Defining Bisexuality: Young Bisexual and Pansexual People's Voices

ABSTRACT

Bisexuality is defined in a plethora of ways, including definitions based on behavior, attraction, or desire and may employ binary or nonbinary definitions. Research has not adequately addressed how young bisexual people themselves define bisexuality, whether those definitions change with social context, or whether bisexual people define bisexuality differently from pansexual people. The current study addresses these questions through an online, mixed-methods study. A total of 60 bisexual and pansexual participants aged ages 18 to 30 responded to closed- and open-ended questions regarding their definitions of bisexuality. Closed-ended responses were analyzed with a series of chi-square tests, while we conducted a summative content analysis on the open-ended responses. Results indicate that in general, bisexual and pansexual people define bisexuality similarly. Participants modified their definitions of bisexuality depending upon the social context. Implications for research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• bisexuality
• pansexuality
• emerging adulthood
• content analysis

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Corey E. Flanders

Corey E. Flanders is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Ontario. Beginning July 2016 she is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Education at Mount Holyoke College. Corey's research interests center on experiences of identity and health among gender and sexual minority people.

Marianne E. LeBreton

Marianne E. LeBreton is a sexologist whose work focuses on gender identity and sexual orientation. Her past research examined the sexual health of trans women who underwent gender reaffirming surgery in relation to various psychosocial variables. Her current research focuses on bisexuality; she started working for the Coping and Resilience (CORE) Research Team at McGill University in 2012, where she's the project coordinator for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funded project Bisexual Identity: Implications for the Mental and Sexual Health of Men.

Margaret Robinson

Margaret Robinson is a Mi'kmaq scholar from Nova Scotia and a member of the Lennox Island First Nation. She holds a PhD in theology from the University of Toronto. Her work examines mental health and substance use in Indigenous and Settler populations, especially among sexual and gender minority people. She is an Assistant Professor in Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University.

Jing Bian

Jing Bian is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto. She is currently volunteering with the Re:searching for LGBTQ Health Team at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Jaime Alonso Caravaca-Morera

Jaime Alonso Caravaca-Morera is a nurse and doctoral student of the Post-Graduate Nursing Program at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, as well as a researcher at the University of Costa Rica.