kinsey scale during registration

Hello to everyone,

I'm a newbi here, and just registered my account. I do have one small question about the 'kinsey' scale scroll-down thing I answered when I created my account.

I am wondering what the difference is between the choices of "straight-only incidentally homosexual", and "straight-more than incidentally homosexual."
I guess I'm not 100% clear on the use of 'incidental' here. Maybe I'm just being dense though. :$
Does it have to do with how many times I've had a sexual encounter with someone of the same gender? Or maybe if I intend to have more encounters with someone
of the same gender?

If someone could clarify this, I would appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

ok straight only incidentally homosexual basically refers to a person that may enjoy a irregular sexual encounter with the same sex, but doesn't feel much need or desire to be with the same sex.... IE you may indulge in a same sex encounter if its offered but you may not go looking for one.. and interest in same sex activities may be a small part of your life

some people have referred to it as they do not think about same sex encounters, they may dream about them once in a blue moon and they may show a interest in one if they stumble across some types of porn in the net etc and the same sex encounters they have had, have not been planned, but random events.....

there is no *set in stone * definition for the kinsey scale, just a basic guideline, so it can be hard for some people to define themselves according to the kinsey scale and in that case, use the one that feels right for you

More about the Kinsey Scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale

The idea is to grade your "degree" of homosexuality on a scale of 0 to 6, with 0 being completely straight and 6 being completely homsexual. 3 then is in the middle, about 50/50. That leaves to degrees on either side: 1 and 2, and 4 and 5.

I think these are the official descriptors:

0	Exclusively heterosexual
1	Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual
2	Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual
3	Equally heterosexual and homosexual
4	Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
5	Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual
6	Exclusively homosexual

Maybe I should change our descriptors to match exactly the official ones?

- Drew :paw:

Considering the scale was the summary of data collected across many questions, it may be hard to pick your current end point without walking through the original questions. Does anyone know what the Kinsey team used for questions and how they were rated? That would be an interesting excersise to update a person's placement, but may be daunting for a registration.

Remember also that this is not an exact science. You have to use your own judgment as to what you consider 'incidental' or 'more than incidental.'

Th e original methodolgy was just a "body count" of how many people a person had sex with and what the percentages were of female versus male and as I recall it was in 3 year increments. For example, if, during the study period, I had sex with 1 woman (my wife) and 3 men, then you take 3 divided by 4 and you get 75% times 6 = 4.5. So my Kinsey score is 4.5. Now, note that I can have sex with 1 woman twice a week for a year and one time anonymous sex with 3 random men and I'm still a 4.5. Later refinements then added fantasy and attraction (e.g let's say I masturbate only thinking of men. That would be a 6) and "romantic"/"emotional" love. (e.g. a 0 if I am only in love with a woman.)

So you can add all three measures.....

number of sex partners = 4.5
fantasy = 6
emotion/love= 0
==========================
10.5 divided by 3 = 3.5. (58%)


So, this person seems to be ever so slightly more on the homo side but just barely. But this person has more sex with men (75%) and is completely homosexual in fantasies and masturbation. However, romatically he is basically heterosexual and has more sex with one woman than with 3 male strangers. It gets complicated certainly.

Imagine a third man who only has sex with one woman and is romantically attracted to her. But his fantasy life is completely homosexual and he only looks at and is aroused by gay ga porn. His profile is 0+0+6 = 6/3 = a Kinsey 2 (or about 33% "gay" if you will) The Third Man (joke for movie fans out there) is technically more "heterosexual" than Man 1 or Man 2 but some of us would say he appears to be a "gay" man having sex with a woman.

It gets messy doesn't it?

Oops. Part of my post got lost. There was the example of a 2nd man who only has sex with 1 man and 1 woman and he is equally roamntically attracted to each one. His fantasies are equally between men and women. So he would be a Kinsey 3 (50/50). But how many of us are really this evenly divided?