“Always the starfish, never the blowfish…”
In which the throbbers take the outdated Kinsey scale test to learn….
What exactly? No one knows!
Kinsey References
If you haven’t noticed, our episodes have been released in an intriguing order… and were also recorded a long time ago! Many eons ago! (back when the world was new…) We had a recording year long gap because of our first born, Harry Hotter and the Cursed Podcast, which we spent forever trying to fix and finally got it sorted! You’re welcome.
Lucy is absent from this episode for “research” purposes. Her official title is Research Coordinator.
Kelly began looking into this topic (with minimal research) due to our earlier episode on Love Languages. We have all of our Love Languages and a variety of other things about us in spread sheets… including, but not limited to, fall activities, twilight characters we share Myers-Briggs characteristics with, and scents we like. We’re normal.
Kelly discovered the great and powerful author and Sex Educator, Shan Boodram! Love her, worship her, follow her on all social media platforms! #blackcreators
In Shannon’s book, The Game of Desire, the first step on your sexual/dating journey is to know thyself. And this is mainly done…with a lot of personality quizzes. (Kelly and the rest of us love a personality quiz)
One of the quizzes included in this book was the Kinsey Scale, a method dating from 1948 which rates sexuality on a scale from homosexual to heterosexual. (Here is a quiz for it, despite the actual Kinsey institute not believing in a version of the quiz instead basing their score on past sexual partners). Shan Boody (she has many a name) suggests taking the quiz twice, once for your reality, once for your fantasy.
The Kinsey Scale 0 (Hetero) to 6 (Homo) & X we don’t understand you
Sissel only knows anything about this concept because of Mean Girls, and the line “Kinsey 6 Gay”.
Here are our Kinsey results:
Gina
Reality 2 – Predominenty Hetero, More than incidentally Homo
Fantasy 3 – Equally Both!
Maisie
Reality & Fantasy 3 – Equally Both!
She also doesn’t really understand how this test could be taken as fantasy vs reality? It requires a certain level of self knowledge to be able to take it, which makes it not necessarily helpful for those seeking answers.
(Sorry, weird break when Sissel did acrobatic moves in tights & a pencil skirt. You’re welcome listeners.)
Hannah
Reality 5 – Predominantly Homosexual, only Incidentally Heterosexual
Fantasy 4 – Predominantly Homosexual, and More than Incidentally Heterosexual
(On a re-listen… Sissel was completely wrong about the term ‘incidentally’… what was she talking about.)
Hannah thinks that she considers herself heterosexual, despite this quiz, because she finds women more attractive but she doesn’t feel strong sexual desire with women, but she does form stronger emotional bonds with them.
Shout out to female/femme friendships, because they’re amazing and we all deserve the depth of codependent friendships! We spend some time talking about how women form strong bonds with each other, maybe due to the nature of how our friendships form? Hannah tells us all about the Best Friends podcast lead by two femme women of color. She had to stop listening to it while running because she’d crack up too much…. so she recommends it.
Male friendships, on the other hand are weird. Sure, a lot of it is socialization to be emotionless robots, but male friendships often somehow involve things like asking about if you’d want to fuck a goat (?) Beastiality? Letterkenny style rumor? WTF!!! (the Throbbers are divided about this…)
Kinsey thinks Hannah is gay… which aren’t we all, a little bit?
Sissel
Reality 2 – Predominantly Heterosexual, More than incidentally Homosexual
Fantasy 2 – Predominantly Heterosexual, More than incidentally Homosexual
Kelly
Reality 1 – Predominantly Heterosexual, incidentally Homosexual
Fantasy 3 – Equally Heterosexual & Homosexual
(Okay maybe Sissel isn’t totally insane, she just was explaining things really wrong. Her thoughts were not translating… wow, she’s annoying.)
(Kelly editing WordPress: No you’re not, Sissel, we love you.)
