What Is Pansexual?
Part 2 of 36 in the The 2026 Kink Field Guide series.
Pansexual means attraction regardless of gender.
Not "attracted to all genders." Not "attracted to people despite their gender." Attraction where gender isn't a factor in the equation—not a plus, not a minus, not a variable at all.
A pansexual person might be attracted to men, women, nonbinary people, genderfluid people, agender people. The attraction isn't happening because of their gender or despite their gender. It's happening orthogonally to gender entirely.
That's the distinction. And it matters more than it might seem.
Pan vs Bi
The question everyone asks: what's the difference between pansexual and bisexual?
The historical answer: bisexual meant attraction to two genders (bi = two), while pansexual meant attraction to all genders (pan = all).
The contemporary answer: it's more complicated than that.
Modern bisexuality has evolved. Most bisexual people don't define their orientation as "attracted to exactly two genders." The common definition now is "attraction to more than one gender" or "attraction to genders like mine and different from mine." Bisexuality has expanded to include nonbinary and genderfluid people.
So what's the difference?
For bisexual people, gender is often a factor in attraction. They might be attracted differently to different genders. More attracted to women than men. Attracted to feminine presentation regardless of gender. Attracted to certain gender expressions but not others. Gender is in the equation.
For pansexual people, gender isn't in the equation at all. The person is hot or they're not. The connection is there or it isn't. What's in their pants or how they identify doesn't enter into it.
This isn't a hierarchy. Neither is more evolved or more inclusive. They're different experiences of multi-gender attraction.
The "Hearts Not Parts" Slogan
Pansexuality is sometimes described with "hearts not parts"—attracted to the person, not the body.
This slogan is catchy but creates problems.
It can imply that other orientations are shallow—that straight or gay or bi people are just attracted to genitals while pan people have risen above that. That's insulting and inaccurate. All attraction involves the whole person.
It can also desexualize pansexuality, making it sound like pan people don't care about bodies at all. They do. Physical attraction exists. Pan people have physical types and preferences like everyone else.
The more accurate framing: pan people have physical attraction that isn't organized around gender categories. They might prefer certain body types, certain faces, certain vibes—but those preferences don't map onto gender in predictable ways.
Why the Label Emerged
Pansexual as a distinct identity emerged in the 1990s and gained traction in the 2000s-2010s.
The driving force was the increased visibility of nonbinary and trans identities. As gender diversity became more recognized, some people felt that "bisexual" didn't capture their experience. If bisexual meant "two genders," and there were more than two genders, a new word was needed.
Whether bisexual actually meant "only two genders" is debated. Bi activists point out that bisexual communities have always included people attracted to nonbinary folks. The "bi = two" reading was always too literal.
But the perception drove the terminology. People who wanted to signal explicit inclusion of all genders adopted "pansexual." The label said: I'm not working with a two-gender model of attraction.
The Controversy
Pansexual as an identity has faced criticism from multiple angles.
From the bi community: Some bisexual people feel that pansexuality was invented to solve a problem that didn't exist—that bisexuality was never exclusionary of nonbinary people, and creating a new label implied it was. This critique sees pansexual as bisexual with better PR, unfairly positioning bi as the less-inclusive option.
From gender-critical perspectives: Some argue that pansexuality assumes a gender ideology they reject—that if you don't believe gender is distinct from sex, pan/bi distinctions don't make sense. This critique is tied to broader debates about gender that go beyond sexuality.
From skeptics: Some see pansexual as unnecessary label proliferation. If it means roughly what bisexual means, why do we need both?
The Defense
People who use the pansexual label typically emphasize lived experience over abstract definitions.
Yes, bisexual and pansexual overlap. Yes, many bi people would describe their attraction the same way pan people do. But for some people, the pan label captures something important:
The emphasis on gender-blindness. Bisexual has "two" in the name. Even if the meaning has evolved, the etymology is there. Pansexual names gender-blindness explicitly.
The signaling function. In dating contexts, saying "I'm pan" communicates something specific—that the person's gender won't be a complicating factor, that nonbinary and trans people are included without question.
The personal resonance. For many people, it just fits better. The experience of attraction where gender is truly irrelevant might feel better captured by pan than bi, regardless of whether the technical definitions overlap.
Labels don't just denote—they connote. The felt sense of a word matters.
The Lived Experience
What does pansexual attraction actually feel like from the inside?
