“Pansexual”: An Etymological Timeline
By: Kravitz M.
Tags: LGBTQ, Identity, History, Sexuality, Kravitz M

When people write and talk about pansexual orientation, a common emerging pattern is claiming that “pansexual” is a new term, some folks even claiming that it didn’t exist until the 2000s. This, however, is simply misinformation. The word “pansexual” itself has been around for almost a century now, and people have adopted it as a sexual identity for decades in various ways.

Since few people know much — if anything — about the origins and evolution of this term, a compilation of its uses felt in order. The following is a virtually exhaustive look at the history of the word “pansexual” and where we find it today.

Note: This timeline does not show every single instance of the word “pansexual.” Sources that direct to scientific journal articles behind paywalls can be accessed in full via a Sci-Hub URL. Access to old New York Times articles may require an account.

1910s

1914–1915: In a volume of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, J. Victor Haberman criticizes Sigmund Freud’s method of psychoanalysis. One thing Haberman points out is his theory that all human activity is motivated by a “sexual instinct.” He — not Freud, contrary to popular belief — refers to it as “pan-sexualism.”

The “parts” of the [Freudian] theory may be enumerated as follows: The infantile or childhood’s “sexual trauma” as cause of hysteria; the pan-sexualism of mental life which makes every trend revert finally to the sexual; the mechanism of repression and displacement; this repressed material, always sexual…

1950s

1952: In a speech, Pope Pius “laid down a moral code for doctors and medical researchers and severely censured ‘the pansexual method of a certain school of psychoanalysis’” (i.e., Freud’s theory of pansexualism) over concerns of Christian morality.

1960s

1962: As mentioned by a scientific journal article discussing crowding in animal populations, “[John] Calhoun’s study of wild Norway rat populations showed deviant sexual behavior by some individuals which he called ‘pansexuals.’ Their sexual behavior was indiscriminate in regard to the sex and age of the other individuals which they approached and mounted.”

1964: In The Lesbian in America, Donald Webster Cory says:

Most modern psychological theories of the origin of individual lesbianism start from an assumption that women (and men, as well) are innately bisexual; and that they are born with a capability to obtain gratification in many different ways, from those of the same sex, and of the other sex, from themselves, and even from other animal species. This capacity, which has been termed polymorphous perverse [the ability to gain sexual gratification outside socially normative sexual behaviors], might be called, in a word that is probably more communicative to most of us, pansexual. But the pansexuality of humans takes primarily three forms: gratification from oneself (the autosexual or masturbatory), from one’s own sex, and from those of the other. Hence, most people can be said to be innately bisexual in capacity or potential — and observation made not only by Freud, but by many of his contemporaries, including the distinguished American psychologist, William James.

1970s

We see the first instances of “pansexuality” as a human sexual orientation, but it primarily take on other related contexts.

1971: An article about McJagger states that “Jagger’s androgynous quality seems to heighten his attraction to both men and women. The oversized masculine head on a girl’s slender body, the limp gestures, and the tough mouth combine to produce a pansexual figure of almost mystical force.”

1973: James Nolan writes “The Third Sex: Hold On, It’s Coming” for Rampart Magazine. He names a “third sex” of people who we’d likely call nonbinary today (“neither Real Men nor Real Women”). They “are attracted to people, their auras, vibrancies, minds and good looks, not to genders. Fuck genders. Make love to people.” Nolan uses the word “pansexual” to refer to loosened attitudes towards sexuality as well as an orientation he describes his friends as, “avoiding the older term bi-sexual, which is meaningless when you can count more than two sexes.”

We can assume that if Nolan believes the “third sex” has a sexual orientation, it would be “pansexual,” but he never directly says this beyond saying they have “I-don’t-care-what-you-call-me, polymorphous perverse, any thing-that-feels-good-goes pansexuality,” which could very well just refer to openness to sexual activity.

January 1974: Serial killer Alton Coleman is arrested. During his time in prison, a prison psychiatric profile identified him as “pansexual, willing to have intercourse with any object … man, woman, child, whatever…”

April 1, 1974: In a New York Magazine article about bisexuality, Judy Klemesrud says: “Whether you call a person who is able to have sex with a male or female bisexual, AC-DC, a switch-hitter, ambisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, or, in Freud’s words, ‘polymorphous perverse,’ his or her sexual persuasion is certainly nothing new.”

April 16, 1974: Martha Weinman Lear writes for The New York Times. She describes pansexuality as loving “jonquils, lovebirds, trained seals, the whole rich range of our furred and feathered friends.” In the context of the article, she’s most likely being satirical, viewing bisexuality as a “slippery slope,” or, in her words, “a mere beginning, a mere toe‐dipping into the great blue waters of erotica.”

May 1974: Noel Coppage reviews two music albums from Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot in an article. He passively mentions pansexuality once but doesn’t define it.

August 1974: Singer-songwriter Alice Cooper brought up pansexuality in an interview. He did not identify as pansexual, but rather “prefer[red] the concept of pansexuality, rather than bisexuality.” “The prefix ‘pan,’” he said, “means that you’re open to all kinds of sexual experiences, with all kinds of people. It means an end to restrictions, it means you could relate sexually to any human being…” Notably, just before that, he said: “I think in the future everyone will be bisexual. And everything would be so much simpler then — you’d just make love with anyone you liked, and it wouldn’t matter what sex they were… or anything, except that you liked them.”

1976: Tom Burk describes pansexuality in similar ways to Alice Cooper, i.e., sexual openness “to demonstrate their uniqueness.” Otherwise, he doesn’t explicitly define it. An interviewed man calls this time “an era without labels, in which [this generation of kids] can be just sexual people.”

1977: Jeannette Smyth calls singer-songwriter Peter Allen’s appeal “pansexual” because of his popularity with women and gay men.

