Pictured A Kinsey shirt.
By Christine Mangan
Awkward pauses and boring cocktail talk may soon be a thing of the past. It seems that Deborah Morrison—along with four close friends—has managed to create an extraordinary conversation piece in the very ordinary form of a T-shirt. Best of all, it has absolutely nothing to do with the weather.
Currently available on their appropriately named Web site, WhoDoYouDo.com, T-shirts come in either purple or brown and are branded with Dr. Alfred Kinsey's human sexuality chart. This six-point scale was first designed by Kinsey, the author of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, and explores the wide spectrum of sexuality as opposed to the simple labels of gay or straight. As self-professed bleeding hearts, Morrison and her friends are hoping that these T-shirts will provide eye-opening experiences and help to open up the lines of communication between people regarding the seldom-discussed subject of sexuality.
Morrison said the idea first originated at a dinner party, when the discussion turned to the subject of attraction. With a mixture of straight and gay partygoers present, everyone soon found that simply defining their desires by these terms did not offer enough flexibility. This led several of them to puzzle over how to correctly define each person's individual sexuality, eventually leading them to Kinsey's scale, which dates back to the 1940s. 'We went around the room saying our numbers, and we saw the beauty of that. Some of us had known each other for years, and this was bringing us closer,' Morrison said. 'We began to wonder how many other people had this discussion using Kinsey's scale.'
After using the scale with friends and family, Morrison decided to use Kinsey's ideas on sexuality by allowing clients to express their individuality. Each T-shirt comes equipped with a laundry marker pen so that customers can choose their own Kinsey number-or group of numbers. So whether you're a zero or a six on the human sexuality scale, or possibly somewhere in between, Morrison's T-shirts provide everyone a chance to proudly display their number for the world to see. ( Regarding the scale, zero means exclusive heterosexuality while six denotes exclusive homosexuality. )
Though they are in talks with several bookstores and college campuses, the only way to currently snag one of these T-shirts in time for this summer's festivities is to order them on the Web site ( www.whodoyoudo.com ) . Morrison said they will not be selling T-shirts at this year's Pride events, as they hope to outfit people beforehand in order to attract attention to the issue of sexual diversity. 'We want to have people wear these so everyone will see and say, 'Oh, there is diversity within diversity.'' Morrison hopes people will realize that the GLBT community is not as isolated as some may believe.
In a world where individuality does not conform to labels such as gay or straight, Morrison hopes to remind everyone of this fact with whodoyoudo.com's T-shirts. 'Life is not just one thing,' she said. 'It's a beautiful spectrum.'
