Talk:Kinsey scale

message: I'm slightly confused. I always believed the Kinsey Scale was a measure of sexual orientation. I looked on several websites and it said that the Kinsey Scale is a measure of sexual orientation. I'm not sure if this is correct so I did not want to edit the article, I was wondering if anyone could submit any feedback to me.--Mjp797 22:37, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  sexual orientation confirmation 

message: Kinsey's work is controversial, but there's still confusion about orientation/preference/experience/gender being used seemingly interchangeably.  Can someone add/cleanup?  Iamvered 17:33, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Kbolino's statement. Kinsey himself may be controversial, but Wikipedia doesn't avoid controversial or even bigoted people -- nor should it. This article is in need of some cleanup, but it's perfectly in compliance with NPOV. -Sean Hayford O'Leary 05:15, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV? 

message: Take a look at the table, I believe someone is playing silly buggers.
Yes, I noticed that too, have deleted the line in question ", --Wren-3talk 22:37, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table 

message: I read the entire article and had no idea how the Kinsey scale was formulated, only that it measures hetero/homosexuality. There should be a section elaborating on the process of how these results are obtained, rather than just saying "11% of men are a 3."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.198.102.148 (talk) 08:02, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. The Kinsey scale is so ingrained into modern culture, but this article is remarkably short. The process of determining sexuality based on this scale should be outlined. I also wonder if there are professionals who disagree with the scale's linear model, not unlike those who disagree with the Wechsler scale of determining IQ, in that things originating in the human mind are too complex to designate in one dimension. This goes along with the argument of asexuality, as pointed out somewhere on this page. I am in no way drawing a correlation between sexuality and IQ (there seems to have been a few easily confused people on this discussion page. Does the color of the numbers really matter?). Xaphon (talk) 17:38, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The meaning of this article is marred by the language 

message: What does that even mean? OrangeAipom (talk) 05:58, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: LIke, for example, somebody who usually likes only women, but may like men in certain cases. Zazaban2 (talk) 06:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Cane the definition of 'incidentally' be placed onto the main article?  --Havvy, November 4th, 2010  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.20.170.63 (talk) 06:25, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

text: (i have no particular idea here but an alternate meaning occurs to me) perhaps it means that there may have been some past incidents for various reasons but no more planned for the future, as in "apart from some events of an incidental nature". Anyway, I agree this aspect needs cleanup along with the rest of the article. 68.174.97.122 (talk) 23:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  The Kinsey scale measures "experience or response", so "incidentally homosexual" means occasionally having experienced or responded sexually to the same sex, the latter accounting for cases where someone can be sexually attracted to members of the same sex whilst having no to minimal sexual activity with them. --Xagg (talk) 08:50, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't you mean "occasionally having experienced or responded sexually to the same sex"? For example, #1 on the Kinsey scale is "Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual." The word "incidentally" is definitely used to mean "occasionally." Flyer22 (talk) 20:26, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the correction, that's what I meant. Fixed above and in the article. --Xagg (talk) 08:41, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

text: Hello, MissTeek. I certainly don't feel that you were being an idiot. Some sources seem to suggest that Kinsey meant incidentally, as in occasionally, to mean "incidental physical sexual contact." And in that case, physical sexual contact obviously applies to his use of the terms exclusively and predominantly. But as can be seen from this article, such as in the Overview section, Kinsey states "experience or response." So he wasn't only going by physical sexual contact, but psychologically being sexually attracted to a sex as well. And, of course, people use the Kinsey scale for measuring both -- physical sexual contact and psychological sexual attraction. Flyer22 (talk) 23:24, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Incidentally?

message: Now, we have Gay=>Yellow and Straight=>Blue and Bisexual=>Green. I cannot emphasise enough that all of these colors are positive colors.
*1st: Yellow is the color of wealth, of opulence, of luxury. It is also a color of the natural world, and it brings to mind long patches of flowers. It is a sweet color, and a calming color.
*2nd: Blue is the color of water. It is also a natural color. It is a relaxing one, a meditating one. It brings to mind the many blue based flags that countries have.
*3rd: Green is the color of grass and plant-life. You can't get any natural than that. It is also meditating. It has an intense symmetry to it, which the yellows and blues flowing into each other to give an endless ying and yang that cannot be unbound. It is also sweet, in a way.
Together, the natural colors symbolize the wonderful unity and intertwined feelings between all peoples of different orientations, since we are still all one human family.
Is this enough? Or are you all still going to be paranoid? The Squicks (talk) 03:04, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the colours you've used. It helps clarify the scale and does so in a neutral way. Jozal (talk) 16:28, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Colors

message: I know that a "score" may not be constant, but where did Kinsey himself fall on the spectrum of his design?  This would be interesting to add to the article. 98.221.137.91 (talk) 11:38, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kinsey Himself 

message: It's my impression (and I could be mistaken) that the original Kinsey Scale that would've been used a half-century ago was significantly different from more recent versions, in that the old Kinsey Scale only reflected actual, real-life, "consummated" activity with another person of the same sex. In other words, there was NO attempt to quantify fantasies that had homosexual themes, let alone to measure something as abstract and intangible as "feelings of attraction." 
So, by the original scale, if a man engaged in real-life mutual masturbation with another man in a hot tub (as described by noted sexologist Trey Parker on South Park), that counted as a homosexual act, and thus his Kinsey Number would go up a bit. However, if the same man engaged in solo masturbation while THINKING about how nice it would be to jerk off with another man, that "didn't count," and had no effect on his overall score!
Later versions of the Kinsey Scale used a significantly revised questionnaire that did attempt to take fantasy life and emotional attractions into account. 
So, if someone with more expertise than I have can confirm all this, it should probably be added to the article that the Kinsey Scale methodology evolved over time, and thus if you see someone described as a "Kinsey 3" in a 1960 publication, it doesn't necessarily have the exact same significance as a "Kinsey 3" in a 2005 publication, because the ranking method and questionnaires have changed. Throbert McGee (talk) 22:16, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Early versions of Kinsey Scale different from modern ones? 