Allen, who was in town last weekend to play American University (he returns next week to the Warner), makes it on an appeal that has been called “pansexual” by no less a dancing fool and society observer than Dan Rather. Allen’s new manager, the formidable Dee Anthony, prefers to explain it by saying that “Women love him. They find him very sexually attractive,” which is more or less true (he has these great loose-jointed legs and navy-blue-and-white-spectator shoes). But Allen has a big-city gay cult following, and maintains that the larger audience to which he aspires rejects tired old macho totems (a trend even Mick Jagger, self-appointed king of the gender blur, might keep a weather eye on. It was rock and roll’s machismo, after all, in whose tradition Jagger sang all those sweet little songs about having so-called “girls” under his so-called thumb).

1979: Sam Julty writes in his book, Men’s Bodies, Men’s Selves, that “sexuality can be seen as a broad rainbow… In time labels will be forgotten and the terms, ‘heterosexual,’ ‘homosexual,’ ‘bisexual,’ ‘pansexual’ will no longer describe people and will only apply to choices people make.” This is the only place in the entire 453-page book he mentions pansexuality (never providing a definition), which is incredibly odd considering he mentions the former three plenty of times.

1980s

BDSM groups pick up the term, starting with play parties in San Francisco. Some researchers hypothesize that the word gained popularity because of BDSM. One bisexual interviewed for Bi Community News says that when she came out as bisexual in the 80s, “the label pansexual it didn’t involve any kind of gender nuance: it was how someone explained their bisexuality feeling interwoven with their Pagan beliefs.”

1982: Rita Mae Brown talks about how she was kicked out of the University of Florida for

her “pansexuality,” as she puts it. “I was open to loving anybody.” An officer of her sorority called her in and said, “White ladies aren’t seen with ‘nigras.’ Would you want to marry one?” Rita Mae recalls her angry reply: “I don’t care if I fall in love with a black or a white or a man or a woman or an old or young person. I just care that they have a good heart…”

1984: United Press International writes that a newspaper refused to distribute a Parade magazine for the “‘offensive’ moral content” in its lead article on sex. The Parade article identified “eight sexual styles,” one of which was “‘the pansexual’ who [has] ‘frequent sex’ and believe[s] they are ‘great lovers’[.]”

January 1985: In Men and Feminism in Modern Literature, “pansexuality” seems to be defined as egotism: “In that sense, she prefigures the pansexuality of the modern narcissist, who discourages deep attachments because he cannot cope with the risk of self-revelation, but who finds in an endless series of strangers the approval needed to inflate his always tenuous self-esteem.”

February 1985: In an article entitled “The Androgyny Myth,” describes musician Prince as “a 5’4” flamboyant pansexual pervert who would make it his motorcycle if he could reach the throttle at the same time.” Never in his life, however, has Prince stated his sexual orientation. It’s likely that the author was referring to Prince’s famous promiscuity.

June 1985: Richard Cromelin publishes an article about The Smiths, a then-upcoming band. “While rawer on stage than on record, the music was still clean and light enough to represent a real alternative to the electronic and hard-rock establishments. Morrissey writes mostly love songs, which are just ambiguous enough to allow him to claim that they’re pansexual rather than gay.” What either man means by “pansexual” is unknown, especially since bisexuality isn’t mentioned, either.

1986: In a review of a biography of French writer Colette, Rebecca Pepper Sinkler says that “Colette (1873–1954) possessed pansexual appetites, failing to discriminate between male and female, old and young, so long as the flesh moved her.”

1987: In The Triumph of Vulgarity, rock music is described as “pansexual,” a genre that “thrives on ambiguity… The ideal rock star is sexuality incarnate. He is the focus of every possible taste. He is indiscriminate in his appeal and therefore vulgar.”

1988: A passage from Buying Time says: “Little did Dallas know that his newly rediscovered heartthrob was a pansexual nymphomaniac, willing to try anything twice!!” We can assume that this pansexuality refers to openness to various sexual acts.

1989: In a paper on borderline personality disorder, Juan Mario Herakovic states:

In 1949 Hoch and Polatin attempted to redefine the concept of “borderline patients” by making its diagnosis more clear. They attempted to move away the concept of the borderline from a nebulose criteria of an undefined state lying somewhere between neuroses and psychoses and spoke of the borderline syndrome as a variant of a schizophrenic state. However, they recognized neurotic traits in these patients in a variety of areas, including sexual and social maladjustment, depressive states, compulsions, phobias, hypersensitivity to criticism, proneness to violence and rage. Hoch and Polatin labeled these traits “panneurosis,” further labeling the anxious traits of these individuals as “pananxiety” and the sexual patterns of promiscuous sexual behavior and perversions as “pansexuality.”

1990s

1990: Tom Geller’s Bisexuality: A Reader and Sourcebook defines pansexuality in two ways: “One who recognizes that one’s sexual capabilities transcend humanity; that inanimate objects, animals, plants, and concepts can also be sexually exciting,” and “One whose sexual interests include people who are gender minorities, i.e. not male or female.” (In this book, however, the term “gender minority” seems to refer to intersex people.) He goes on to say the second definition “is usually implied by the word Bisexual.”

1992: John Leland writes for Newsweek. He describes Madonna’s “Sex” book as full of “ erotic photos and writings, celebrating sadomasochism, homosexuality, exhibitionism and other pansexual delights[.]”

April 1993: In an article reporting on the new magazine, Esquire Gentleman, Woody Hochwender “labels the magazine ‘pansexual,’ saying ‘it’s not gay, not really straight either in its sensibility. It appeals to almost anybody.”

May 1993: In an article about glam rock, Evelynn McDonald says that “[m]usicians like Mr. Bowie, Lou Reed and Marc Bolan dressed in platform shoes, feather boas and purple eye shadow. Meshing cheesy pop with pretentious art-rock, their music inspired a giddy, glittery pansexual liberation.” None of the aforementioned men identified their sexuality as pansexual — Reed identified as gay despite marrying three women during his life, Boland claimed bisexuality, and Bowie clained and later retracted his previous gay and bisexual identities — so we could perhaps assume that pansexuality is used here within the context of pop culture, if not the “popularity among various kinds of people” definition.

