Sexuality Labels

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Why do we have to have them?

Homosexual, Bisexual, Heterosexual, Straight, Gay, Lesbian are all labels to which many object very strongly. It is rather like having a tag attached your forehead - "I am gay", "I am bisexual", "I am straight", even "I am normal". What is normal?

The problem is that labels like this are truly restrictive as sexuality is an infinitely variable thing. Not only that, but it can change within a person. Someone who during a part of their life behaves mainly in a heterosexual manner, can with time, take on homosexual tendencies. It is not that these tendencies are new to the person concerned, but they have started to emanate, having been suppressed in the past.

We are who and what we are, but we do not always want others, or indeed ourselves, to recognize it, particularly if we have not come to terms with the "monster" within us.

There is an expression "Living on the Down Low" which is often used to describe people who will never admit to being anything other than straight, when in fact they are also having sex with others of their sex, but never disclose the fact. "Down Low" means generically to keep something private.

What if we were to discard the labels altogether?

That would be great! Or would it?

For convenience, however restrictive they may be, labels at least give us a clue as to what the broad sexuality of a person might be. If we had no labels, how would you find this site, Married Gay?

	"Married Men" would be too general and on Google generates 8 million responses.
	"Married Gay Men" returns 2 million responses.
	"Married Gay Women" would return similar responses.

So, I take the view, that whether we like it or not, we have to use labels, but not so as to mislead ourselves and others by over simplification.

Kinsey developed the following scale in his 1948 Study, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male which I have used in the questionnaires attached to this site:

0 - exclusively heterosexual
1 - predominantly heterosexual, 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, incidentally heterosexual
6 - exclusively homosexual

I am using a similar scale for the Human Female.

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