Alfred Kinsey’s imprint on the world of sexuality has — and continues to — inspire criticism, fascination, even outrage. It’s a captivating legacy for a man who spent the first half of his career studying the gall wasp.
Depending whom you ask, Kinsey — the creator of the Kinsey Scale of sexual behavior along a continuum — either ignited a radically progressive understanding of human sexuality; created a scale that doesn’t come close to encapsulating the range of human sexuality; or even, according to one critic, “spent his lifetime ripping down the institution of the family.”
First published in 1948, Kinsey’s eponymous scale classified people according to their degree of attraction or sexual behavior toward the same or other sex: 0 being “exclusively heterosexual” and 6 being “exclusively homosexual” — with a big swath of gray in between. But for the first time, scientific inquiry had acknowledged that there weren’t just two options.
And though it’s unlikely that a visit to a therapist will earn you a number on the Kinsey Scale today, the legacy of Kinsey lives on in new models of sexuality. But they've outgrown him, too. Professionals and researchers say that sexuality is tied up with many other factors — and isn’t necessarily a point on a straight line. Today’s understanding still relies on so much of what Kinsey described, but adds so much more.
