The philosophy of sexuality
Philosophy takes a long hard look at some of
the most fundamental subjects in nature, and
so it is natural that what makes us attracted to
each other has also come under its spotlight.
Although more often studied by psychologists,
capturing the essence of why some people are
attracted to members of their own sex has
fascinated philosophers for many years and
while many have put a negative view on same-
sex attraction, other branches of philosophy
have added a strong voice for gay rights.
Chief among the philosophers who felt
homosexuality was acceptable were the
essentialists. They basically felt that categories
of sexual attraction just existed, that being gay
is a specific thing created by nature, it just is ‘a
thing’ and is not being evil or dirty. They felt
that there may be different ways homosexuality
are expressed across the globe, including
repression of course, but that being gay is
something like type of tree or flower, that it is
just a category of human.
To begin with, these categories of sexual
attraction were simple – heterosexual or
homosexual. Ultimately though, things were
not that simple. For a start, early discussions
seemed to assume only men were capable of
homosexuality. This was clearly not the
case so in the 20th century the concept of
a ‘lesbian’ was born.
But there was something even more
complex than that! Some people
seemed to not only fancy people of
their own gender, but people of
the opposite sex as well. And so
the term bisexual started to be
commonly used as well. So that
left society with straight, gay,
lesbian or bisexual.
For many though, the options
still seemed too limited. Some
bisexuals felt they preferred
one gender or the other while
others who labelled themselves as ‘straight’ also
felt some attraction to people of the same sex,
on occasions.
However it was actually a psychologist that
helped clear the matter up a little. In the 30s
and 40s, Alfred Kinsey started researching
the hidden private desires of Americans and
he found that sexual orientation was in fact
better described as being on a scale rather
than one or the other (or in the middle). So in
1948 he produced a scale which ranged from
0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively
homosexual). This gave people a way of
describing their sexuality by placing it on a
level rather than choosing between labels.
The Kinsey Scale was the most famous way of
measuring sexuality, but in recent years it has
come in for criticism for still being too limited.
But in the past few months, another scale has
emerged which offers a potential 42 different
sexual orientations! The Purple-Red scale
appeared on
Reddit in early 2015 and includes the Kinsey
scale as well as six more options which ask
‘how’ you are attracted to people. The options
here range from no interest in sex to sex being
the be-all and end-all of a relationship.
Today, there are many who say there are
simply too many ways of classifying sexuality
and that there are way too many labels. From
Androsexual to Skoliosexual, there seems to be
a label for everything. So the question is, can
we live without labels? Could you deal with just
having a sexuality and not being on a scale or
part of a category? Only time will tell whether
classifying and measuring sexuality will be of
use in the future but for now, many people
feel happy to be able to communicate their
sexuality, whether that means using words,
colours or numbers.
WINTER 2015
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