The Kinsey Institute created a scale to show that sexuality is more accuratly described as a spectrum and not a clear definition. The scale created by the 60-year-old institute uses the numbers 0 – 6 to allow people to identify themselves, the institute expects people’s identity to change over time. Here is a look at the scale:
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, only incidentally heterosexual
6- Exclusively homosexual
Source: kinseyinstitute.org
• Bisexual Resource Center designated March as awareness month focussed on erasure.
• Erasure is common even in Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender community student says.
• Research shows number of bisexuals higher than those identifying as gay or lesbian.
For some people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community, discrimination can come from within the group.
The Bisexual Resource Center designated March as the first Bisexual Awareness month to help with some issues bisexuals experience, including bisexual invisibility — the denial of bisexuality by believing in strict heterosexual or homosexual tendencies. The center used the month to raise awareness about the community’s mental and physical health using social media.
Bisexual invisibility is common in both straight and LGBTQ communities today, according to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission LGBT Advisory Committee.
AJ Owens said bisexual invisibility, or bisexual erasure, typically applies to people denying the existence of bisexual people labeling them as gay when they date someone of the same sex and straight when they date someone of the opposite sex.
“I think there is just a general misunderstanding of what sexual orientation is and how it works,” said Owens, a junior social work major and secretary of Call to Action. “When people have a sexual orientation that is an attraction to one sex or gender, they don’t understand the capacity to find different genders
attractive.”
According to the committee, research about the LGBTQ community typically follows the same trend of placing bisexuality under “gay” or “lesbian,” meaning there are fewer studies on bisexuality.
The number of people in the United States who identify as bisexual is 1.8 percent while those who say they are gay or lesbian hit 1.7 percent, according to a study conducted by the University of California Williams Institute.
Kinsey Sexuality Rating Scale demonstrates how sexuality is more of a spectrum and cannot be clearly separated into homosexual and heterosexual. The scale, created by the 60-year-old Kinsey Institute, offers numbers between zero and six which identifies people ranging from completely heterosexual to completely homosexual.
The institute created the scale to explain why research oftenfound that people did not fit into a strict sexual identity, according the institute’s website. Furthermore, through use of the scale, the institute has found a person will often change their sexual identity on the scale throughout their lifetime.
There have been cases of discrimination of bisexuals even within the LGBTQ community, according to the article from the San Francisco HRC advisory committee. In the 2008 Gay Softball World Series, three San Francisco softball players said they were disqualified for being “not gay enough” when they identified as bisexuals.
Owens said some people in the LGBTQ community see bisexuality as simply a “stepping stone” to coming out as gay.
“[Bisexuality] is almost seen as a joke,” Owens said. “You’re ridiculed if you’re bisexual sometimes because people say, ‘They’ll figure out that they are really gay eventually.’ It’s played off as a joke, but it’s almost malicious.”
Lisa Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, published a study in 2008 that surveyed 79 women over 10 years and found that bisexuality is more of a stable identity than it is a transitional phase.
Owens said the exclusion of sexual preferences is even more evident in those not covered under the LGBTQ label. While bisexual invisibility only contains the “bisexual” label, the concept can be applied to other non-gay or lesbian sexualities.
Arianna Hartloff, a freshman psychology and women and gender’s studies major, identifies as pansexual — not basing attractions to a person based on “what’s in their pants.” She said pansexual individuals often consider themselves gender-blind.
When Hartloff first heard the term pansexual as a sophomore in high school, she was confident that was her label.
“I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s my term. Thank you, Lord, for sending that word to me,’” Hartloff said. “I went out and shouted it and told my mom.”
Others didn’t share in her excitement, and she said she received a lot of criticism for her label. Likewise, Hartloff said people criticize polysexuality, which is attraction to multiple genders or sexes, but not necessarily all.
Her mentor, who identifies as polysexual, would try to hit on a man or a woman at gay bars. People would refuse her advances strictly because she wasn’t definitively gay or straight.
Emerald Poor, a junior criminal justice major, said when she mentions she is pansexual, people often ask her if she is attracted to cookware.
“I always come back with a smart remark afterward,” Poor said. “Most of the time, they are joking and I just look at them and say, ‘Yep, I’d find a pan more attractive than you.’”
She said people often misjudge pansexuals as promiscuous because they practice fluidity in their choices of partners. Likewise, people often ignore bisexuals because they could date someone of the opposite gender and don’t include them when speaking about LGBTQ rights, even though they are included in the community.
Although both bisexuals and pansexuals are fighting for the same rights as the rest of the community, she said they are being somewhat cut off by the discrimination, meaning less people are involved.
“It utterly disgusts me that people in LGBT discriminate against their own,” Poor said. “Why are we being punished for being a little bit different in a group that is already different in itself?”
Rachael Barry contributed to the story.
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