Would you consider a Kinsey 5 to be gay?

I would generally consider a Kinsey 5 to be 'gay'. I think of myself as being between 4.5 and 5 on the Kinsey scale, and I suppose I identify as 'gay'.

But in the end, individuals have the right to decide for ourselves how we feel comfortable identifying in terms of labels.

 

I'd say a kinsey 5 is mostly gay. If I absolutely had to label them, I'd say gay. And I'd say a kinsey 1 is either a gay person/bisexual in denial or a straight person who has some minor homosexual tendencies.

 

No.

 

honestly? I think if someone identifies as a kinsey 1 or 5 the onus is on the individual to decide if they prefer the label 'gay' or 'straight' or any other word that they feel suits them.

it's sometimes hard to put a more complicated idea about sexuality into a single term, but it's also helpful for quick explanation and for relation to a community of people that are largely similar, but not all exactly the same.

 

I would say that they are predominately homosexual if they are a kinsey 5, so I'd say mostly gay.

 

I find it kind of silly that we make such a big deal out of this scale and then question the living shit out of 1 and 5. At this rate, we should make it 1 to 3.

#BeingReductiveFTW

 

Only if they want to identify as gay (or straight, in your second example). If they want to identify as bisexual, I wouldn't think of them as 'mostly gay' or 'mostly straight', just bisexual.

 

This.

 

I'm a kinsey 5 and I identify as gay. Some might choose to identify as bisexual if they're a kinsey 5, and that's fine, they can do that if they feel that label accurately describes them. But for me, while I do have a slight interest in women, the interest isn't strong enough to make me go out of my way to seek women and it's completely dwarfed by what I feel for men. If you showed me a picture of a girl I found attractive, well, let's just say it wouldn't be as noticeable as it would be if you showed me a guy I found attractive. So for me the label "gay" always felt more honest than "bisexual," but others may feel differently.

 

Well, not entirely gay. I like men, but there's a tiny fraction of me that likes women.

 

I think most people can be categorized as essentially straight or gay and the rest as somewhat gay or straight on a continuum but cannot really draw the line. Essentially, the question can boil down to how many rectangles you want to create in order to measure your "actual" Kinsey score (i.e. use 1,2,3,4,5,6 or 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5...........) and then draw lines at where "society" dictates heterosexuality ends or homosexuality begins.

The best policy is to use "calculus" and find out your actual "value" that may very well be unique to you.

That being said, we're humans; we like to have things in boxes (or rectangles) :roflmao:.

 

I more or less agree with this. I know it's common in the community to say that sexuality is a spectrum, but speaking as someone who isn't monosexual, it's really more complicated than that. The Kinsey scale is like creating a scale of musical taste with pop music on one end and classical on the other. It not only conflates all the different ways in which one can like both ends but also completely ignores that there are plenty more choices outside the binary system presented.

So, is a Kinsey 5 gay? Only if they identify as such. Maybe they only fall into the criteria for being a 5 because they experience some sexual attraction to the other gender but don't have any romantic attraction and so prefer to just go with gay. Maybe they have tried identifying as gay but then got uncomfortable whenever they find another gender attractive, and it happens often enough that they feel as if gay doesn't describe them.

In short, sexuality, like gender, is complicated.

 

I'm a 4 and I consider myself bisexual, but mainly gay. And saying that you are a 5, you probably could consider yourself gay rather than bisexual. But only you can decide on what you think your accurate orientation is.

 

I'd say they're gay. Terms used for social classification purposes don't need to be exact, they just need to tell you what you need to know. The practical impact of saying you're gay is to say 'I want to find partners of the same sex, not the opposite sex' and most Kinsey 5s are probably like that. Same in reverse for Kinsey 1s.

But whether they choose to call themselves gay/straight or bisexual is entirely up to them. Both terms are technically accurate.

To use an analogy - many deaf people actually can hear. But they could only hear a jet plane landing, or something similarly loud. So for practical purposes, in most situations they aren't much different from a totally deaf person. However, if they wanted to describe themselves as 'hard of hearing' instead, it would be technically accurate.

 

I know. I was just expressing some frustration with the scale. Now that I am out to myself as genderqueer, I am having trouble figuring out what sexual orientation even meens. I feel non-binary, and if sexual orientation is in relation to the gender of other people you find attractive... What is it? Is it "straight" for me to like masculine genderqueers?

Too much is made of Kinsey anyway, and as has been pointed out, Kinsey was kind of problematic.

 

I like the term androsexual and gynesexual, for specifying the gender you prefer without specifying your own gender.

But even so, those terms assume the people you're attracted to are part of the gender binary.

 

I'd say more bi. Because if a 6 is 100% gay and a 0 is 100% straight.
Then 5 and 1 would be a varying degree of both genders.

 

It think that I'll leave it up to the individual as to how they want to identify. If, say, a man isn't interested in having sex/relationships with girls, I'd have no problem with him identifying as gay, even if he is slightly attracted to girls. Technically, 1 and 5 would be bisexual, though. I think it is more important that people recognise their attractions. Particularly in terms of 1s, I think they are more common than people think, and if more 1s were aware of there same sex attraction there might be less homophobia.

But yes, I think that Kinsey has a lot to be desired.

Skoliosexual = attraction to people with non-binary genders. Or so I've heard. I've never met anyone who identifies as that.