People describe it as: "I'm attracted to individuals, not categories." "Gender never enters my thought process when I find someone attractive." "I could fall for anyone if the chemistry is there."
This doesn't mean pan people have no patterns in their attraction history. They might end up dating more people of certain genders simply because of who's available, who's interested, demographic distribution. The pattern in practice might look different from the orientation in principle.
It also doesn't mean total openness to everyone. Pan people have types. They have preferences. They're not attracted to all people equally. They're attracted to people without gender being a relevant variable in that attraction.
Dating and Disclosure
For pansexual people in dating contexts, disclosure involves specific considerations.
When to mention it. Some pan people put it in profiles directly. Others wait until conversation develops. The calculation: is this label important enough to feature prominently, or is it just one detail among many? Putting "pansexual" in a dating profile signals explicit inclusivity and can attract like-minded people. It can also prompt questions from people unfamiliar with the term.
Explaining to partners. When dating someone who hasn't heard the term, explanation is needed. The risk: getting confused with polyamory ("so you want multiple partners?") or hypersexuality ("so you're attracted to everyone?"). Neither is accurate. The explanation needs to convey: gender doesn't determine who I'm attracted to, but I'm still selective about who I'm interested in.
Navigating misconceptions. Pansexual people sometimes encounter assumptions that they're "easier" or "less picky" because gender isn't a limiting factor. This misconstrues how attraction works. Removing one variable (gender) doesn't mean removing all variables. Pan people have standards, preferences, and boundaries like everyone else.
In queer spaces. Pansexuality is generally well-understood in LGBTQ+ communities, though the bi/pan distinction can still be contentious. Some older queer people see pansexual as unnecessary—a rebranding of bisexuality for a younger generation. Younger queer people often see it as natural evolution of language to be more explicitly inclusive.
The Practical Experience
What does being pansexual look like in practice?
Dating pool expansion. Pan people can potentially date anyone, regardless of gender. This expands options in theory. In practice, actual dating pools are shaped by who's available, who's interested, and demographic distribution. A pan person might end up mostly dating one gender simply because that's who they meet, not because of preference.
Relationship history variety. Many pan people have dated across genders. Looking at past relationships might show men, women, nonbinary people. This history can be harder to explain to people who assume sexuality is fixed to a type.
Fluid partner seeking. Pan people often describe being open to wherever attraction appears. Rather than seeking "a man" or "a woman," they're seeking "a person I connect with." This can feel more open-ended and less structured than attraction organized around gender categories.
No crisis with trans partners. For some people, a partner's gender transition creates orientation questions. For pan people, this is typically a non-issue. If your attraction isn't organized around gender, a partner's gender changing doesn't threaten the relationship foundation.
The Attachment Angle
Does pansexuality correlate with attachment styles?
No obvious direct connection. Pan people can be securely attached, anxiously attached, avoidantly attached. The orientation is about attraction triggers, not relationship patterns.
But there might be indirect connections worth exploring.
Some pan people describe their orientation as emerging from deep security—a comfort with attraction that doesn't need to be organized into categories. "I just like people" can come from a place of stability.
Others describe it differently—as a response to rigid categories that felt suffocating. Coming from a highly gendered environment, pansexuality might be a rejection of imposed frameworks. That could correlate with avoidant patterns, though not necessarily.
The research here is thin. These are hypotheses, not findings.
The Omnisexual Distinction
If pansexual means gender-blind attraction, omnisexual means attraction to all genders where gender is still a factor.
An omnisexual person might be attracted to men, women, nonbinary people—but differently. Gender influences the attraction even though it doesn't limit it.
The distinction is subtle and not universally observed. Some people use pan and omni interchangeably. Others find the difference important.
The key is whether gender is a variable in the attraction formula or absent from it entirely. Omni = variable present. Pan = variable absent.
Making Sense of It
Here's what matters:
Some people experience attraction that genuinely doesn't organize around gender. For them, whether someone is a man, woman, or nonbinary person just isn't relevant to whether they're attracted. The attraction happens on other dimensions.
This is a real experience. It's not bisexuality rebranded or a political statement or a trend. It's how some people's attraction actually works.
Whether to call that "pansexual," "bisexual," or something else is partly semantic and partly personal. The underlying experience—gender-irrelevant attraction—exists regardless of what label gets attached.
If the label helps someone understand themselves and communicate with others, it's doing its job. If it becomes more important than the experience it names, something's gone sideways.
Previous: The Proliferation of Attraction Identities Next: What Is Asexual?