September 1993: Mim Udovitch interviews singer k.d. lang, describing her appeal as “pansexual; she is [simultaneously] a beautiful woman and a cute boy sort of like Jean Seberg after a light course of hormone therapy. She is a babe. She is one butch babe.” Pansexuality here seems to describe androgyny.

1994–1998: As their now-defunct website states, “Cuir Underground was a San Francisco-based magazine for the pansexual kink communities, published from Fall 1994 to Summer 1998.”

1994: In Borderwork: Feminist Engagements with Comparative Literature, Greta Gaard notes in an essay that sociologist Paula C. Rust rejected the word “bisexual” because it emphasizes “the biological sex characteristics of potential romantic partners.” Rust said we should “banish the concept of partner sex from our vocabulary,” suggesting the term “pansensual” to describe sexuality outside of a “merely genital” framework. Gaard wants us to see “pansensuality” as not only distinct from bisexuality but more expansive.

June 26, 1994: An article on Keanu Reeves says that his “enigmatic face suggests a computer-generated composite of every known race and gender. His affect is pansexual and so is his appeal. At the trill of his name — say key-AH-noo — fans female and male heave libidinal sighs.”

July/August 1995: Comparing East Coast and West Coast BDSM communities, Mistress Veronika Frost says:

S/M play with more than one gender is common here [in the West], and those who engage in such play may call themselves bi, lesbian, gay, het, queer or something else entirely. Rules are less strict about orientation identity and behavior being congruent with each other. ‘Pansexuality’ seems to be increasing in popularity. ‘Cross-orientation play’ (gay men playing with dykes, gays and lesbians playing with heterosexuals and vice versa, etc.) got its start in San Francisco in the early 1980s.

“Cross-orientation play” seems to be synonymous with “pansexuality” here.

September 1995: All essays discussed are found in Naomi Tucker’s Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, and Visions.

In her essay “Identity and Ideas,” Liz A. Highleyman discusses strategies and potential goals for the bisexual movement. She notes that “some proponents of sexual and gender liberation have coined terms such as ‘pansexual’ and ‘omnisexual’ to describe their aspirations, but no term for this movement has so far reached common usage.”

Mykel Board’s “Pimple No More” argues that identity politics limits progress. She suggests we eliminate sexual identities but also theorizes that “everyone is bisexual.” She proposes the word “pansexual” to describe her theory. “Those who feel uncomfortable about using bisexual in a new way might try this term to see if it makes things easier.” In this context, pansexuality refers to her theory of sexuality rather than a separate orientation. She emphasizes that everyone has bisexual “potential,” so to speak, and everyone should feel free to move about in the “sexual sphere.”

In “Too Butch to Be Bi (or You Can’t Judge a Boy By Her Lover),” Robin Sweeney says: “A number of lesbian women and gay men I met did S/M [sadomasochism] together, but did not consider themselves bisexual. They were simply doing what has come to be called ‘pansexual play.’”

In “Pansies Against Patriarchy,” Sunfrog mentions pansexuality and some other new labels, though only once. He says the new terms go beyond limitations of language, include “the entire scope of sensuality,” and “also love trees, rivers, the sky, and food¹.”

October 1995: Owen McNally states that writer and sexologist Gore Vidal “argues that people are neither homosexual nor heterosexual but pansexual.” McNally does not elaborate and bisexuality is not mentioned in this article, but Vidal was openly bisexual. Furthermore, other sources, including Vidal’s own writing, actually show that he claimed humans were innately bisexual, not pansexual. Why McNally chooses to use the latter term instead is unknown.

January 1996: In “My Life as a Dom,” found in The Second Coming: A Leatherdyke Reader, Liz Highleyman says:

Pansexual is another confusing term. Some people use it to refer to groups or events that admit all genders and sexual orientations. Others use it to designate people or groups that specifically prefer or encourage multigender, multiorientation, “mixed energy” spaces and play.

February 1996: Carol Queen, writing for Cuir Underground, states:

Still others reject monosexuality, all right — but they reject bisexuality too, in favor of “pansexual,” “metasexual,” or “just sexual.” I admit to some sympathy with this choice of nomenclature. “Bisexuality” doesn’t describe the parts of my sexuality that respond to sex toys, some kinds of SM play, animals, nongendered fantasy objects, certain transgendered persons whose preference when asked “male or female?” is “neither,” and that ineffable sexual energy Tantric practice seeks to harness.

June 1996: Hank Burchard notes that “Biographers and art historians have concluded that Eakins was, if not a closet homosexual, a ‘pansexual,’ intensely interested in the human form and the full spectrum of human sexuality.” Bisexuality is not mentioned in this article.

1997: A (seemingly abandoned) website for Knot for Everyone (KFE), a BDSM support group in New Jersey, says that KFE is “a pansexual group and welcome[s] singles as well as couples, age 21 and over.”

1997: Transgender Care: Recommended Guidelines, Practical Information, and Personal Accounts defines the term “pansexual attractions” as “a liberating and newly coined reference to individuals who are primarily attracted to all individuals and all sexes.”

1997: In The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities, Dossie Easton defines pansexuality as “including everyone as a sexual being: straight, bi, lesbian, gay, transgendered, queer, old, young, disabled, perverts, male, female, questioning, in transition.” This is not in terms of personal identity, however; Easton refers to the fact that when discussing sexual lifestyles, she will acknowledge the entire spectrum of humanity as potential sexual subjects. Pansexuality here “includes everyone” similar to how the book makes an effort to be gender-neutral.

May 1997: In an article interpreting the band Kraftwerk, Terre Thaemlitz writes this footnote:

The term “Queer,” as reappropriated since the late 1980’s by such groups as Queer Nation, references pansexual and transgendered concepts of sexual identity and is used as an alternative to identities such as Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual which operate in relation to the restrictive dichotomy of Heterosexual/Homosexual… Similarly, Queerness is a response to discussions of biological predeterminism within Lesbian and Gay communities, as such discussions can be turned against members of pansexual and transgendered communities who reject the Heterosexual/Homosexual paradigm in favor of a multiplicity of identities, and for whom concepts of identity are more openly related to the complication and/or subversion of cultural norms.

