County Hall has defended itself this week after a series of 'bizarre' questions asked during an equality training course came to light.Among the questions posed by county council bosses at a course on respecting sexuality were: 'Is it possible your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of the same sex?' and 'If you've never slept with a person of the same sex, how do you know you wouldn't prefer it?'

Since the questions appeared in a national newspaper over the weekend, following a Freedom Of Information Act request, the story has been picked up by websites all over the world.

But the council has denied that the questions were directly put to staff, and said they were used to illustrate points about discrimination.

So far nine members of staff at Bucks County Council have taken part in the course, which was drawn up by the council's training and development team.

After details about the course came to light, Jacqui Burnett, manager at Aylesbury's equality and human rights council, said: "I'm pleased that the county council is trying to get people to question their prejudices, but I don't know if I'd have asked it like that."

But she praised the council for providing diversity training, and urged bosses not to cut the work when they decide on spending cuts.

"My concern is that with the pressure on services, people could say that equalities and human rights are not important, but they are.

"If anything I think it becomes more important," the equalities boss stated.

"While I've been here I've found the county council to be taking the legislation seriously."

Yesterday a County Hall spokesman said the course was being run to bring it in line with the Equalities Act 2010, which becomes law next month.

A statement from the council said: "Training courses such as this one will help our employees understand individuals needs, so that they may design and deliver excellent services to our residents."

And it said that gay rights organisation Stonewall had praised the council for the work, adding: "The course also includes questions to provoke attenders' thought processes and to enable the them to put themselves in someone else's shoes.

"Questions are not used in quiz format directed to individuals but as a learning tool during the course." http://www.bucksherald.co.uk/news/39How-can-you-know-you39re.6544711.jp

How do you know your not katoy if you haven't made a boob job?

'If you've never slept with a person of the same sex, fat chick, how do you know you wouldn't prefer mind it?'

When it comes to food and sex, "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it" has long been my motto.

Simple answer. If you lust for men - and you are one - you are gay. If you don't, you are not.

Simple answer. If you lust for men - and you are one - you are gay. If you don't, you are not.

There be the problem, some are always looking for complex answers to simple questions.

Waddle,quack,duck...... easy.

Boy are you guys out of the loop.

It depends if you self identify as gay.

There are at least two kinds of gay fellow. A regular gay lad and a Thai Visa gay lad. A regular gay person likes sex. A Thai Visa gay lad never thinks about sex. Gay identification is only a classification of gender preference as applied to intellectual pursuits and interior decoration and righteous social issues and culinary expertise with some small allowances made for lesbian sadists.

Katoys are never mentioned in the same breath as gay men. It is not the same subject at all. Lady boys are completely a heterosexual issue.

I'd drop the snide attack if I were you mark.

I just got a cut from a crisp, not the packet but an actual crisp, Lay sour cream and onion, what a jip... hurts quite a bit, possibly because of the salt content.

I now hate all crisps.

Global Attitude Break.

You may not believe me but I did just draw blood with a bit of fried potato, will this change my view of fried potato snacks in general?

Not really, it didn't do it on purpose, it had no axe to grind with me nor I one with it, apart from I was going to eat it, and I would suggest that anyone who does have an axe to grind based on personal assumptions about people who don't conform to their view of how the world structure should be, has a choice of two options.

1. Rethink, you may be wrong.

2. Go To 1

There is of course always the third option, you give me a red and then ignore the subject until someone vaguely agrees with you.

I just got a cut from a crisp, not the packet but an actual crisp, Lay sour cream and onion, what a jip... hurts quite a bit, possibly because of the salt content.

I now hate all crisps.

Global Attitude Break.

You may not believe me but I did just draw blood with a bit of fried potato, will this change my view of fried potato snacks in general?

Not really, it didn't do it on purpose, it had no axe to grind with me nor I one with it, apart from I was going to eat it, and I would suggest that anyone who does have an axe to grind based on personal assumptions about people who don't conform to their view of how the world structure should be, has a choice of two options.

1. Rethink, you may be wrong.

2. Go To 1

There is of course always the third option, you give me a red and then ignore the subject until someone vaguely agrees with you.

But who is to say who is Copernicus and who is the Pope?

Just a friendly insert here to let everyone (mainly Mark45y) know that as far as comments on gays (or the gay members of Thaivisa) are concerned, this forum is not a 'safe haven.'

There is a problem with the binary 'gay or not' approach, as simple as some people would LIKE it to be- people aren't really like that. When given the opportunity to comment in detail on what they ACTUALLY HAVE DONE (cf. Kinsey most especially but also others), most people (including me) have experienced some form of sexual contact or erotic experience with BOTH sexes- people who have exclusively had sexual contact with only one sex are the minority, whether as completely homosexual or as completely heterosexual (about 10% in both groups).

