In this episode of our web series, InQueery, where we delve into the his, er, themstory of our favorite queer words, we're examining the origins and history of the word “pansexual.”
From the term’s first documentation in the world of psychology, its usage slowly trickled down from high academia into common usage in the early 21st century. In this video, we learn how pan-sexualism, a term characterizing "sexual deviancy," evolved into pansexual, an identity and label many claim proudly to describe their sexual orientation. Check out the full video and the script below to learn more about how the word has evolved over time.
From its origins in the early 20th century psychoanalysis to its burgeoning use among celebrities today, the word “pansexual” has come a long way to get to this pop culture moment. And we love how it challenges us to think about gender, sexuality, attraction, and desire. So: How much do you really know about the history of the word “pansexual”? Find out in this episode of InQueery.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “pansexual” first appeared in 1914 as the word “pan-sexualism” in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
A doctor named J. Victor Haberman criticized Sigmund Freud’s method of psychoanalysis, and unpacked one part of his theory, which was that “the pan-sexualism of mental life which makes every trend revert finally to the sexual.”
In other words: Freud theorized that sex was a motivator of all things, hence “pan-sexualism.”
The word “pansexual” itself was derived from the Greek prefix pan-, which means all. And of course, “sexual.”
At the time, it was a psychoanalytic term used far differently from how we use it today.
Though “pansexual” may not have been used to describe sexual orientation at this time, there were reports of people in the 1920s and 1930s who loved across “labels and boundaries” in Harlem and Chicago’s South Side.
In fact, it wasn’t until the 1940s that the pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey laid out how sexuality operated on a continuum with his scale that measured the degrees of heterosexuality and homosexuality.
His work helped pave the way for labels that described sexual orientation and the possibility for labels beyond "heterosexual" and "homosexual."
Still, anything outside of being straight was thought of as a mental disorder, and even “pansexual” in its psychoanalytic use was condemned.
In a 1952 speech, Pope Pius said that the quote “pansexual” method of psychoanalytic therapy went against Christian values. The 1970s saw the first inklings of “pansexual” being used in roughly the same way it is today to describe desire and identity.
A 1974 New York Times article about the sexual revolution proclaimed: “I see that a lot of people are going bisexual this year. This seems to be different from going homosexual, which was last year…” And then declared, “I know what comes next season. It's pansexuality.”
The paper of record used the word again a year later to describe androgynous British rocker Brian Eno, who was in the band Roxy Music.
The New York Times called him a “bizarre synthesizer wizard with the pansexual image.”
The New York Times might have been onto something, because in the 1980s, “pansexual” as a sexual orientation continued to proliferate. But the world also acquired a slightly different meaning, like at pansexual play parties in San Francisco where the term expressed that a person may be interested in a wide array of sexual experiences. It was a way of saying “I’m down with lots of different kinds of sex.”
Now, according to some researchers, it’s also possible that the word became popular thanks to BDSM — bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism — and kink communities. After World War II, BDSM groups formed in big cities as queer people returned from service, and the term has since been used in these communities to connect different sexual orientations.
The 1990s ushered a time for sexually fluid and non-monosexual people — those who are attracted to more than one gender — to contemplate their labels.
The current meaning of "pansexual" grew out of this spirit of activism and the desire to reclaim identity in one’s own terms as greater awareness of trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer identities spread.
It evolved to mean a person is attracted to people of all genders for reasons independent of their gender, or as a way of saying ”I’m attracted to people of all genders for reasons about their genders.”
Early social media communities on the Internet made the way for pan community to grow.
In 2002 the LiveJournal community “I Am Pansexual” proclaimed in its first post: “We are here to help support pansexuals, discuss pansexual issues and bring pansexuals closer together.” From there, it blossomed, with an uptick in searches for the term starting in 2004, peaking in 2012 and then getting even higher in 2018 (we’ll get to that).
In 2010, the pansexual pride flag emerged on the web, with a pink stripe, blue stripe, and a yellow stripe in the middle to symbolize trans, intersex, agender, bigender, third gender, nonbinary, fluid, and all other gender identities.
In the past few years, the word “pansexual” has really come into its own, with celebrities mainstreaming the term in the media. Miley Cyrus told Elle UK in 2015 that she was "pansexual. But I’m not in a relationship. I’m 22, I’m going on dates, but I change my style every two weeks, let alone who I’m with."
In 2018, “pansexual” became one of the most widely searched terms in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary after Janelle Monáe told Rolling Stone that she “read about pansexuality and was like, 'Oh, these are things that I identify with too.'”
Movie characters, like Lando Calrissian and Deadpool, are pansexual too.
Today, December 8 marks Pansexual Pride Day, and Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness & Visibility Day is May 24. It’s a whole new frontier for this inclusive and expansive term, as it’s clearly no longer a flash in the pan.
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