The True False Questions
The quiz starts with your age and gender identity… some of us forgot to do that which made this Kinsey quiz hella complicated.
Also it’s a pretty outdated quiz, but surprisingly progressive for 1948. Probably not the most useful for this day and age. But it is kind of impressive because the DSM didn’t declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder till like the 70s…
It’s a very binary quiz, in all the ways, not a lot of grey available. Better be a cis straight or exclusively gay person!
Here are the big questions:
- I have never felt sexual desire
- I cannot decide which sex I’m attracted to more
- I find the idea of having sex with the same gender repulsive
- I wouldn’t want to die without having experimented sexually with both men and women
- I have no interest in sexual intercourse with anyone
- The gender composition of an orgy would be irrelevant about my decision to participate
- I avoid watching homosexual pornography
- I can be sexually attracted to anyone in the right circumstances
- I have always been extremely confident in my sexual orientation
- I find people who share my gender more attractive than the opposite gender
- I find a threesome with a couple awkward because of the same gender person
- I’m only attracted to the same gender
- I am sexually submissive
General thoughts:
Maisie wants to have a stronger attraction in her fantasy realm; her reality is not the same. Sarah and Sissel are like lets get the gender swapping going!
Question three seems strongly worded. Who is that binary?!?! (Very possibly some people.) Sissel has heard some strong terms from both ends of the spectrum being really grossed out about one type of sexual intercourse. Also how does this quiz work? How does this quiz not know how to understand you?
There’s so many sexualities on the spectrum! Demi-sexual, Pan-sexual, all the sexualities!
(We were slightly confused about the definitions of some of these terms, but here’s a comic that was really helpful in explaining asexuality and demisexuality!)
The Kinsey quiz question number 4 is also very black and white, which makes it difficult to answer. Our general consensus: let’s not rule out having sex with all the different types of people!
Orgies! Does the number of penises matter? Everyone but Gina thinks yes! Too much dick! Gina and Sissel think the best type of orgy would be like the one in Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Sissel holds out hope for a good orgy one day! Till she dies! Everyone else is pretty meh about orgies, because the practicalities of sex really get in the way. Sissel thinks back to her time in a threesome and when the foreplay was better than the sex. We all start thinking about how just watching sex would be the most fun part of an orgy.
Maybe if we were on drugs… Molly? Wine Country anyone? What about Chekhov’s Gun? Kelly gives the best definition.
The roaring 20s are coming! This is the part where we all predicted the future…World Ending, Economic downturn? All happening before this episode is released? It could never! (It has). Hannah offers to house Gina in her basement. Gina is both pleased and knows she would never move in to Hannah’s basement, because like they’d hate each other.
Porn! Everyone agrees that we wouldn’t avoid lesbian porn. but there’s also not a lot of interest in video porn. Some of us seek out specific types of gay porn, Sissel and Gina like watching lesbian porn, Maisie likes to read male gay porn. Apparently there are some statistics about male gay on gay porn is appealing to women because the porn seems more authentic.
All of us are intrigued by the concept of good porn, and are considering good porn. Paying money for it! OMG Yes is the one Emma Watson recommends.
The reason we’ve gotten into fanfiction, or literotica, or the now dead Oysters and Chocolate is because the quality was so much better than free video porn, and also there is so much less human suffering involved in the written word on a free platform.
We spend some quality tangential time berating Maisie for not liking Disney movies. (Takeaway: Meg is one of the best Disney characters.)
Attraction! Only Gina is sexually attracted to everyone. She’s is a good and decent human being. Sissel agrees. Everyone else is like… um… Donald Trump? And we all collectively barfed. We contemplated the idea of what can create attraction outside of appearance, and who we appear as in sexual fantasies.
No one is 100% confident of their sexual orientation for their whole life, or at least nobody we know of. Sometimes labels are limiting. Sometimes they’re helpful. Who knows? We certainly don’t.
