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What is Bisexuality?

With celebrity advocates like Janelle Monae, Asia Kate Dillon, Keiynan Lonsdale, and Sara Ramirez; history-makers like Assemblywoman JoCasta Zamarripa and Senator Kyrsten Sinema; and viral social media campaigns like #BiWeek and Bisexual Health Awareness Month shaping the media; people are talking about bisexuality and the bisexual+ community more than ever.

But what is bisexuality, and how does it relate to pansexuality, and other terms that the BRC and other organizations include under the umbrella term bi+ or bisexual+?

Below, we will talk about what these terms mean to us as an organization, and our community members as individuals; there is no one definition. The experience of talking about what bisexuality is is just as nuanced and diverse as the identities of bi+ folks themselves.  

Bisexuality

Attraction to more than one gender.

This attraction could be physical, romantic, and/or emotional.

Bisexual people may experience different kinds of attraction to different genders, and their attractions may change over time.

Pansexuality

Attraction to all genders and/or regardless of gender.

This attraction could be physical, romantic, and/or emotional.

Pansexual people may also experience different kinds of attraction to different genders, and their attractions may change over time.

Pansexual and bisexual are identities that overlap and have nuanced differences, and someone who is attracted to all genders or regardless of gender might also identify as bisexual.

Bisexual+/Bi+

An umbrella term that includes all people who experience any kind of attraction to more than one gender.

Every Bisexual+ Experience is Different

Someone might use multiple terms to talk about their identity, might use different terms in different contexts, or might prefer one term over another for many different reasons.

Although bisexual and pansexual are the most common terms, they’re not the only ones! People who are attracted to more than one gender might also use words like multisexual, omnisexual, polysexual, heteroflexible, or queer to describe their identity. 

Multisexual Colors
Omnisexual Colors
Polysexual Colors

Regardless of the terms we use, the bisexual+ community is a home for every person who is attracted in some way to people of more than one gender.

Bidentification Station

Click to download your very own bi+denitification card!

“What is bisexuality?” is almost trick question: the bi+ community is so diverse and multifaceted that a few paragraphs can’t possibly cover all the different ways people define the concept, both to themselves and to others. 

Because the thing is, every person gets to decide what their identity means to them.

So instead, we asked folks in the bi+ community to talk about bisexuality through the lens of their own bi+dentities. Here are some of those responses.

Additional Resources