June 1997: Frank Rich mentions an “epidemic of pansexual faggot-burning,” possibly referring to the phenomenon of (underlying reasons for) stigma against gay men also affecting some straight men (“‘The fire the religious right started with gays,’ says Mr. Tafel, ‘is starting to singe straight men.’”) If true, “pansexual” here may mean “(happening) regardless of sexuality.”

Spring 1998: Anything That Moves features an interview from Matt Rice. The interviewer, Marshall, tells him that “[s]ome have proposed the term ‘pansexual’ as more inclusive than bisexual” and asks, “is ‘bisexual’ limiting because it implies only two, fixed genders?” Matt, while not identifying with the term, says that “pansexuals don’t require that there be two and only two genders…”

June 1998: Peter Braunstein describes a gay disco club — frequented by men of all sexualities — as a “pansexual playground.”

September 1998: A Washington Post article calls The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s character, Dr. Frank N. Further, “pansexual” (though no elaboration is given on which definition applies here), a “sweet transvestite from transexual Transylvania,” and “perversely glamorous.”

May 1999: The first edition of Chuck Stewart’s Sexually Stigmatized Communities: Reducing Heterosexism and Homophobia: An Awareness Training Manual states that “[a] newer term, pansexual, has been adopted to include transsexuals and all other persons whose gender, sexual orientation, and affective orientation do not coincide with societal norms.”

June 1999: Perspectives on Human Sexuality by Anne Bolin and Patricia Whelehan defines “pansexual” as “Lacking highly specific sexual orientations or preferences; open to a range of sexual activities.”

2000s

The orientation definitions of pansexuality gain popularity; other contexts decrease in frequency.

2000: “I consider Little Richard to be the most famous pansexual,” said Leon for Washington Post. “He was not about genders. He was about beautiful and not beautiful. If there was a cute boy and a homely girl, he’d talk to the boy. If the girl was pretty, he’d talk to her.

2001: Catherine Padilla writes about Leatherfest, “the San Diego-originated leather event, which offers BDSM/fetish education, set up much like a conference.”

Although closely associated with Club X, San Diego’s largest pansexual BDSM organization, they are separate entities. However, board members of Club X have often served on the board of Leatherfest. Such was the case with this year’s Co-Executive Director Jake Lee. […] According to “Papa” Tony Lindsey, in his recently published Internet newsletter for gay leathermen: “From a gay male standpoint:, the last few Leatherfests didn’t have many gay guys amidst the pansexual crowd, and I sure missed ‘em… This time around there were scads of gay leathermen attending, and I think maybe about 10 percent of ’em didn’t feel comfortable.”

October 2001: The Journal of Bisexuality included an article entitled “Bisexuals and BDSM: Bisexual People in a Pansexual Community,” written by Steve Lenius. In this context, pansexuals are kinksters who “play” (i.e., engage in sexual acts) with others in their BDSM group regardless of their gender or orientation. Lenius found that some self-proclaimed pansexuals showed skepticism to this idea of pansexuality, particularly straight men embarrassed about participating in homoerotic acts.

November 2001: In an interview for Salon magazine, Tristan Taormina says:

I don’t identify as bisexual for a few reasons… I firmly believe there are not two genders. So identifying as bisexual is counterproductive to my gender politics. So when people ask me, “Are you bisexual? gay?” I’m like, “I’m equal opportunity. I sleep with people of all genders.”… I identify with pansexual.

May 2002: Mental Health Issues in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Communities states:

Bisexuality identifies persons who are attracted to women and men, to varying degrees. Pansexuality or polysexuality represents the broader sense [of] attraction to persons of diverse gender attributes. For example, a pansexual woman may be attracted at times to some biological women, to biological men, and to some transgender women (biological males living as women, often with a female psychological, hormonal, and surgical gender).

April 2002: Rose Rouse reports on the “pansexual revolution.” The article’s introductory blurb states: “They’re not straight and they’re not gay. Today’s sexually liberated lovers are simply looking for love wherever they find it.” Rouse describes the “revolution” as a world of “limitless hedonism,” where “labels like heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual — or even gay and lesbian — are considered outdated.” Psychotherapist Malcolm Stern says it’s about “self-discovery through sexual experimentation.”

June 2002: Peter Boom publishes “The Theory of Pansexuality.” He defines pansexuality as including “all kinds of sexuality that can exist in a human being, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans[s]exual, transgender,² heterosexual, tendencies that may prevail either permanently or occasionally.”

June 12, 2002: Counseling Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Substance Abusers: Dual Identities defines a “pansexual” person as one “whose sexual feelings and behaviors are fluid, ranging from heterosexual to bisexual to homosexual.”

June 13, 2002: The LiveJournal community “I Am Pansexual” states in its first post: “Pansexuals love people of all genders, male and female, but unlike bisexuals, pansexuals love transgendered, androgynous and gender fluid people, people who don’t fit into the categories of male or female.”

2003: In Social Change, Mental Health, and the Evolution of Gay Male Identities: A Clinical Ethnography of Post-communist Prague, we find the following quote: “…pansexual men who like sex and do not care whether their partners are men or women.” This book is particularly difficult to find, so the full sentence was unable to be gathered.

February 2003: Devon MacFarlane states that pansexuality “is used to describe anyone romantically and sexually attracted to people of all genders.”

March 2003: Addressing Homophobia and Heterosexism on College Campuses features the following passage:

For example, a pesron who is gay or lesbian is attracted to the same gender, and someone who is bisexual is attracted to both men and women. But how do we define a trans person’s own sexual attractions, as well as those of someone who is attracted to a trans person? What is that person’s sexual orientation? What is the sexual orientation of a person who does not identify as a man or a woman, or is attracted to a person who does not define oneself as a man or a woman? Current models of sexuality and language are slow to embrace the diversity in gender and gender identities, and to include trans people and their experiences. Additional sexual orientations that may speak to this are the terms: omnisexual (omni is from Latin origins meaning all), and pansexual (pan is from Greek origins meaning all). Thus, someone who is omnisexual or pansexual can be attracted to all genders, or a variety of gender identities.

