Pansexuality

Pansexuality describes sexual, romantic, or emotional attraction to people of all genders, or attraction that is not limited by a person’s sex or gender identity. Those who identify as pansexual often consider themselves gender-blind, meaning that gender and sex do not play a deciding role in whom they find attractive. This orientation is sometimes viewed as a distinct category, and other times as a subset of bisexuality—since being attracted to all genders naturally includes attraction to both the same and different genders—but with an emphasis on having no gender preference. While pansexuality explicitly rejects the gender binary through its name and includes people who are not strictly men or women, this openness is not unique to pansexuality; broad definitions of homosexuality, bisexuality, and the asexual spectrum also encompass such attraction.

History and etymology

The prefix “pan-” comes from Ancient Greek, meaning “all” or “every.” Pansexuality is also sometimes called omnisexuality. When a distinction is made, pansexuality tends to stress gender blindness, while omnisexuality highlights that gender is still a factor in attraction. The earliest known use of “omnisexual” in Portuguese appears in an 1878 newspaper review by Brazilian writer Machado de Assis, writing under the pseudonym Eleazar.

He criticized the novel O Primo de Basílio for its naturalism and lack of sexual restraint, describing its eroticism as “omnisexual and omnimod.” Early figures associated with pansexual tendencies include John Wilmot and Friedrich Schiller. The terms “pansexual” and “pansexualism” were first recorded in 1914, coined by critics of Sigmund Freud to describe the idea that sexual instinct drives all human activity. The word was later used in German in Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.

By the 1970s, “pansexual” and “omnisexual” were in use alongside “bisexual” to describe a broad range of attraction. The book Bi Any Other Name notes that pansexual people have been active in bisexual communities since that decade. Pansexuality emerged as a specific identity label in the 1990s, describing desires that already existed for many. Social psychologist Nikki Hayfield points to early use within BDSM communities.

The pansexual flag, designed by Jasper Varney, first appeared on a Tumblr blog in 2010. Its colors represent attraction across the gender spectrum: cyan for attraction to men, pink for attraction to women, and yellow for attraction to non-binary people. Variations like “panqueer” have also appeared, for instance in a study on the non-medical impacts of COVID-19.

Definitions

A literal reading of “bisexuality” (from the prefix “bi-”) suggests attraction to two sexes or genders, or to both same and different genders. Pansexuality, with its “pan-” prefix, explicitly includes attraction to any sex or gender, covering intersex and non-binary individuals. According to Sex and Society (Volume 2), people who identify as pansexual do not include paraphilias like bestiality, pedophilia, or necrophilia in their definition, stressing that the term applies only to consensual adult relationships. Some believe pansexuality is the only identity that includes those who do not fit neatly into male/man or female/woman categories.

However, many bisexual-identified people and scholars argue that bisexuality is not limited to two genders, as gender is more complex than biological sex and involves genetic, hormonal, environmental, and social factors. The Bisexual Resource Center defines bisexuality as “an umbrella term for people who recognize and honor their potential for sexual and emotional attraction to more than one gender,” while the American Institute of Bisexuality states that “bisexual” is an inclusive term for people with same-sex and different-sex attractions, noting that the scientific classification addresses biological sex, not gender presentation. Scholar Shiri Eisner notes that terms like “pansexual,” “omnisexual,” “polysexual,” and “queer” also exist within this landscape.