What's Your True Sexual

Orientation? The Purple-Red Scale

Is Here to Help You Find Out
By Nicolas DiDomizio
Oct 6 2015
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When reality TV dumpling Honey Boo Boo Child declared that
"everybody's a little bit gay" three years ago, she was
unknowingly taking a page out of sexologist Alfred Kinsey's
book. His famous Kinsey scale, which identifies people's levels
of same- or opposite-sex attraction with a number from zero to
six (zero being exclusively straight, six being exclusively gay),
has been a favorite cultural metric for measuring sexual
orientation since it was created in 1948.
But even though asking someone where they fall on the Kinsey
scale is now a common dating website opener, the Kinsey scale
is far from an all-inclusive system. As Southern California man
Langdon Parks recently realized, the scale fails to address other
aspects of human sexuality, such as whether or not we even
care about getting laid in the first place.
So Parks decided to develop a more comprehensive alternative:
the Purple-Red Scale of Attraction, which he recently posted
on /r/Asexuality. Like the Kinsey scale, the Purple-Red
scale allows you to assign a number from zero to six to your
level of same-sex or heterosexual attraction, but it also lets you
label how you experience that attraction on a scale of A to F. A
represents asexuality, or a total lack of interest in sex "besides
friendship and/or aesthetic attraction," while F represents
hypersexuality.
Pick your letter-number combo below:
Source: Langdon Parks
Parks told Mic that he came up with the idea for the Purple-Red
scale after learning about asexuality and realizing that he was
a "heteroromantic asexual, or a B0 on the scale" — someone
who is interested exclusively in romantic, nonsexual
relationships with the opposite sex.
"I then thought, not only are there sexual and asexual people,
[but] there are different kinds of sexual people as well," he
said. "I thought of adding a second dimension to Kinsey's scale
to represent different levels of attraction." (As for the color
scheme, Parks opted for purple because of its designation as
the official color of asexuality, while "'red-blooded' is a term
often used to describe someone who is hypersexual.)
The scale represents all possible degrees of sexual attraction,
from those who only want to have sex when they're in a
relationship to those who are ready and rarin' to go pretty much
whenever. For instance, if we use Sex and the City as an
example, Carrie would likely be an E1, while the more prudish
Charlotte is probably more of a D0 and uptight Miranda an E0.
Our beloved bisexual, sex-crazed Samantha? Totally an F2.
Busting myths about sexual attraction: Back in 1978, Dr. Fritz
Klein tried to update the scale to make it more inclusive of a
wider range of sexual experiences, as well as sexual fantasies.
His final product, the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, came out a
bit clunky, however, and was still based on the assumption that
everyone using it was capable of experiencing sexual attraction
in the first place.
Parks' Purple-Red Scale accounts for those who experience
sexual attraction at different times in different contexts, as well
as those who don't experience it at all. That's notable in part
because although asexuality is not exactly rare — according to
one estimate, approximately 1 in 100 people are asexual,
though they might not self-identify as such — it's one of the
most widely misunderstood sexual orientations, with many
people assuming that asexuals are just closeted gay people or
too socially awkward to have sex.
But asexuality is a legitimate sexual orientation with many
unique shades of its own. As the Huffington Post reported back
in 2013, many asexual people don't just identify as asexual.
For instance, they can also self-identify as "heteroromantic"
(meaning they're interested in having exclusively romantic,
nonsexual relationships with members of the opposite sex) or
"demisexual" (meaning they're open to experiencing sexual
attraction within the context of a strong emotional connection
or committed relationship).
"Some people don't want to have sex in a relationship at all,
and others view it as the whole point of the relationship," Parks
told Mic. "Yet others typically start off having no feelings but
build them up over time. Still others don't want sex for
themselves, but are still willing to have it for other reasons,"
such as to procreate or make their partner happy.
That's why Parks' Purple-Red scale is so important: It
acknowledges the shades of grey in sexual orientation and
sexual interest. Both, he explained, are fluid and largely
dependent on context.
Why do we need scales in the first place? While the Purple-Red
scale is helpful in classifying sexual attraction, some people
might argue that we don't need a cut-and-dry system for
classifying our sexuality in the first place. If the burgeoning
"label-free" movement of sexual fluidity is any indication,
coming up with clinical labels like "E2" or "B0" might be
purposeless or even counterproductive to achieving true sexual
freedom.
But Parks believes that having a simple tool like the Purple-Red
Attraction Scale can be useful, particularly as a way to improve
communication in the dating world. "The scale was designed to
provide a quick and easy way of scoring a person's view of
relationships on forums and dating sites," he said. Imagine, for
instance, if you logged onto OkCupid and entered your sexual
orientation as D5, instead of simply self-identifying as "gay,"
"straight" or "bisexual."
Parks also noted that the Purple-Red scale is a great way to
match partners who have similar or compatible sex drives.
"Attraction type is every bit as important as orientation," he
told Mic. "We see it all the time: John wants sex, sex, sex, while
Jane doesn't have the feeling right away."
Because discrepancies in sex drive can cause problems in
same-sex and opposite-sex relationships, Parks wants people
to use the scale as a way to establish sexual compatibility right
off the bat.
"Instead of relying on assumptions like 'Oh, he's a guy, go for
it!' or 'She's a woman, wait for it,' people can now use their
letters to describe their basic outlook on relationships," he
said.
"Attraction type is every bit as important as orientation."
Perhaps one day, we'll live in a world where we don't need
something like the Purple-Red scale to tell us about our own
sexuality; a world where we don't need to fit who we want to
have sex with into boxes or spectrums or scales. But for the
time being, whether you're a B2 or an F5 or a D6, it's cool that
we have something like Parks' scale to help us answer the
nagging questions about sexual orientation that our culture
keeps asking us to answer — and maybe it can help us find out
a little bit more about ourselves.
h/t GayStarNews