April 2003: Susan R. Rankin defines pansexuality as being “open to sexual activity of many kinds; pansexual people espouse their freedom of choice and imagination in sexual relations, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.”

May 2003: Wikipedia mentions “pansexuality” for the first time as a section in its article on bisexuality. User MatinHarper, who added it, notes in the revision history that “since pansexual is essentially the same concept as bisexual, I think it should be here[.]” The addition says that pansexuality is “essentially the same concept as bisexuality,” but “a pansexual would be attracted to a transsexual.”

December 2003: The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability says that “being pansexual means that you identify as having a sexual orientation towards all people potentially. It is a much broader term that would encompass being attracted to people who don’t identify as either male or female. It may also suggest that you acknowledge that you could be sexually aroused by a beautiful painting, or the sound of a babbling brook.”

2004: The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines pansexuality as “exhibiting or implying many forms of sexual expression.”

2004: Eli R. Green defines pansexuality as being “sexually attracted to all or many gender expressions.”

January 2004: Art historian Walter Hopps states that painter Robert Rauschenberg “does not identify as homosexual… He described the artist as ‘pansexual.’ ‘He’s had intimate, long relationships with women, men, his beloved dogs and the very Earth itself[.]”

July 2004: “GL vs. BT: The Archaeology of Biphobia and Transphobia Within the U.S. Gay and Lesbian Community” defines pansexuality as “openness to all forms of sexuality,” a practice alongside polyamory and “other forms of responsible nonmonogamy” being “pioneered by bisexuals.”

2005: In “Creating Safe Space for GLBTQ Youth: A Toolkit,” the Girl’s Best Friend Foundation & Advocates for Youth writes:

The term ‘bisexual’ implies a sexual attraction towards people whose biological sex is different than and the same as one’s own. Since, however, there are more than two genders,³ some people do not self-identify as bisexual, finding themselves attracted to people across a spectrum of genders. These people have adopted different terms, including pansexual, a term that can also apply to people whose gender is fluid or who consider themselves genderqueer (or genderless).

April 2005: A book on gay slang defines “pansexual” as “a person who is interested in all kinds of sex — heterosexual and homosexual, top and bottom, S&M and vanilla.”

September 2005: Pansexuality gets its own Wikipedia article, though it was just a stub at this point. The stub says pansexuality is “distinct from bisexuality” and includes “people who don’t fit into the gender binary of male/female implied by bisexual attraction.”

November 2005: The paper “Gender and Sexuality: A Look at the Sexuality among Partners of Transgender Individuals” includes this paragraph:

The term pansexual refers to individuals that feel sexual attraction to an array of individuals regardless of sex, gender or gender identity. Bisexual was the previously accepted label for individuals attracted to either gender or gender identity, but the term pansexual allows for the fluidity of sex/gender. In acknowledging pansexuality one is recognizing that there may be more than two sexes/genders and their partners may be free in identifying themselves. An online dictionary states that adjective pansexual is defined as “equal acceptance of all major human sexual orientations and identities, including homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, as well as transgender, transsexual and Intersex people.” The second use of the term is “a sexual orientation towards basically everybody, without the two-gender restriction implied by bisexual.” This term allows fluidity among gender identity and sexuality as well as sex.

April 2006: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines “pansexuality” as “Relating to, having, or open to sexual activity of many kinds.” One can still find this definition elsewhere.

May 2006: The Wikipedia article develops more, now having more sections. It says “Pansexuals are known as the most open-minded, non-judgemental, and fluid of sexualities.” The article also claims:

Pansexual men tend to enjoy any individual on the orientation spectrum, with a strong preference towards the feminine — be it a tran[s]sexual female, transgendered female, or female… A pansexual may be attracted to all genders and sexes, but has a strong preference toward transexual men, butch lesbians, intersexed persons, etc.

November 2006: Ginny Rebecca B. defines pansexuality as being “attracted to people of any gender at all.”

2007: The Gay and Lesbian Guide to Life defines “omnisexual” — which is “also referred to as pansexual” — as “sexually, romantically, or emotionally attracted to an individual of any gender.”

March 2008: Hellen G. defines pansexuality as attraction “to ‘people, not parts’. Used instead of ‘bisexual’ (because ‘bi’ means ‘two’, and there aren‘t two sexes/genders). Indicates the potential to be attracted to anyone regardless of their sex, gender identity, or gender expression.”

April 2008: This version of the Wikipedia article states, “pansexuality includes potential attraction to people (such as transgender individuals) who do not fit into the gender binary of male/female.” This revision also has a section specifically to specify the differences between bisexuality and pansexuality: “Pansexuality is inclusive of bisexuality (attraction to both males and females) but additionally includes attraction to other genders and sexes such as those identifying as transgender, genderqueer, bigender, intersex, or genderfuck.”

August 2008: A study examining suicidality and self-harm among Japanese sexual minorities says that “Fujiko, 36, described herself as ‘pansexual,’ meaning that she was open to different sexual orientations and gender identities in her sexual partners.”

October 2008: In the notes of a Rupert Raj article, we find that “Pansexual means an attraction to individuals of any of the five sexes (male, female, intersexed, transsexed)⁴; additionally, it is a term which goes beyond the self orientation identity of bisexual to include the orientation of transensual [i.e., attraction to transgender people].”

2009: Emily Lenning publishes this article. She says that “bisexuality implies a dichotomy, pansexuality suggests the possibility of attraction to a spectrum of gender identities.”

2010s

2010: The pansexual flag appears online. Before this, some pansexuals used the bi flag in their symbols as we were considered the same community and orientation. The creator of the pansexual flag states on their blog page, “For a long time we’ve [pansexuals] shared a flag with bisexual pride, but I believe as [sic] more people are choosing to identity (though we don’t choose what we are) themselves as pansexual rather than bisexual… both deserve to be represented individually.” They define pansexuality as “attraction and/or sexual preference to males, females, and those who do not fall inside the gender or sex binary.”

