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From: joe@emacs.uucp (Joe Chapman)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: The Kinsey Distribution
Message-ID: <147@emacs.uucp>
Date: Mon, 2-Sep-85 12:41:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: emacs.147
Posted: Mon Sep  2 12:41:19 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Sep-85 05:49:06 EDT
References: <116@mit-hector.UUCP>
Organization: CCA Uniworks, Wellesley, MA
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<>
[ I'm replying to Alix Vasilatos's posting on Dr. Kinsey's
scale, part of the recent discussion on Bisexuality. ]

To me, the notion of a continuum of sexual preference is far better than
the hetero/homo/bi sexual categories which hardly seem to be of any
value.  Nevertheless, I think that the notion of some sort of linear
progression from Kinsey 0 to Kinsey 6 is still artificial, because of
the things it doesn't take into account.  The fantasy life of the mind,
subconscious desire, romantic desire, and erotic desire are all
distinct, (often achingly) real, and interconnected aspects of what we
might consider to be the sexual being: how can these be combined into a
single statistic?  On top of this we might include a sort of political
or social desire, to account for behavior ranging from a closeted gay
teenager going out with someone of the opposite sex in order to pass the
dreadful scrutiny of his or her peers to the practice of being outrageous
for purposes of societal consciousness-raising.

Moreover, there are intensities to be taken into account---consider
Alexander the Great, for whom women were in the arithmetic majority, but
for whom one man was unquestionably the erotic center of his life
(according to some interpretations: the argument is psychological, not
necessarily historical).  

I haven't thought a lot about this since I saw a man in a bar wearing a
``Kinsey 6'' T-shirt with his arm around a woman.  Jeepers, what's the
world coming to?

-- 
-- Joseph Chapman                  decvax!cca!emacs!joe
   CCA Uniworks, Inc.              emacs!joe@cca-unix.ARPA
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