Who Adopts Queer and Pansexual Sexual Identities?

Abstract

Some nonheterosexual individuals are eschewing lesbian/gay and bisexual identities for queer and pansexual identities. The present study aimed to examine the sexual and demographic characteristics of nonheterosexual individuals who adopt these labels. A convenience sample of 2,220 nonheterosexual (1,459 lesbian/gay, 413 bisexual, 168 queer, 146 pansexual, and 34 other “write-in”) individuals were recruited for a cross-sectional online survey. In support of our hypotheses, those adopting pansexual identities were younger than those adopting lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities, and those adopting queer and pansexual identities were more likely to be noncisgender than cisgender, and more likely to be cisgender women than men. The majority of pansexual individuals demonstrated sexual orientation indices within the bisexual range, and showed equivalent patterns of sexual attraction, romantic attraction, sexual behavior, and partner gender as bisexual-identified men and women. In contrast, three-quarters of queer men, and more than half of queer women, reported sexual attraction in the homosexual range. This study found that rather than a general movement toward nontraditional sexual identities, queer and pansexual identities appear most appealing to nonheterosexual women and noncisgender individuals. These findings contribute important information regarding who adopts queer and pansexual identities in contemporary sexual minority populations.

Notes

^1. Some recent studies have reported that men are as likely (or even more likely) to experience sexual fluidity as women (Katz-Wise & Hyde, 2015; Ott, Corliss, Wypij, Rosario, & Austin, 2011; Rosario, Schrimshaw, Hunter, & Braun, 2006). However, in these studies, fluidity is conceptualized as any shift in sexual attraction or identity irrespective of direction. Closer inspection of these shifts finds they are typically from straight → gay, bisexual → gay, or straight → bisexual → gay; shifts which can be explained as representing normative sexual identity development and/or transitional bisexuality (in otherwise homosexual men). To show that there exists comparable fluidity in men as in women requires evidence from retrospective or longitudinal studies that some gay/bisexual/straight men experience sexual identity trajectories similar to those documented in Diamond’s longitudinal research into female sexuality (i.e., gay → bisexual; gay → straight; gay > bisexual > unlabeled); that is, transitions which cannot be explained as merely the movement from a presumed heterosexual identity to a gay identity (via a transitional bisexual identity). Evidence of these types of trajectories, to our knowledge, are absent from existing quantitative or qualitative research in men.

^2. The inclusion of “pansexual” as a sexual identity option occurred after recruitment had commenced in response to participants frequently specifying “pansexual” in the Other (write in) option. This may have influenced the overall proportion of participants registering a pansexual identity; however, this would not have foreseeably influenced the proportion of men, women, and transgender individuals within the pansexual group (nor sexual orientation ratings), which was the primary focus of the present study.