If this sounds incredible, think back (if you are not in denial) to school days and whether or not there was playing around or experimentation with others of the same sex- even if the boys/girls doing that enjoyed it, should they be classified automatically as 'gay'? No, probably not- and many of those kids eventually identify and behave primarily as 'straight' adults.

And on another note- in case no (straight) person understands the relevance of these questions, they are questions often posed (in reverse) by more-unaware types of straight people (especially family members) towards gay persons who have just come out to them... so they are used as awareness-raising questions.

'How do you know you're gay?'

'Maybe you just haven't met the right women yet...'

Etc.

And on another note- in case no (straight) person understands the relevance of these questions, they are questions often posed (in reverse) by more-unaware types of straight people (especially family members) towards gay persons who have just come out to them... so they are used as awareness-raising questions.

'How do you know you're gay?'

'Maybe you just haven't met the right women yet...'

Etc.

I know I haven't met the right woman yet.

I know I haven't met the right woman yet.

Or, all you need is a good woman

Certainly depends on your interpretation of good or bad, because when a girl is really bad, she is really very good, or so I am told

(about 10% in both groups).

If this sounds incredible,

I do find that a little difficult to comprehend, although not incredible, so if you have a readily available link to the Kinsey research I would like to read it.

There is a problem with the binary 'gay or not' approach, as simple as some people would LIKE it to be- people aren't really like that. When given the opportunity to comment in detail on what they ACTUALLY HAVE DONE (cf. Kinsey most especially but also others), most people (including me) have experienced some form of sexual contact or erotic experience with BOTH sexes- people who have exclusively had sexual contact with only one sex are the minority, whether as completely homosexual or as completely heterosexual (about 10% in both groups).

It's nice to belong to an exclusive club (Unless the girl who forced me to kiss her when we were 8 counts as sexual contact )

There is a problem with the binary 'gay or not' approach, as simple as some people would LIKE it to be- people aren't really like that.

I would suggest that most people are like that, only those that want to prove otherwise claim they aren't.

think back (if you are not in denial) to school days and whether or not there was playing around or experimentation with others of the same sex

I am definitely not in denial, and there was definitely no experimentation with the same sex for me.

The Wiki article is a good enough summary, though of course for details you'll have to use the citations or (shock, horror) the original report):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_Reports

This quotation shows some overall patterns, and cites representation problems in the original sample which were fixed in the followup sample demonstrating that the patterns Kinsey had spotted were indeed true for the general population.

The fact that one or another individual doesn't fit the majority means nothing more than that individual is not in the majority. The whole point of the Kinsey report's approach is that people DON'T speak honestly in public about their real experiences, or that they don't always define what constitutes 'sex' in ways that might make them uncomfortable. The style of the questions, as I recall, was to ask very specifically if people had ever touched, kissed, etc., a male/female person in this type or that type of way and to specify more individual details about frequency, age, feelings, etc. It was very detailed.

Basically, they're the experts and I have no reasons from personal experience or the experience of people I have spoken with to doubt them.

The reports also state that nearly 46% of the male subjects had "reacted" sexually to persons of both sexes in the course of their adult lives, and 37% had at least one homosexual experience.[7] 11.6% of white males (ages 20–35) were given a rating of 3 (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) throughout their adult lives.[8] The study also reported that 10% of American males surveyed were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55" (in the 5 to 6 range).[9]

7% of single females (ages 20–35) and 4% of previously married females (ages 20–35) were given a rating of 3 (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) on Kinsey Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale for this period of their lives.[10] 2 to 6% of females, aged 20–35, were more or less exclusively homosexual in experience/response,[11] and 1 to 3% of unmarried females aged 20–35 were exclusively homosexual in experience/response.[12]

Academic criticisms were made pertaining to sample selection and sample bias in the reports' methodology. Two main problems cited were that significant portions of the samples come from prison populations and male prostitutes, and that people who volunteer to be interviewed about taboo subject are likely to suffer from the problem of self-selection. Both undermine the usefulness of the sample in terms of determining the tendencies of the overall population. In 1948, the same year as the original publication, a committee of the American Statistical Association, including notable statisticians such as John Tukey, condemned the sampling procedure. Tukey was perhaps the most vocal critic, saying, "A random selection of three people would have been better than a group of 300 chosen by Mr. Kinsey."[13][14] Criticism principally revolved around the over-representation of some groups in the sample: 25% were, or had been, prison inmates, and 5% were male prostitutes.[citation needed] Psychologist Abraham Maslow asserted that Kinsey did not consider "volunteer bias". The data represented only those volunteering to participate in discussion of taboo topics. Most Americans were reluctant to discuss the intimate details of their sex lives even with their spouses and close friends. Before the publication of Kinsey's reports, Maslow tested Kinsey's volunteers for bias. He concluded that Kinsey's sample was unrepresentative of the general population.[15]

