Kinsey proved that bisexuality runs rampant

Alfred Kinsey was the first scientist to thoroughly examine sex and sexual behavior. Credited with mainstreaming the field of study known as “sexology,” this pioneer founded the controversial Institute of Sex Research in 1947 with his wife, Clara.

Kinsey himself maintained many male lovers (many of whom were his graduate students). One biographer claims that Kinsey enjoyed group sex, S&M, and encouraged his staff to engage in group sex.

His wife, Clara, who had sex with other men, remained his life partner as they explored why people didn’t always tell the truth about their sexual behavior. To address this reality, Kinsey and Clara developed a scale that addressed the different degrees of one’s sexuality.

The couple discovered that 37 percent of men and 13 percent of women had an orgasm at some point in their lives with a person of the same sex. And their conclusion, frightening to many, is that most people’s sexuality falls somewhere in between heterosexual and homosexual, which ultimately means most people are fencesitters.

At the Toronto International Film Festival, in my job as an entertainment journalist, I asked the cast of “Kinsey” at a press conference what each of them rate themselves on the Kinsey Scale.

When Laura Linney (nominated for an Oscar for her role) piped up “2,” the headlines the next day professed that a California muckracker outed Linney as bi. To this day the actress laughs when seeing me and says I'm the one who got her in trouble. Ultimately, she says she’s more hetero, but she forgot that the scale starts at 0, so she meant to say she’s more a 1.

Oh well. At least Linney, unlike her tight-lipped co-stars Liam Neeson and Peter Sarsgaard, answered the question.

You can read an extensive look about the movie "Kinsey" that I wrote for the recently Lambda Award-nominated book, "Kinsey Zero through Sixty: Bisexual Perspectives on Kinsey" which is part of the Journal of Bisexuality series. My section, which interviews all the cast and the director, Bill Condon, is called: "Moving Closer to the Middle: Kinsey the Movie, and Its Rocky Road to Bisexual Acceptance" and can be bought online.

 Here is the scale that Kinsey came up with, (reprinted with permission from the Kinsey Institute) and it's important to note that of the 12,000 men his team interviewed between 1938 and 1947, about 37 percent could be labeled bisexual. More, if you consider the respondents' history, past and fantasies.

0 - Exclusively heterosexual with no homosexual
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, on incidentally heterosexual
6 - Exclusively homosexual.

Check out the slide show below of the real Afred Kinsey and his wife, Clara and the staff.

Also, click below for a video clip explaining the Kinsey Scale.

For more 101 stories, see below:

* Bisexuality 101: Am I bisexual?

  *Bisexuality 101: The Ice Cream Dilemma, or your sexuality based on what you put between your lips