that warranted treatment.
When Kinsey scale was released to the public, there was a harsh outcry. People didn’t want to be labeled by something that would classify them as a deviant, no matter how minor. Indeed, Kinsey himself identified as bisexual. That public acknowledgement coupled with his research put him in danger numerous times in his life.
In more modern times, when people are able to label themselves and explore as they like, the Kinsey Scale does a passable job of reflecting the enormous complexity of human sexuality that doesn’t fit neatly in a box.
You place on the Kinsey Scale is determined by questions such as the following, taken from psymed:
My sexual fantasies are about:
Only the opposite sex
Mainly the opposite sex, rarely about the same sex
Mainly the opposite sex, sometimes about the same sex
Both the same and the opposite sex
The idea of having sexual intercourse with someone of the opposite sex is:
Desirable
Alluring
Interesting
Tolerable
Negative
The idea of having sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex is:
Desirable
Alluring
Interesting
Tolerable
Negative
As you can see, these aren’t necessarily offensive questions; rather, they are trying to show what you have a sexual proclivity, or preference, for in real life, as opposed to what you perceive yourself to prefer. In other words, let the evidence determine your sexual orientation, not a label that you’ve had your entire life. If anything,the Kinsey Scale is a helpful diagnosis tool for you to understand yourself better, and perhaps urges that you've suppressed for years. It reduces your sexuality down to a number. I'm a 4, if you were wondering.
The scale by itself wasn't proof of a spectrum of sexuality, it was the results that Kinsey's team collected as a result of taking the questionaire for the scale. The Kinsey Scale was the basis for all subsequent sexologists that wanted to study sexual orientation.
The next prominent sexologist was Fritz Klein, who developed the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid (KSOG) in 1978 as an improvement upon the Kinsey Scale. Where the Kinsey Scale yielded one number, the KSOG yields twenty-one different numbers.
There are seven variables, and each variable is measured by questions representing the past, present, and ideal. It makes the assumption that people change over time, that their past experiences do not necessarily represent their sexual orientation, and the value of the ideal measure, which are acts and attitudes that people would engage in, but haven't had the opportunity or freedom to do so, implying that they might orient themselves towards them in the future.
The seven variables, which are measured three times each, are:
1.Sexual Attraction (For example, on a scale of 1-7, are you attracted to heterosexuals or homosexuals? How would you have answered in the past, how do you feel right now, and whatdo you think you would eventually like?)
2. Sexual Behavior
3. Sexual Fantasies
4. Emotional Preference
5. Social Preference
6. Self Identification
7. Heterosexual/Gay Lifestyle
The KSOG is more all-encompassing, and paints a more complete picture of someone’s sexuality.
Unfortunately, the Kinsey Scale and KSOG only account for sexual orientation, which is only a piece of the puzzle when we think about the spectrum of sexuality. Sexual orientation is simply which gender a person is attracted to. You are familiar with the terms of homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual.
By contrast, gender identity, a rising area of study and research, determines the gender someone sees themselves as. Most of us have gender identities that match our biological gender. However, many do not.
For instance, people who are male in gender but see themselves as female have a female gender identity. People’s sexual organs have no bearing on gender identity, and of course, they conflict often enough for this to have a name and label. This conflict is called gender dysphoria, and is what the term transgender describes: people whose gender identity does not match her body’ gender.
Those with gender dysphoria highly identify with the opposite gender in most respects, which causes a significant amount of stress and anxiety. This means they are attracted to the same gender as their biological gender, but they aren’t homosexual. It’s a distinction of that compulsion that is difficult for others to understand, and it’s no surprise that there is an extremely high rate of suicide among the transgendered population.
Some transgendered may cross-dress to regain their gender identity; and others will seek complete sex re-assignment surgery to make their biology match their emotional and mental identity, studies show that transgendered people who receive such treatment have far better psychological outcomes and overall quality of life.
At the complete opposite end of the so-called spectrum of sexuality are asexual people, those with little to no sexual attraction to anyone.
An asexual person still has a sexual orientation and a gender identity, and they might even have romantic attraction to others. However, they simply don’t have any sexual attraction to others. Sex has no appeal to them, and they don’t feel desire or arousal towards others. Someone in a relationship with an asexual person must be prepared for it to be completely nonsexual, though still romantic, loving, and committed.
It’s not as much of an oxymoron as you might think, but it does show that it’s very difficult for most to separate sexual intercourse from love and emotions.
Though many people’s sexuality may be set in stone, it is becoming increasingly clear that for most of us, sexuality is fluid and subject to change due to context, passage of time, and chemistry.
Sexual fluidity is essentially the idea that who and what we are attracted to is always changing. Nothing is concrete, and attraction and arousal are flexible and adaptable. You can also view it as sexuality on a case-by-case, person-by-person basis that no assessment or scale can define.
Studies show that women feel far freer to explore their sexual fluidity because the negative stigma of male homosexuality still runs deep in society. In other words, a heterosexual male is far less likely to allow himself to act on his attraction to another male.
Funnily enough, sexual fluidity is likely where human beings started from sexually. That is, thousands of years ago, humans were far more open and giving with their sexual urges because they were free of modern societal constraints and expectations to conform to gender roles.
For additional evidence of that, take a look into the ancient Greek concept of pederasty, in which an older adult male was a mentor, teacher, and also lover a younger teenage boy in his journey to adulthood, it was completely normalized to the point that Alexander the Great was reported to hold his male companion in far higher regard than his actual wife.
When did sexuality begin to be viewed so strictly and in such a crystallized way when we’re just hairless monkeys that live in nicer digs than the jungle? No one can say, but the fluidity movement is coming back in full force and subsequently, many people are finding their true identities once more.
And of course, this is exactly the type of knowledge you can harness for positive uses, such as getting past any stigmas of the homo or bi variety, and just embracing what feels good to you in bed and will create remarkable sex.
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