Sexuality and American Culture

 In his mid-twentieth century investigation into the various forms of sexual behavior in the human male, Alfred Kinsey boldly suggests that "perhaps the major portion of the male population has at least some homosexual experience." Yet by no means does Kinsey mean to suggest that the major portion of the male population is homosexual, or, rather, that most men are "exclusively homosexual," as he puts it. Thus, what one may initially conclude from his statement is that homosexual acts, as acts in themselves, bear no relationship  to any kind of natural or innate state of being; that is, if one may engage in homosexuality without actually being homosexual, then homosexuality is evidently a social construct which may very well be "cured" and need not interfere with a "normal," heterosexual lifestyle. 

However, Kinsey later goes on to state that "there is an additional group of adult males who avoid overt contacts but who are quite aware of their potentialities for reaching to other males...." With such an assertion, Kinsey here suggests that homosexual tendencies are, in fact, innate, and that one need not engage in homosexuality in order to be considered homosexual. 

With these two seemingly contradictory claims, Kinsey's primary goal is not to argue in favor of essentialism or social construction (though he does state that homosexuality has proven to be "a fundamental part, not only of human sexuality, but of mammalian patterns as a whole...."), but to demonstrate the futility of regarding sexuality in such binary terms. Kinsey adamantly rejects the use of an overly simplified hetero/homosexual dichotomy which fails to take into account the sexual experiences of a large portion of the population. He argues that sexual experiences occur quite often along a continuum, across gender lines, and that individuals must not be categorized as either hetero or homosexual because many simply cannot fit exclusively into either group. The 1950's society in which Kinsey published his report labeled any individual known to have ever engaged in a homosexual act as homosexual, regardless of any heterosexuality activity in which he or she may have also engaged. This way of thinking, according to Kinsey's report, would identify at least 60% of males as homosexual, as "about 60 per cent of the pre-adolescent boys engage in homosexual activities." It makes no more sense to apply to individuals who have slept with members of both sexes the label of heterosexual than it does to apply the the label of homosexual. Thus, the often square peg of sexuality must not be forced to fit into a round hetero or homosexual hole. Instead, it must be measured, if you will, in terms of how much sexual experience one has had with either men, women, neither, or both.

Yet does this classification of sexuality based on how often and with whom it is practiced bring us back to the suggestion that sexual orientation is not innate? Does this mean that the man with emotional and/or physical feelings exclusively for other men but who chooses to conform by sleeping with women, or who chooses to remain celibate, is not actually gay?

Notably, Kinsey does not merely call for a new label of "bisexual" either; in many cases, even for people who sleep with and/or are attracted to members of both sexes, that label is simply not adequate enough. Sometimes, it is even still more complicated than that. And this just proves how desperately a new means of categorizing sexuality is required.

Thus, I do not think it is Kinsey's goal to actually address the essentialist versus non-essentialist issue. I think, instead, that by proposing this idea of the continuous sexual scale, Kinsey simply intends to provide a more logical means by which individuals and society can classify the varying forms of sexuality, as it is practiced. I am not left with the impression that Kinsey meant to suggest an either natural or constructed cause of sexuality itself