In response, Paul Gebhard, Kinsey's successor as director of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, cleaned the Kinsey data of purported contaminants, removing, for example, all material derived from prison populations in the basic sample. In 1979, Gebhard (with Alan B. Johnson) published The Kinsey Data: Marginal Tabulations of the 1938–1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for Sex Research. Their conclusion, to Gebhard's surprise he claimed, was that none of Kinsey's original estimates were significantly affected by this bias: that is, prison population, male prostitutes, and those who willingly participated in discussion of previously taboo sexual topics had the same statistical tendency as the general population. The results were summarized by historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist Martin Duberman, "Instead of Kinsey's 37% (men who had at least one homosexual experience), Gebhard and Johnson came up with 36.4%; the 10% figure (men who were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55"), with prison inmates excluded, came to 9.9% for white, college-educated males and 12.7% for those with less education.[6]

My own long-held theory is that there is a typical bell curve; very little black or white, but lots of the various shades of grey (Taking extreme homo as white and extreme hetero as black).

This theory seems to be supported by the XY/XX chromosome fact, ie, that men have one Y (female) chromosome.....however that "supporting" aspect of my theory falls over when we consider homsexual females .

The Wiki article is a good enough summary, though of course for details you'll have to use the citations or (shock, horror) the original report):

http://en.wikipedia..../Kinsey_Reports

....................

........................... The results were summarized by historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist Martin Duberman, "Instead of Kinsey's 37% (men who had at least one homosexual experience), Gebhard and Johnson came up with 36.4%; the 10% figure (men who were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55"), with prison inmates excluded, came to 9.9% for white, college-educated males and 12.7% for those with less education

!!!! Does this imply that non-whites are slightly more likely to be exclusively homosexual....and does it imply that education tends to draw homsexuals into hetero experimentation?

What if I like men but I'm not gay ?

What if I like men but I'm not gay ?

Then you're a woman.

What if I like men but I'm not gay ?

Then you're a woman.

Hmmm...wonder if my wife knows she's a lesbian.

think back (if you are not in denial) to school days and whether or not there was playing around or experimentation with others of the same sex

I am definitely not in denial, and there was definitely no experimentation with the same sex for me.

It's many years since I was at school (Boys School).

It was known that the rugby coach liked to invite one or two of the boys at a time back to his place to have tea and talk tactics. (And known also as to what really went on).

Fortunately I was able to avoid all that because there was no other boy who could wear the no. 8 jersey with my talent. (Not blowing my own horn - just stating facts, Ma'am)

So I can say that I had no same sex experimentation at school, nor after. I am in the exclusive 10% that hangs to the right.

One in three women has been raped but crime statistics only list 4%.

Women underreport abortions in sex surveys by 50%.

Homosexuality is also thought to be under-reported, but no one knows by how much.

A new national study on male sexual behavior, the most thorough published since the Kinsey report more than four decades ago, shows that about 2 percent of the men surveyed had engaged in homosexual sex and that 1 percent considered themselves exclusively homosexual

The figures on homosexuality in the study, released yesterday by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, are significantly lower than the 10 percent figure that was published in the Kinsey report in 1948 and that then became part of the conventional wisdom.

But the new findings are in line with a series of surveys of sexual practices done in each of the last four years by researchers at the University of Chicago, and with recently published reports from Britain, France and Denmark, said Tom W. Smith, who directs the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago.

The new survey also reported that about 23 percent of the 3,321 men surveyed, all between the ages of 20 and 39, said they had had intercourse with 20 or more partners in their lifetimes, with 35 percent of black men reporting that many partners and 22 percent of white men. Statistics on Partners

The study also found that three-quarters of the men surveyed had engaged in oral sex and 20 percent had engaged in anal sex.

The study, financed by a $1.8 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, was based on face-to-face interviews in which the subjects were guaranteed anonymity. It was designed to provide information on which segments of the population might be at increased risk of contracting AIDS or receiving or transmitting the H.I.V. virus. It was conducted by researchers at the Battelle Human Affairs Research Center in Seattle.

*The variety of sexual activity increased with the age of the men involved and with their education levels.

The researchers said the figures on reported homosexual activity in the new American study had a margin of sampling error of less than one percentage point. That means that the number of men who reported that they had engaged in oral or anal sex with other men during the previous decade could be as low as 1.8 percent and as high as 2.8 percent. The percentage of men reporting exclusively homosexual activity in the previous year could be as low as seven-tenths of 1 percent and as high as 1.5 percent, said John O. G. Billy, a Battelle researcher.

One in three women has been raped but crime statistics only list 4%.

Women underreport abortions in sex surveys by 50%.

Homosexuality is also thought to be under-reported, but no one knows by how much.