April 2010: A HubPages article defines pansexuality as “sexual attraction towards people regardless of gender[,] also known as omnisexuality[. S]ome pansexuals refer to themselves as gender blind as to them gender is insignificant in determining whether they will be sexually attracted to others.”

July 2010: One Wikipedia update states that while some pansexuals are genderblind, others find that “sex, gender expression, or gender identity can be a key factor of attraction.”

August 2010: Explaining their color choices for the pansexual flag, its creator says:

I chose pink, yellow and blue as pan colours because pink and blue have come to be accepted to represent binary gender (pink for the female spectrum, blue for the male spectrum), while yellow is a bright colour, that symbolises life and happiness in many cultures, and is neglected by most queer-representing flags. Yellow makes it stand out from the bisexual colours, representing non-binary attraction, while the similar use of pink/blue (in a different shade) acknowledges the similarity of having attraction fall into the binary.⁵

September 2010: Marshall Cavendish Reference Books publishes the second volume of Sex and Society. In it, this quote appears:

Pansexuality recognizes that there are more than just the two distinct genders and that gender identity and expression are flexible and fluid. A person may fall anywhere on the gender spectrum, often changing position over the course of his or her life. This flexibility allows people to develop physical and emotional relationships not only to men and women, but also to transsexuals, androgynes, and transgender individuals who do not conform to conventional gender identities.⁶ […] Pansexuals may be more interested in the feelings generated by their relationships, rather than in the biological sex of their partners or the way in which they express their gender.

2011: A BinaryThis article features this passage in an article about pansexuality:

Pansexuality describes a sexual orientation wherein a person has the ability to be attracted to a diverse range of people across sex and gender spectrums. Pansexuals describe their attraction as different from bisexuality, which only considers the gender binary — if you are bisexual, by definition you are attracted to either men or women. Thus it is often claimed that pansexuals are “gender blind” (though some pansexuals would argue that this is not the case — sex and gender may play a role in attraction, but their sexual orientation doesn’t rule anybody out because of their sex or gender presentation).

December 2011: A Good Therapy article defines pansexuality as attraction to “any combination of sexual and gender perception and expression.”

August 2012: A Huffington Post article says, “[T]hough many might describe [Mary] Gonzalez’s orientation as bisexual, pansexuals don’t believe in a ‘gender binary,’ and hence can be attracted to all gender identities.”

February 2013: Ayisigi Hale Gonel publishes this paper in which they state:

[P]ansexuality differs from bi-sexuality, as the understanding of attraction is not limited to dualistic social constructions of male/female and man/woman. […] This rejection of the gender and sex binaries was also apparent in the way in which they related their pansexuality to bisexual and monosexual orientations. Respondents suggested that pansexuality could be seen as an ‘advanced’ version of bisexuality; one that has a broader scope for attraction[.] […] [R]esearch respondents also suggested that bisexuality invested in gender and sex binaries, and therefore was different than pansexuality. When asked whether being pansexual was different from being lesbian, gay or bisexual, respondents situated their pansexual orientation in contrast to these other orientations, mainly in terms of rejecting binaries of gender and sex[.]

November 12, 2013: Elizabeth Palermo publishes this article in which she explains that “pansexuals may be attracted to those of all biological sexes or gender identities — including men, women, those who don’t identify with a specific sex or gender or those who are transsexual or transgender. This differentiates pansexuality from bisexuality, which denotes attraction to people of just two different sexes — male and female. […] The term has since been reclaimed by those who wish to connote their recognition of the fluidity of gender and their belief that there are more than two genders.”

November 16, 2013: One Wiki revision says: “Go Ask Alice! states that pansexuals can be attracted to cismen, ciswomen (meaning cisgender), ‘transmen, transwomen, intersex people, androgynous people, and everything else. It is generally considered a more inclusive term than bisexual’.”

February 2014: The Psychology of Human Sexuality defines pansexuality as “attraction to members of all sexes and gender identities. It is broader than bisexuality, which implies that one can only be attracted to biological males and females.”

November 12, 2014: Kaylee Jakubowski publishes an article saying that “someone who identifies as pansexual, no matter what their gender or sex is, can potentially be attracted to cis men, intersex men, trans men, agender people, genderqueer people or any other non-binary person, trans women, intersex women, cis women, or any other combination of sex, gender, and gender performance.”

November 12, 2014: Sexual Identities and the Media: An Introduction defines pansexuality as “an attraction to a person regardless of sex or gender. People who use this label may describe themselves as ‘gender blind’ or as being attracted to a person’s personality rather than his or her sex. The term also acknowledges a space for intersexed and transgendered people in an otherwise binary understanding of sexuality and gender.”

February 2015: Frankie, a (now former) Penn State University student writes a blog post explaining the differences between bisexuality and pansexuality. “Bisexuals are attracted to either males or females,” she says.

Pansexuals are attracted to males, females, and then they may be sexually attracted to individuals who identify as intersex, third gender, androgynous, transsexual, and many other sexual and gender identities. The topic of pansexuality is not only controversial to the general public, but to the bisexual community as well. The bisexual community argues that bisexuality is already inclusive of any and all genders and sexes. […] The pansexual and bisexual community strongly distances [sic] themselves from each other. They have their own different flags, colors, and ideologies. In short, pansexuality is more accommodating for all and any gender[s], while bisexuality is more directed towards just males and females and being attracted to either or both. Aside from who pansexuals are attracted to, they also see gender and sexuality differently. More specifically, they do not see it… A pansexual individual is attracted to a person, not a gender. It seems very similar to bisexuality. BUT, bisexuality, for the most part does not include genders aside from male and female, which is what the main difference is with the two.

March 2016: The “Pansexual” section of Exploring the Dimensions of Human Sexuality: Sixth Edition says:

Pansexual: A person who is romantically and/or sexually attracted to both men and women. A person who experiences sexual, romantic, physical, and/or spiritual attraction for members of all gender identities/expressions, not just people who fit into the standard gender binary. […] A pansexual person can love not only the traditional male and female genders, but also transgendered, transsexual, cross-dressing, androgynous and gender-fluid people and all other variations of gender identification, including those who feel they do not have a gender. It is often confused with or included within the definition of bisexuality, but it is a more fluid and much broader form of sexual orientation in which the pansexual individual experiences sexual attraction towards members of all genders. […] [P]ansexual[:] One whose sexual orientation includes all kinds of sexual expression and sexual relationships that can exist in humans.