message: If I created the Kinsey Scale and put it into wikipedia, it would be called original research and deleted. That's what should have been done with the original too, it's obvious looking at it that it's just made up. It might have some statistical usefulness (see "rank order statistics" which I am not an expert on) but it would need the statistical analysis on a sample to show that, and in any case could be invented on the spot for the purpose of the statistics and it wouldn't need a name. The problem with it is that it's just a linear graph to represent an underlying process that there is every reason to believe is not linear. If there are enough underlying independent variables and processes involved we might expect the curve to be some form of a gamma function, but again, it's the actual statistics or actual underlying processes that are interesting, not this chart.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.190.76.5 (talk) 16:31, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Not to be completely rude, but did you actually read anything on this? Or did you just look at the pretty picture and decide that it couldn't possibly be real because you say so? The Kinsey Institute is real and so is this scale. Please do some research before making grandiose claims. TheNewKarl (talk) 08:29, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  original research that wound up with a name 

message: I haven't done the research to determine the correct meaning of the scale, but, on the page, this bit suggests zero is completely gay:
In such studies, the person would be asked a question such as "If 0 is completely gay and 10 is completely hetero, what is your orientation number?"
whereas the "Table of the Scale" suggests zero is completely straight.
Which is it?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.246.167.146 (talk) 23:14, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which end of the scale is which? 

message: Whereas Kinsey scale is used to support a myriad of scientific or pseudo-scientific works there is not scientific work that give grounds to Kinsey out of Kinsey himself.
First of all is not regarded the TRANSITIONAL aspect of the sex act. In sex one individual DELIVERS and another RECEIVES. This determines which individual is ACTIVE and which is PASSIVE. Men that may have received oral sex from passive homosexuals can't be thrown in the same category, nor one category away from travesties.
How can a study assure that 1 out of 10 mature age males will have been ENTIRELY HOMOSEXUAL during 3 years of his life when 90% of males are married to females? It is the same to say that the remaining 10% had exclusively homosexual intercourse during three years time.
Kinsey takes a mere Home Office demographic statistic, dresses it up with his more POLITICAL THAN SCIENTIFIC VIEWS, and applies it back to the whole society. 
It is clear that Kinsey's statistics are bogus, these were ONCE used to enhance the myth of men who don't marry or who marry late as of abnormal sexuality. It is used TODAY to support the OBNOXIOUS AND FALSE PROMOTION OF HOMOSEXUALITY.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.191.20.220 (talk) 01:05, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kinsey Scale is Bogus 

message: Can anyone confirm that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kinsey_Scale.svg is actually an accurate reproduction of a chart in the book? The labeling of this chart, which seems to be some mashup of a bar and a line chart, is very vague on non-integer ratings. If the book has a better chart, we should update this. If it doesn't, I'm not sure the appropriate course of action. Sparr (talk) 21:03, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  chart and fractions 

message: As of this writing, citations 7 - 10 are citing other wikipedia articles as a source. Is this practice acceptable on Wikipedia? I've personally never seen it done before, and can't imagine it's encouraged, if not forbidden entirely. — B1naryatr0phy (talk) 10:44, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: , those references are not citing other Wikipedia articles as sources; they are citing Kinsey and simply linking to the Wikipedia articles about the books. References often include WP:Wikilinks, whether it's to the author's name and/or to the publication that the reference is talking about or was published in, or something else. But, yes, per WP:Verifiability and WP:Reliable sources, using Wikipedia as a source is not appropriate. Flyer22 (talk) 23:33, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Several citations use other wikipedia articles as source 

message: Substituted at 21:16, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The "Kinsey reports" section is poorly written. For the men it only covers 11.6% of "white males 20-35" and 10% of "American males". For the woman there is slightly more written but still only accounting to 26% of all surveyed.
Furthermore, this "Kinsey reports" is filed under "Findings", which makes the entry incomplete at best.
What is one supposed to take away from reading this section? What are the findings here if you only talk about 11.6% of white males aged 20-35? (for example)?
I suggest this entire "Findings" section is axed or rewritten to present the findings in a way that covers all of the surveyed people.
Aethalides (talk) 17:18, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias in reported findings 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:
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Participate in the deletion discussion at the . —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:22, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion 

message: I'd like to know how to better understand the scale and the data or information that were gathered to prove that the information is factual and not fake Ackeria Smith (talk) 01:17, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kinsey scale 

message: The article says at least twice (as of this date) that there are seven categories. There are 8, because of the "X" that the article also describes. The inconsistency is jarring, at least to this reader. IAmNitpicking (talk) 14:24, 22 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Counting? 

message: Participants completed the Kinsey scale and then were asked to respond to the following question: "In what ways did this scale capture or fail to capture your sexuality?
This is a strongly leading question. It is inciting confirmation bias. Odd for a scientific survey. Wouldn't a neutral wording be: "Does this scale capture your sexuality? Are there things you would like to add?" 2001:A61:12AB:1C01:3CB2:1811:EF64:4693 (talk) 22:48, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Surveys and other studies