K
KING — Someone who does an exaggerated performance of masculinity.
Drag kings create personas which might use machismo and chauvinism or other tropes of masculinity. Their performances might include singing, lip syncs, stand-up comedy, acting, and dancing.
The term “drag king” was first published in 1972, but “male impersonation” is a much older tradition, and women have played male characters throughout the history of theater and opera.
Most drag kings are cis women, trans men, or non-binary people, but anyone can be a drag king.
see also: QUEEN; DRAG; TROUSER ROLE
KINK, KINKY — Unconventional or deviant sexual practices.
The term kinky comes from “bent,” or an opposition to straightness in the broader sense of the word. Kink is no longer exclusive to straight people (if it ever was), and its opposition now lies in so-called “vanilla” sexual preferences.
Kinky practices include bondage, power play, pain, and humiliation for sexual pleasure, cross-dressing, unconventional role-playing, and anything widely considered non-normative.
Polyamory is not an oppressed group identity. It’s not “kinky” to be a straight man who wants to fuck multiple women; that’s a normative desire within patriarchy. Depending on your social context, it may be assumed that either monogamy or polyamory is the “natural,” socially dominant mode of relationships. There is no “natural” mode—just do your best to communicate your boundaries and expectations.
see also: BDSM; FETISH; SEX POSITIVE; SEX NEGATIVE
KINSEY SCALE — A scale of 0 to 6 designed to represent where on a spectrum between “exclusively heterosexual” and “exclusively homosexual” someone is at the time when they respond. It was developed by Alfred Kinsey and first published in 1948.
|
0 |
Exclusively heterosexual |
|
1 |
Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual |
|
2 |
Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual |
|
3 |
Equally heterosexual and homosexual |
|
4 |
Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual |
|
5 |
Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual |
|
6 |
Exclusively homosexual |
|
X |
No socio-sexual contacts |
The scale shows sexual diversity on a spectrum, not just a binary between gay and straight. It focuses on sexual behavior rather than identity, so your place on the Kinsey scale can shift depending on what you do—there’s no interest in who you “are” or who you are attracted to. The Kinsey scale was explicitly designed to represent the sexual orientation of an individual for a given period of their life, with the implicit understanding that sexual orientation is not necessarily static throughout a lifetime.
The Kinsey scale assumes a single axis between “heterosexual” and “homosexual,” and does not explicitly describe bisexuality or asexuality (which is defined by lack of sexual attraction, not sexual behavior like on the Kinsey scale) or account for non-binary people. Since its development, other scales for sexual orientation have been developed.
Kinsey himself was, by the modern understanding of the word, bisexual. However, he rejected that label because at the time the psycho-medical community still loosely associated it with “hermaphroditism” (an outdated term for intersex).
see also: GAY; BISEXUAL; BIPHOBIA; BINARY; BICURIOUS; APHOBIA
KWEEN — An AAVE alternative spelling of “queen,” and a genderfuck mashup of “king” and “queen.”