Bisexuality versus pansexuality: What’s the difference?

With so much overlap between the bisexual and pansexual identities, how do you decide which label is right for you? And what’s the difference between bisexuality and pansexuality? Read on to find out how one bisexual psychologist found clarity between the two.

I am a behavioral therapist, and if we look only at behavior and exclude everything else- ignoring attraction, orientation, identity, and all of the vital components that make us complex people - if we speak only about sexual behaviors- then pansexual and bisexual and plurisexual all mean fundamentally the same thing: that there are multiple genders, and that a person can be interested in relationships or sexual interactions with multiple genders.

Defining Bisexuality and Pansexuality

A piece of advice I once actually received: “Just pick whichever pride flag you think is prettier and stick with that.” I need more information on what the differences were beyond the superficial!

Now that said, I’m also a dialectical therapist, and dialectics is all about the juicy nuances of multiple things being true at the same time. Looking at behavior alone is no way to measure how someone identifies. If that were true, then everyone is asexual until their first crush or first kiss, and no one is asexual afterwards, and that is clearly not the case. Let’s reject oversimplifying and add back in sexual attraction and sexual identity. If sex and romantic love are parts of your identity, with whom do you want to share that?

Drawing a rigid dividing line between different sexual orientations does not sound helpful or fun to me. If you’re anything like me, you’re hoping for less of a rigid definition, which may only be outdated in two years anyway, and for more of a chance to explore some of the particular niches of sexual orientation that other queer people are creating for themselves. Perhaps you are in search of solidarity, or clarity, or engaging with your curiosity. If that is what you’re in the mood for, then buckle in.

In a set of interviews that took an unflinching look at the struggles of defining your attraction, three researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln set out to let 25 plurisexual people define themselves. What gets me so excited about this article is that the researchers provided no definitions themselves, and let the descriptions come from the participants themselves.

Researching Sexual Orientation

Now, if you read the part above that says Nebraska- Lincoln and you had some preconceived notions that this automatically means pretty much only white people, you are correct. They describe their sample as 83% white. If you were also hoping for information on how these sexual orientation questions play out across racial differences, we’re not going to find that here. I call on researchers to do BETTER, and get some black and indigenous people of color into these studies YESTERDAY, so we can actually get some information on sexual identity as a whole, not just for sexual identity as it exists for white people. This reads as solid research to me and that’s why I’m talking about it.

This research, published in the article “Bisexuality Isn’t Exclusionary”: A Qualitative Examination of Bisexual Definitions and Gender Inclusivity Concerns among Plurisexual Women” looked at 23 cis and 2 trans women living in Nebraska. They found one big difference in how people define the term “bisexuality.” Essentially, if you yourself are bi, you are more likely to define bisexuality as attraction to two or more genders. If you yourself are not bi, you are more likely to define bisexuality as attraction to only two genders, or indeed to only cis men and cis women. This is the danger of making assumptions about to whom others are attracted. Looking at the bisexual box from outside, the misconception is that people in the bisexual box believe that there are only two genders, and are not attracted to anyone outside of the gender binary. But if you ask bisexual people, or at least the ones in this small sample, they will tell you bisexual means attraction to at least two genders. So we end up with this misconception, that to be bi is to perpetuate a gender binary. This can affect what words we use to describe our own orientation. Per one participant’s response, “I don’t want to validate a gender binary by claiming to be bisexual.”

Bisexual Does Not Mean Only Two Genders

This misconception dates far back. In the 1990’s the Bay Area Bisexual Network produced a literary magazine called Anything That Moves. In this magazine they published a “Bisexual Manifesto,” with the words “Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or duogamous in nature: that we have ‘two’ sides or that we must be involved simultaneously with both genders to be fulfilled human beings. In fact, don’t assume that there are only two genders.” So if bisexuals have clearly been defining themselves in relation to multiple genders and not upholding a gender binary, since at least the 1990s, why then does this misconception continue to hold sway?

It’s a helpful thing to be aware of what assumptions people may make about your beliefs depending on the label that you use. It is up to each of us to explore these different labels, to choose one if we find one that resonates, and to allow other people the same freedom to make this choice. That said, basing your choice of what words you use to name your own identity on other people, on the possibility that other people may have misconceptions about a given word, rings false to me.

Part of my work in the queer community is devoted to helping other bi and pan and plurisexual people figure this all out for themselves, since I want them to have access to the companionship and clarity that I found in the particular community that works for me. I can’t talk about my relationship with bisexuality and pansexuality and the whole community of queer people without starting from a place of gratitude. The fact that there was more than one other bisexual person out there came as a genuine revelation to preteen me, and I felt shocked. And surprised, and afraid, and joyful! Discovering that there was a whole community of people who were also attracted to multiple people: my reaction was awe.

And so, to parrot back the conclusion of this article, “These findings indicate that researchers may wish to consider adjusting their conceptualization of bisexual identity as capturing attraction to more than one gender.” My key takeaway? Rigid boxes, clear dividing lines, do not help us as a community. Labels will continue to proliferate. Finding one that feels like it fits you can be a source of companionship and solidarity, and it can also feel too confining. Leading with empathy, to understand what different labels mean to the people that use them, sounds like a good starting place to me.

If you’d like help in exploring these labels for yourself, click to find out more about my LGBTQ+affirmative individual therapy services. Another good starting place would be reading about the impact of queer-friendly therapy. Enjoy!