ABSTRACT

Originally published in Weise, E.R. (ed.) (1992) Closer to Home: Bisexuality and Feminism, Seattle: Seal Press. Reproduced by permission of the author. In this article, Udis-Kessler surveys the strengths and weaknesses of three important scales developed to ‘measure’ sexuality, and discusses their role and influence in different understandings of bisexuality. How we attempt to ‘measure’ sexual orientation or desire not only determines the proportions of the population we assume to be bisexual, heterosexual and homosexual, but also reflects the different ways we conceptualize sexuality in general, and bisexuality in particular. Such issues lead on to questions about the relationship between identity and behaviour, raised in the next section.