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SOUTHERN VOICE
NOVEMBER 17/1994
How gay are you?
California psychiatrist
Fritz Klein weighs in with
‘The Bisexual Option’
Just how gay are you? Even if you are
sexually attracted to your own gender, do
you ever fantasize about the opposite sex?
Do you develop emotional attachments with
the opposite sex? Do you prefer socializing
with the opposite sex?
San Diego psychiatrist Fritz Klein has
had innumerable gay and lesbian patients who
were comfortable in an out-of-the-closet lif
estyle but had questions about nebulous in
terests in the opposite sex. They wondered
about more than
just physical acts
and occasional
fantasies.
“Some people
prefer to have sex
with one gender
but are emotion
ally involved
with the other,”
Klein notes.
“Physical attrac
tion is only one
variable out of
many. A gay man
may prefer a
straight woman
as a housemate to
living in an all
gay situation. He
may prefer so
cializing with
heterosexuals to
gay bars. And he
may not think of
himself as pre
dominantly gay.”
So Klein developed the Klein Sexual Ori
entation Grid to reflect a person’s overall
being, not just physical acts or sexual attrac
tion. He included the grid in the recent up
date of his book, “The Bisexual Option”
(Harrington Park Press/Haworth).
At first, Klein relied on Alfred Kinsey’s
Homosexual/Heterosexual Rating Scale,
which recognized sexual orientation as a con
tinuum instead of an either/or determination.
The seven-point scale ranges from a 0 as
exclusively heterosexual to 6 being exclu
sively homosexual. A person rating five is
predominantly homosexual, but more than
incidentally heterosexual.
As much of an improvement as Kinsey’s
scale was over labeling a person either ho
mosexual or heterosexual, Klein takes it fur
ther. His sexual orientation grid includes
sexual attraction, sexual behavior, sexual fan
tasies, emotional preference, social prefer
ence, homosexual/heterosexual lifestyle and
self-identification. Each category is divided
into past, present and ideal.
“Sexual attraction is not synonymous with
sexual behavior,” Klein says. He cites a 34-
year-old mother of two children as an ex
ample. “She was monogamous with her hus
band, but she admitted she has been attracted
to women since her childhood,” he notes.
In recent decades, stars such as Elton John
and Boy George have identified themselves
as bisexual (and later amended it by saying
they were gay). But Klein believes some ce
lebrities of the past who were labeled homo
sexual were more likely bisexual. And many
gays may have more interests in the opposite
gender than they have realized.
“Oscar Wilde was not a homosexual,”
Klein declares. Though Wilde was tried and
convicted in the 1890s in England for homo
sexuality, Klein believes the writer and wit
was bisexual.
“He was in love with his wife and they
had two sons. He wrote beautiful love letters
to her,” Klein states. Prior to his marriage, he
had emotional and sexual love affairs with
women which would have qualified him as a
womanizer in today’s terms.
But Wilde’s early poems exhibited an in
terest in male physical beauty. During his
last 14 years, he was equally enthusiastic
about men, Klein
noted.
While a gay
man may rate him
self a 6 on the
Kinsey scale, the
Klein grid gives a
broader picture.
The same gay man
places himself in a
6 in attraction and
behavior but may
have a slightly
higher level of fan
tasies for women
(5). Emotionally
and socially, he is
equally involved
with men and
women, and his
lifestyle is evenly
mixed between
straight and gay—
giving him a 4 rat
ing in those cat
egories. He iden
tifies himself as mostly gay for a 6. With his
totals running 6-6-5-4-44-6 shows a more
diverse sexual orientation than Kinsey.
The results may help people reach their
full potential, Klein believes. For example,
self identification as just gay or straight can
be “a painful self-limitation. A bisexual who
views him or herself as a homosexual suffers
not only because of the label. He or she may
find nothing negative in being ‘gay.’ But one
part of that person knows that the label is a
lie.” '
If the grid shows they are not as exclu
sively homosexual or heterosexual as they
had thought, it may encourage them to be
who they really are, Klein says. Because the
gay community frequently has rejected bi
sexuals as homosexuals living in denial, some
gay men and lesbians may have repressed
even the slightest interest in the opposite sex.
“People differ infinitely in height, intelli
gence, excitability, perseverance, color, age,
point of view, nationality, religion, weight,
sex ability, and on and on. In every external
and internal way, they differ. There is no
bisexual person who necessarily reflects a
50/50 ratio between his male and female pref
erence.”
Klein has also found people change over
their lives. “I have seen gays gravitate to
heterosexual or bisexual, but I have to em
phasize that this is limited to only some
people. It is more likely for bi’s to change
than gays.”
Dr. Fritz Klein says his scale is an improve
ment on Kinsey’s.
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