Effeminacy. I. A quantitative rating scale.

Although effeminacy is recognized to be a complex and important phenomenon, until now it has been only scantily studied, and has not been clearly defined or measured. In this paper, we review the literature and present an Effeminacy Rating Scale that quantifies the behavioral fragments comprising the overall clinical picture of effeminacy. We also present data obtained in a trial of the scale on a sample of 16 homosexual and 16 heterosexual males. The scale was found to have a high interrater reliability (0.93) and can therefore be used to study effeminacy quantitatively.