Since a three-dimensional object casts a two-dimensional shadow, we should be able to imagine the unknown four-dimensional object whose shadow we are. – Marcel Duchamp
Most of y’all are probably familiar with the Kinsey scale of sexual orientation; it’s the 0-6 in the chart below. Earlier this week, my attention was called to an article in Mic which promoted this new classification system, which expands Kinsey’s one dimension to two. But while on the one hand it gives a slightly better picture of vanilla sexual response, it completely ignores both the kink dimension and the existence of responsive sexuality (the norm in about a third of women), and gives a place of precedence to ongoing sexual “relationships” despite the fact that many individuals aren’t interested in them:
Given only this system to work with, I’d probably best be classified as a C4; I don’t ever develop what most people would define as “lustful feelings”, no matter how long I’m in a relationship or how attractive I find my partner. Yet at the same time, that “C” description makes it sound as though sex is always a calculated and rather sterile decision for people like me, and that we can’t experience passion. And that is 99 44/100% pure bullshit; anyone who’s ever seen me actually aroused can tell you that I’m very passionate indeed. The people who designed this chart seem to believe that responding to sexual stimuli requires “lustful feelings”, which is roughly equivalent to saying that a car is non-functional because it requires a driver to start and operate it.
And then there’s this weird and narrow focus on vanilla notions of sexuality; obviously that isn’t spelled out in the chart legend, but the language strongly implies that when the designers say “sex” they mean intercourse, oral sex and other genital diddling designed to produce orgasm. But many people’s sexualities aren’t like that at all; some people might be described as A, B or C where fucking is concerned, yet they’re D, E or even F with some sort of kink. Furthermore, that kink might not even be something the majority would recognize as sexual, yet it gets the individual hard or wet and results in the same kind of gratification vanillas get from the old in-out (or some equally satisfying physiological/emotional state). Expanding one dimension to two is not a big improvement, especially if one is going to use descriptors like “true orientation” while ignoring a lot of the human race. As I wrote in “East is East and West is West“,
Human sexuality is not like a standard light switch, which has two and only two positions; it’s not even like a dimmer switch, with an infinite number of subtle gradations along one linear path. It’s much more like a faucet, in which two kinds of water can be mixed to produce many temperature gradations while the intensity of the flow can also have many levels. In fact, if you can imagine a shower where the water can be directed to come out of either the lower faucet or the shower head or a movable nozzle or jacuzzi jets, that might be a model a bit closer to the truth. Though modern Westerners like to pretend that everyone falls into rigidly-defined boxes of “straight” or “queer” which they occupy from birth until death and never leave, the truth is that this does not adequately describe many, perhaps most, people’s sexuality…
One final note: I find the phrase “bonds stronger than friendship” (in the “B” description) extremely offensive. For most people deep friendship can be a stronger bond than romance, which is why friendships so often outlast marriages. The people (almost certainly men) who designed this chart are the same sort who come up with ugly phrases like “friend zone” and “friends with benefits”, who imagine relationships as fitting into some sort of linear scale where those containing sex and romance are objectively “better” or “higher” than those which don’t. The reality of human sexuality is a whole world; describing it requires at least four dimensions plus time. So though two dimensions of description is certainly an improvement over one, it’s hardly revolutionary; if anything, it’s kind of a slow start.
Brilliant critique. Sexuality just cannot be put in boxes. Though my ‘orientation’ is rather fixed, I’m definitely not pinned to their boxes regarding attraction. For me it’s always contextual and never predictable.
Maggie, this fits with something a friend of mine wrote on sexual orientation being multi-dimensional (he compared it to orchestral music).
Here’s a link to his blog piece.
Very nice, Maggie. Thanks. Most sex workers I have known well enough to have discussed what you write about here, seem to fall in “you” category, C4.
In addition:
During an interesting conversation long ago, an escort went as far as saying that within human sexuality she considered copulation as the only conduct deserving the name ‘sex:’ “the biological, mechanical behavior of a vagina and a penis that causes ejaculation. Sex is not driven by thought and works best without thinking.”
In her opinion any other sexual conduct belongs to the realm of eroticism: “Erotic behavior is kindled by imagination. Imagination (fantasies) initiates orgasm; copulation alone can’t do this. Reaching orgasm is for men and women quite possible without copulation, for a man even without ejaculation.”
She made a clear distinction between ejaculation and orgasm, each with their own purpose, function, and means for achieving them. She thought that a full orgasm, something so intense that it short-circuits consciousness and thought for a split second, is rare. (The French call it “La petite morte,” little death…) In fact, there still are no factual recollections of the orgasm experience on record: obviously there are no words for when consciousness is suspended.
These days, thanks to neuroscience research, this is quite common knowledge, but fifty, sixty ears ago when she was at the height of her career, the common man used the two terms like synonyms.
The function of ejaculation is clear, but she always wondered what could be the purpose of orgasm ???
In her work she considered a session with a client not successful if she could not relax him (take his mind of the sex) and eroticize him enough to reach some form of orgasm.
Further, based on experience she believed that for men and women the sex act as such is rarely memorable (and few people do remember it), but erotic experiences surrounding and accompanying it can be extremely memorable and sometimes unforgettable.
I guess that for the modern sex worker this is all common daily knowledge and experience, but in my experience it isn’t for all clients and other sexual beings.
In French : « la petite mort » (la petite morte means the little dead woman, or the little dead girl).
the little dead girl woud be “la petite mortE” (with the feminin -e attached)
“La mort” (feminin) is “Death”
Right, that’s what I said.
In your first reply, you wrote « morte », meaning a female dead person, instead of « mort », meaning death.
Not a big mistake, for sure.
hehe! I hadn’t noticed. Thank you!!!
It seems the disciples of Procrustes are still doing a fine trade in the social “sciences”.
I’m sure your dislike of the our new methodolgy is based on penis envy and negative orgone accumulation, along with over-stimulalted superego formation based on faulty toilet training. By any chance were you exposed to erotic frescoes as a child? They can be quite damaging, you know!
A metric has one primary characteristic: It comes up with a number (or in this case a 2-element vector of numbers). Many “researchers” mistakenly believe this is already enough to form a useful metric, even if that is rather obviously not the case. The scientific literature is full of worthless and counter-productive metrics of all kinds.
My take is that this is a behavior encouraged because what it produces looks scientific, but does not require any deep actual understanding or time-consuming work. Or in other words, it will increase the chance of getting a paper published, even if its contents is basically worthless. A lot of what is supposed to be science these days is just nonsense masking as science in best Feynman Cargo-Cult manner by faking it, using artifacts like this pretty but useless chart.