A new national study on male sexual behavior, the most thorough published since the Kinsey report more than four decades ago, shows that about 2 percent of the men surveyed had engaged in homosexual sex and that 1 percent considered themselves exclusively homosexual

The figures on homosexuality in the study, released yesterday by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, are significantly lower than the 10 percent figure that was published in the Kinsey report in 1948 and that then became part of the conventional wisdom.

But the new findings are in line with a series of surveys of sexual practices done in each of the last four years by researchers at the University of Chicago, and with recently published reports from Britain, France and Denmark, said Tom W. Smith, who directs the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago.

The new survey also reported that about 23 percent of the 3,321 men surveyed, all between the ages of 20 and 39, said they had had intercourse with 20 or more partners in their lifetimes, with 35 percent of black men reporting that many partners and 22 percent of white men. Statistics on Partners

The study also found that three-quarters of the men surveyed had engaged in oral sex and 20 percent had engaged in anal sex.

The study, financed by a $1.8 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, was based on face-to-face interviews in which the subjects were guaranteed anonymity. It was designed to provide information on which segments of the population might be at increased risk of contracting AIDS or receiving or transmitting the H.I.V. virus. It was conducted by researchers at the Battelle Human Affairs Research Center in Seattle.

*The variety of sexual activity increased with the age of the men involved and with their education levels.

The researchers said the figures on reported homosexual activity in the new American study had a margin of sampling error of less than one percentage point. That means that the number of men who reported that they had engaged in oral or anal sex with other men during the previous decade could be as low as 1.8 percent and as high as 2.8 percent. The percentage of men reporting exclusively homosexual activity in the previous year could be as low as seven-tenths of 1 percent and as high as 1.5 percent, said John O. G. Billy, a Battelle researcher.

I know it is odd to respond to my own post but I am an odd fellow.

You might want to know what conclusions I draw from the above information.

People who are over 65 with lots of education have a lot more kinky sex than the rest of you.

I am in the exclusive 10% that hangs to the right.

Same here, and I think the membership numbers are much higher than some people would like.

I don't care all that much, actually, though I find it odd that some seem so defensive in their individual, repeated denials of the possible truth of such data, as collected by professional social researchers, even when it accounts for a sizeable population of their own cases. It's not as though the existence of those other groups is somehow emasculating to all men- why would anyone find it personally threatening? I've certainly met people all over the scale- and have no personal problem with the existence of the populations anywhere along the scale. I've known straight guys who quite freely admitted to experimenting with friends, and I've already mentioned at times that I (like many gays) started by dating women because that's just what you did in those days. Then again, I don't generally move in communities where men need to be afraid of homosexuality at all (or women for that matter).

I haven't read the actual survey you reference, Mark, but I would suppose it was much less detailed than the approach the Kinsey team used- most more recent surveys haven't had the funding to do the kind of extensive open-ended ask-all, tell-all stuff. Worst are the surveys which ask for self-identification of orientation, because they require self-selected individuals to identify with their behaviours.

I don't care all that much, actually, though I find it odd that some seem so defensive in their individual, repeated denials of the possible truth of such data, as collected by professional social researchers, even when it accounts for a sizeable population of their own cases.

I found your post regarding Kinsey intriguing and so thought it logical to investigate it further.

However, what I find even more interesting is your above response, because I see no defensive dead bat on a spinning wicket, I also see no repeated denials, just an expression of their view.

Funny how we read different material, depending on how we want to.

One qualifier, I didn't read Marks post.

I don't care all that much, actually, though I find it odd that some seem so defensive in their individual, repeated denials of the possible truth of such data, as collected by professional social researchers, even when it accounts for a sizeable population of their own cases.

I found your post regarding Kinsey intriguing and so thought it logical to investigate it further.

However, what I find even more interesting is your above response, because I see no defensive dead bat on a spinning wicket, I also see no repeated denials, just an expression of their view.

Funny how we read different material, depending on how we want to.

One qualifier, I didn't read Marks post.

Taken from “Ten Scientific Frauds that rocked the world”

Alfred Kinsey’s landmark studies of the 1950s, known as the Kinsey Reports, were the major emphasis on late-20th-century views of human sexuality. The incidence of homosexuality, bisexuality, adultery, and childhood sexual behavior were higher than previously thought, which helped lead to different views of adult and childhood sexual behavior.

According to Judith Reisman, however, Kinsey’s research was fraught with very bad scientific method and possibly fraud. He obtained much of his data by interviewing prisoners, his interviewing technique was biased, and he used reports from pedophiles to hypothesize about childhood sexual behavior.

Kinsey’s estimates on the extent of homosexual behavior (38.7% in males ages 36 – 40) have not been validated in subsequent studies. In contrast, a Batelle report found that 2.3% of men reported having sex with another man. Nonetheless, Kinsey’s landmark study still remains one of the primary sources for current sexuality discussions.

According to Judith Reisman, however, Kinsey’s research was fraught with very bad scientific method and possibly fraud.

That's that sorted then.