More than just gay vs. straight
Dr. Alfred Kinsey was one of the first researchers to explore bisexuality in the U.S. Dr. Kinsey and his colleagues developed the Kinsey Scale in the 1940s, to measure and portray sexual attraction/behavior as occurring along a continuum, with a number of people falling somewhere between exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality (The Kinsey Scale, 2017). (Figure 1)
More recently, the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid (KSOG) was developed by the founder of the American Institute of Bisexuality to represent a nuanced view of sexual orientation, including bisexuality. The KSOG incorporates a variety of elements, including the possibility that a person’s sexual identity will change over time, and it includes emotional and romantic preferences as well as sexual attraction/behavior (The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, 2014). (Figure 2)
Both the Kinsey Scale and the KSOG are ways of measuring and representing bisexuality as existing along a continuum of sexual identities.
Featured Content
Read about the background of the Kinsey Scale from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University.
Read more about the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid in this article from the American Institute of Bisexuality.
References:
The Kinsey Scale. (2019). Kinsey Institute. https://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/publications/kinsey-scale.php
The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid. (2014). American Institute of Bisexuality. http://www.americaninstituteofbisexuality.org/