July 2016: The Journal of Bisexuality studies GSA members and finds that they associate bisexuality with the gender binary, while “pansexuality served as a personal contestation to this dichotomy.” One student, Zion, tells us how she learned about bisexuality from Skylar:

[W]hen we first started [the GSA], I think we talked more just about stories. Like I learned about Skylar, umm, you know exploring bisexuality and then you know coming to the conclusion that she’s more pansexual… She gets attracted to a person not a gender or a sex… I think that’s one of the wonderful things about pansexuality…

September 2016: The Journal of Bisexuality examines pansexuality online. These passages appear:

Virtually all of the data points we were able to identify had an element of comparing bisexual and pansexual identities. Most identified pansexuality as a subset or component of a bisexual identity… Some discuss the difference between the two as focused on gender, such as this statement: “It’s different from bisexuality. Bisexuality refers to people attracted to men and women. With more people identifying across the gender spectrum between men and women, pansexuality has emerged as a catch-all that includes everyone else” (Difference Between). …“Pansexuality” as a term and identity is much larger and more encompassing, though many definitions proposed for bisexuality are much narrower.

October 2017: For The Shield, an interviewed pansexual says that pansexuality is “basically a more liberal version of bisexual,” and that “It means you don’t care about someone’s gender or identity or sexuality, you just like them for them. For instance, I am dating a guy right now, but I would be open to dating a female, or someone who is transgender.”

November 2017: Ritch C Savin-Williams says that pansexuality is “not equivalent to bisexuality, because it’s broader in scope. […] Others extend even this broad definition by delineating pansexuality as being not about the sexual equipment of the individual or how feminine or masculine the individual is or feels (gender identity), but about the person as an individual — inclusive of just about anything.”

April 2018: A them. article says:

A pansexual person is someone who is attracted to people of all genders — not just cisgender and transgender men and women, but nonbinary people, gender-nonconforming people, and anyone whose gender falls outside of the gender binary, or beyond traditional definitions of what it means to be a “man” or “woman.”

June 2018: For the Rolling Stone, Zachary Zane says a pansexual is “The meaning of pansexual is clear: someone who is attracted — either emotionally, physically or both — to all genders. This includes cisgender, transgender, agender and gender nonconforming individuals.”

2019: The Netflix Series Big Mouth has one character, Ali, say:

Bisexuality is so binary. Being pansexual means my sexual preference isn’t limited by gender identity… if you’re bisexual, you like tacos and burritos. But I’m saying I like tacos and burritos, and I could be into a taco that was born a burrito, or a burrito that is transitioning into a taco, comprende?

People weren’t happy about it.

2019: The Merriam Webster Dictionary quotes Mel Evans for its definition of pansexuality. Evans says pansexuals “can be attracted to males, females, transgender people and those who identify as non-binary (not female or male).”

January 2019: For The Sun, Hayley Richardson explains:

Just like bisexuality, pansexuals are sexually attracted to men and women. But the key difference is that pansexual people tend to consider themselves as more ‘gender fluid.’ They may also be drawn to those who identify as intersex, third-gender, androgynous or transgender.

February 12, 2019: Angela Johnson tells Insider that “People who are pansexual can be attracted to people who identify as male, female, androgynous, transgender, or intersex, taking it a step further than the traditional view of bisexuality.”

February 18, 2019: An article by Erica Nahmad explains the difference between bisexuality and pansexuality this way:

But bisexual is more specific in that it refers to someone who is interested in both men and women. If you’re bisexual you are sexually drawn to people of both genders — you are not exclusively hetero- or homosexual. You are both. You are attracted to more than one gender. Pansexual is not the same thing. If you are pansexual you are attracted to people of all genders, not just male and female, and your attraction occurs regardless of gender identity.

February 21, 2019: Lani Peswani writes for Metro:

When it came to fancying someone, I didn’t really think about what that person’s body was like or what it might be like to have sex with them, my view of a person was more complex. I also knew I felt especially attracted to people who were androgynous, as well as liking trans people. […] [My best friend told me that] pansexuality meant you could feel attracted to people of all genders — boys, girls, transgender people, non-binary people… A key characteristic of pansexuality is that pan people don’t really ‘notice’ gender; it doesn’t really cross their mind when experiencing attraction.

March 12, 2019: For Marie Claire, Tanya Koens says that “pansexuality is not saying you’re attracted to gender or orientation, it’s saying you’re attracted to people, regardless of whether they’re a man, a woman, gender-expansive or transgender.” The author of this article, Isabelle Truman, states that the definition of pansexuality is “being attracted to the person, not their gender… while bisexuals identify as being attracted to women and men, transgender and non-binary people.”

March 17, 2019: Gentside says:

The term “bisexual” can therefore be considered theoretically as reductive by some because it implies a binary term, the classic “man or woman.” …many bisexual people do not find themselves in this definition either because it can be seen as sexist or even transphobic… On the other hand, the term “pansexual” includes all genders and all sexes: man, woman, transgender, intersex…

May 13, 2019: Kinkly tells us:

[Pansexual] has since been adopted by some people as a more inclusive term than bisexual, a term that implies that there are only two genders (male and female). Pansexuals, on the other hand, can be attracted to transmen and women, intersex people, androgynous people, and cisgendered people, among others.

June 8, 2019: Elena Janowiak tells The Boston Globe that “Pansexuality basically means it’s about hearts, not parts. It doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, trans male, trans female, nonbinary — everyone’s hot to me.”

June 11, 2019: Lana Peswani writes for Cosmopolitan. “As a pansexual person, as well as fancying males, females, and other genders, I feel I experience sexual attraction differently to the average person. I never look at someone and think, ‘I wonder what it’d be like to fuck them? I wonder what their genitals look like.’ That thought doesn’t enter my head.”

