Critique of the Purple-Red Scale

The Purple-Red Scale of Attraction, first proposed on Reddit, has apparently been making the rounds (including on mainstream websites like Mic.com, weirdly enough). Here are some problems I have with it.



1. The Kinsey Scale, which one of the axes is based off of, does not include nonbinary people. Apart from this major problem, the scale becomes useless for people who are attracted to nonbinary people, for example, a bisexual who is attracted to female and nonbinary people but not men.

2. The scale conflates aromantic and asexual by putting them at the same end. it also does not have a spot for people who aromantic but not asexual.

3. Hypersexual is not the opposite of asexual. Hypersexuality is actually, according to Wikipedia, “a clinical diagnosis used by mental healthcare providers to describe extremely frequent or suddenly increased sexual urges or sexual activity.” By using this term, the scale conflates orientation with behavior.

4. People of all orientations can have hypersexuality, for example, asexual spectrum sexual abuse survivors who have hypersexuality as a result of their trauma. Also, the scale’s use of hypersexual promotes the harmful stereotype of aromantic allosexuals as overly sex-driven and uninterested in emotional intimacy.

5. The model’s use of Tertiary Sexuality makes no sense. That particular “sexuality” is not mutually exclusive with some of the other categories.

6. The model has no room for most gray asexuals.

7. The model depends on the primary/secondary model of sexual attraction (which I really wish would go away and die) which is inaccurate for many demisexuals.

In conclusion, this model is based on inaccurate and incomplete information and is just plain bad. I sincerely hope it doesn’t become popular.