Sissel talks about how she’s been on the periphery of her sexuality for a lot of her life. Now she’s almost questioning something she decided in college, her bisexuality, because her long term partner is a person with a penis? But maybe she just needs less penis in her life. Like the Elvis song says: A little more conversation, a little less penis. That’s what he says, right?
Gina is a little uncomfortable with her bisexuality because she feels guilty in lesbian spaces. She had one sexual encounter with a woman and she felt judged when she revealed she’d only been with men. She’s feeling like she’s intruding on a lesbian space in her need to seek sexual experiences, not necessarily sure of her footing in that world. Which is a completely understandable and a real part of bisexuality erasure. Finding spaces to explore who you are is valid.
Most Throbbers think that the ladies are more attractive than men, who are, in general, trash (excluding Gina who thinks everyone is beautiful). We tangent into a Chris Simpson comic review. (Click here for our image of Gina’s dream partner.) Also, we are all old. Sissel doesn’t know what TLDR stands for and the rest of us have never hear of ETA for edited to add. We are crotchety Millennials.
Threesomes! The threesome question is slightly problematic. Assuming we’re talking about heterosexual couples? Rude! But also none of us feel very strongly about the same gender person making a threesome awkward. There are plenty of other things about a threesome that can be awkward.
We all find it fascinating that Hannah got such a gay score. She might come off as gay… but that’s not how she really feels.
Maisie is just confused about what she is because her libido is so low she can’t tell!
Maisie, Kelly, Hannah discuss how they want to just be in a relationship without the annoying beginning part. Because dating and the beginning is so hard! There’s so much effort.
Sissel and Gina feel differently because they see the work in a relationship as so much harder and emotionally necessary than that of going on a date. You don’t have to put effort into a date, you do in a relationship.
Kelly brings up the anxiety to horniness ratio. Anxiety often drowns out horniness, which makes dating so difficult. (But that’s what masturbation is for, right?)
Sissel talks about how she spent a lot of time dating because she wanted a relationship and statistically you need to put yourself out there to get there. But honestly that’s a bunch of bullshit, she watched a lot of Sex and the City growing up and it impacted her views, she knows this now.
We had to stop debating our factions. We’re different and that’s okay.
Submissiveness! What the actual fuck does submissiveness have to do with the sexuality spectrum?!?!?!? We were all offended about this, because it’s so completely irrelevant. It’s assuming that men are dominant and women are submissive and honestly, miss us with that shit.
But Sissel is submissive, Hannah just doesn’t speak up, Kelly and Maisie are unsure. Gina is dominant. We all knew that.
How did we feel about the Kinsey results?
Gina felt like her results were pretty accurate.
Maisie thinks the results are correct, but she’s a pastel bi.
Hannah thinks her results are very inaccurate.
She’s the straight one in her family, her sister is gay. And we all know that you are allotted one gay per family. (Just kidding. Actually, statistically if you have one gay brother you are like 1/3 more likely to be gay? I’m gonna find this research and attach it here… They, of course, didn’t do this research with lesbians.)
We all think that Hannah’s sister is hot. 😉
Sissel is sad that she’s so heterosexual. Maybe she isn’t, maybe she is.
Kelly definitely found the fantasy vs reality stuff compelling. Because there are just too many dicks (on the dance floor). But she still thinks she’s pretty hetero. Even though in her fantasy, she is more homosexual.
This is our pastel dive into sexuality! You’re welcome! Thanks Kinsey!
All in all labels are what you make of them, so no judgement, choose however few or many labels as you’d like!
Thank You For Listening!
We are all able-bodied, cisgendered white women. We know our background and experiences only cover a percentage of those around us which is why we want to supplement this with guest speakers, research, and you. If you have opinions and experiences you’d like to share we would love to hear it! If, however, you just want to spew hate at us then we can’t stop you but instead we invite you to suck our collective clitorises. Hater. This podcast also contains mature sexual themes and swearing. No, clitoris isn’t a swear word.
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