So before I share the thoughts that I've had recently about rethinking the ideas of sexuality, I should probably say what already exists to measure sexuality. Well, for starters, there was the tertiary system (gay/lesbian, bi, straight). All fine and good. What about more complex gender identities? Well that was fixed when we added 'T' to 'GBLT'. At this point, we have a quarternary system where 'T' is kind of an other category. In fact, adding letters to this acronym (or whatever you want to call it) represents including more people into this quartnerary system rather than adding more dimensions. So in reality, there doesn't seem to be a clear understanding of "the rest" of the letters.
Another proposal that was introduced was the Kinsey scale. This was a simple two-dimensional scale to measure what a person is attracted to (men, women, or something in between). This was rather revolutionary because it showed that more people are "in between" than we imagined. Not all straight people have scores of 0 and not all gay/lesbian people have scores of 6. So, naturally, the "in between" people were informally declared bisexual, declaring that most of humanity was somehow bisexual. Very valid point! What's wrong with this? It still lumps a bunch of different people into a single category. Though profound, saying that almost everyone is a "version" of bisexual doesn't really help anyone - especially when we clearly don't understand what bisexual really means. (For a better discussion of bisexuality, visit this blog.) It's true. We may think that bisexuality is defined by one person who is attracted to both men and women, but even then we run into trouble. We get the questions like: "So would you marry gay or straight?" "What are you attracted to most?" "If bisexual isn't just 'gay + straight' in varying degrees, then are you pan-sexual or something?" "What are you attracted to? What aren't you attracted to?"
Here is something that I thought up that might help with these issues. It also might do the exact opposite, but I'm willing to at least share what I have. And if someone likes it, I've helped one person.
I propose a scale for both sexuality and gender simultaneously; a scale that isn't two-dimensional and distinguishes individuals with a single letter and explores similarity among the different letters. So on the sexuality scale, one would assess which sex(es) they are physically attracted to AND would assess their own sexual identity (sex in both cases meaning anatomy). Then on the gender scale, one would [similarly] assess which gender(s) they are physically attracted to (mental-sex extroversion) AND would assess their own gender identity (mental-sex introversion). When I say "mental-sex" I mean to say the sexual personality that the person either displays to their environment (extroversion) or what they identify with (introversion). The important thing to understand about these scales is that any scale can be ignored because it is not a factor in physical attractiveness. So if someone doesn't factor in one or more parts of the gender scale, they are saying that they don't care or think about that when assessing physical attractiveness.
To better understand this scale, let's look at a few [fake] case studies:
Name: Sam Smith
Sexual identity: Male
Sex attraction: Female, Male
Gender identity: Feminine
Gender attraction: Masculine
Name: Gene Gildeschter
Sexual identity: Female
Sex attraction: Male, (Female)
Gender identity: Feminine, (Masculine)
Gender attraction: Masculine
Name: Leslie Lane
Sexual identity: Female+
Sex attraction: Female+, +Male, Male, +FM+, +Female, Male+, Female, +MF+
Gender identity: Masculine, Feminine, Third, Elvis "Leslie" Presley
Gender attraction: Masculine, Third, 2-Spirit, Feminine
If you're confused already, good. You're supposed to be. Here are some notational uses that I used which might explain a few things:
For sexuality, I only use variations of Male and Female:
Male: has male anatomy
Female: has female anatomy
Male+: mostly Male, transitioning from
Female+: mostly Female, transitioning from
+Male: mostly Male, transitioning to
+Female: mostly Female, transitioning to
+MF+: intersex, transitioning MTF
+FM+: intersex, transitioning FTM
For the gender scale I use a range of values:
Masculine: rugged, typical of the male stereotype
Feminine: curvy, typical of the female stereotype
2-Spirit: both rugged and curvy, both stereotypes
Third: neither rugged nor curvy, neither stereotype
Self-defined: emanating a certain personality (e.g. Elvis Presley)
You may have noticed that there is also a set of parentheses. This denotes any sub- or alter-identity. This can be used anywhere on the scale. I should mention that though the parenthesis can be used in the "Sexual identity" field, it wouldn't make sense to have more than one sexual identity without parenthesis. This is because, generally, people are born as one sex or the other. Even if they are born with both, there are only variations of two sexes. That's just how biology works (X and Y chromosomes). Nonetheless, biological sex is often disregarded when considering physical attraction - and especially when regarding gender identity.
It should also be noted that each field entry is ordered by preference of the individual. So, for example, Sam prefers women over men but is physically attracted to both. Meanwhile, Leslie prefers masculine identities over feminine and 2-spirited identities but is physically attracted to all of them.
There is also an arrangement of preferred field. So the individual can choose to place gender attraction in an hierarchy with sex attraction, and gender identity with sexual identity just the same. (I did not order the fields in the above [fake] cases.)
It should also be noted that this is only a scale of physical attraction and is subjectively arranged by the individual. It is not a scale of measuring what someone is personally attracted to. For example, someone might be attracted to a certain physical structure that is sexually ambiguous, or to an activity that has nothing to do with a person's sex or gender.
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