June 23, 2019: Bella Thorne, who used to identify as pansexual since at least 2016, comes out as pansexual. She describes her sexuality as favoring personality over bodies. “Doesn’t have to be a girl or a guy or a he or she or they or this or that. It’s literally you like personality. You just like a being.”

June 25, 2019: Jenne Scherer writes for Rolling Stone. She says “pansexuality, which has come into wider use in recent years, intends to explicitly refer to attraction to all genders, not just cisgender people…”

July 11, 2019: Zachary Zane writes for Prevention. Due to the prefix “pan,” he says, “a pansexual person would be attracted to cisgender, transgender, gender nonbinary, genderfluid, and agender folks (a person who doesn’t identify with any gender).”

July 16, 2019: Holly Richmond, PhD, tells Health Magazine:

Pansexuals are attracted to the person, not their physical form… [they] can sometimes think they’re just bisexual. It can take time for them to realize that their sexual orientation is all-encompassing. [Pansexuals can] love all people and don’t look at gender as being the most important aspect. [They] can be sexually and/or romantically attracted to someone who is transgender, non-binary, or gender fluid.

2020s

January 2020: Yahoo! News publishes an article explaining the differences between bisexuality and pansexuality. “Often confused with bisexuality, pansexuality is where gender isn’t factored into attraction at all. In contrast, those who identify as bisexual are attracted to both genders.”

April 21, 2020: Vera Papisova’s Teen Vogue article interviews several pansexuals.

Danielle says:

It never felt right for me to identify as bisexual. I know so many people who are asexual or two-spirited, and I’m open to being with someone who is trans. I never wanted to alienate anyone in my sexual exploration. Even though I have never been with anyone who is trans, I’m open to it. For me it’s more of a political decision. I think everyone, regardless of who they are with, should identify as pansexual.

HB says:

I had identified as bisexual for most of my life, but as an adult, I heard the term pansexual and I realized it was a more accurate description of the way I felt. I’d say the best definition would be that my sexual attraction is not based on gender assignment or gender expression. I am attracted to men and women as well as nonbinary people who don’t identify as either.

April 25, 2020: Nikita Andester, in describing her journey through identity, states the following:

Over the years, as we’ve grown together in our polyamory, I’ve reevaluated my sexuality and gender time and again. And I finally realized something: my attraction to folks has little to do with their gender presentation, and everything to do with their essence, their swagger. For lack of a better word, their “vibe.” Bisexual suddenly didn’t cut it. My sexual orientation was unfolding in a new direction: I began to identify as pansexual. […] While bisexuality’s definitions vary, the common thread is that a bi person’s attraction is influenced by gender. In a positive way, gender is still a factor that informs their attraction. Pansexuality, on the other hand, doesn’t hinge on gender, and our attraction to others has nothing to do with our own gender identity. In fact, while we can be deeply aroused by someone’s gender expression, it doesn’t factor into how or why we’re attracted to them. And unlike bisexuality, pansexuality doesn’t factor in your own gender identity. It’s not a matter of yearning after someone who looks like or feels like me.

May 2020: Nikki Hayfield, author of Bisexual and Pansexual Identities: Exploring and Challenging Invisibility, explains that “While pansexuality is sometimes conflated or used interchangeably with bisexuality, some have distinguished between bisexuality as binary and pansexuality as non-binary.”

June 13, 2020: Rainbow-Heart publishes this article, stating that “[b]isexual is attracted to both sexes by both men and women — Attractiveness is related to gender… Pansexual is attracted to all, including transsexuals — Sex does not play any role. The attraction itself is unrelated to sex.”

June 18, 2020: Charlie Lankston writes an article regarding Madison Bailey’s pansexuality. “Madison proceeds to explain that a pansexual person can be attracted to all different kinds of people, including ‘girls, boys, trans girls, trans boys, and nonbinary babies’. The term pansexual is viewed as being much more inclusive than ‘bisexual’, because it does not assume that a person is only attracted to men or women, but also those who don’t identify with a specific gender.”

August 30, 2020: This quote appears in the current update (as of September 2020) of the “Pansexuality” Wiki page:

Because pansexual people are open to relationships with people who do not identify as strictly men or women, and pansexuality therefore rejects the gender binary,⁷ it is often considered a more inclusive term than bisexual.

Unknown Years

(We can safely assume that the following entries are dated between 2000–2020.)

Unknown: Find a Top Doc features this article. It says:

Pansexuals… may be sexually attracted to individuals who identify as male or female; however, they may also be attracted to those who identify as intersex, third-gender, androgynous, transsexual, or the many other sexual and gender identities. The latter distinction is what draws the line between pansexuality and bisexuality… Pansexual people are bisexual, in-fact; however, bisexuality does not place the same emphasis on sexual and gender identity awareness, but more simply indicates attraction to the two (generally accepted) biological sexes.

Unknown: Queer Paris defines pansexuality as “Sexual orientation associated with desiring/loving a person’s personality primarily, and specific bodily features secondarily.”

Unknown: Polyamory UK defines pansexuality as “sexual and/or emotional attraction without reference to gender or biological sex. The more commonly used term ‘bisexual’ limits those identifying with it to two genders or sexes, something pansexual’s reject.”

Unknown: Salt Lake Community College’s list of LGBTQ vocabulary defines “pansexual” as “[a] person who recognizes more than two genders and can be drawn to a person of any gender identity or expression.”

Unknown: The University of Baltimore’s list of LGBTQ vocabulary defines “pansexual” as “[a] sexual orientation where a person desires sexual partners based on personalized attraction to specific physical traits, bodies, identities, and/or personality features which may or may not be aligned to the gender and sex binary.” It defines “bisexual” as “individuals attracted to members of the male and female sex.”

Unknown: California State University’s list of LGBTQ vocabulary defines “pansexual” as “[a] person who is fluid in sexual orientation and/or gender or sex identity.”

Unknown: An article on The Mix tells us: