From continua to kaleidoscopes: How plurisexuality challenges traditional conceptualizations of sexual orientation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Traditional measures of sexual orientation (e.g., the Kinsey Scale, the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, single-item sexual identity questions) focus on a person’s behaviour, identity, and attraction yet are described by plurisexual, asexual, and gender-diverse individuals as inadequate in capturing the complexity of how they experience and understand their sexuality. This study explores how plurisexual and asexual individuals make sense of their sexual orientation. Across several studies, participants (n = 2,306) completed demographic questionnaires related to their gender and sexual identity while also responding to the Kinsey Scale. Additionally, participants wrote open-ended responses explaining why they had selected a particular sexual identity or Kinsey score earlier in the survey. The authors used an abductive reflective thematic analysis to review these open-ended responses, focusing on whether responses aligned with a dominant model of sexual orientation (i.e., behaviour-identity-attraction). While many participants described their choice of sexual identity label and Kinsey score using at least one aspect of the behaviour-identity-attraction trichotomy, not all responses fit within this model. For example, participants emphasized their attraction to individual characteristics other than gender/sex, distinguished between romantic and sexual attraction, and discussed plurisexuality and experiences of sexual fluidity. Traditional measures of sexual orientation may not be adequate when working with sexually diverse samples. Researchers should consider how best to conceptualize sexual orientation and other related constructs, including emotional/romantic attraction, sexual fluidity, and the role of gender expression in processes of attraction and identity construction.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.021 | 0.037 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.022 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.016 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".