Pansexual Visibility Day Date in the current year: May 24, 2024

The term “pansexuality” includes the Ancient Greek prefix pan-, which means “all, every”. An alternative term is omnisexuality, derived from the Latin word omnis, which also means “all”. People who identify as pansexual can feel attraction to people of any sex or gender (cisgender and transgender men and women, intersex people, and people with non-binary gender identities). In other words, for them, sex and gender don’t play any role when choosing a partner. Of course, this doesn’t mean that pansexuals are attracted to everyone, just as heterosexual people aren’t attracted to every single person of the opposite sex.

There is an ongoing debate in the LGBT community concerning bisexuality and pansexuality. Some people consider pansexuality a sexual orientation on its own, while others think that it falls within the bisexual umbrella. According to most, the main difference between bisexuality and pansexuality is that the concept of pansexuality deliberately rejects the gender binary and thus is more inclusive than bisexuality.

Among people who identify as pansexual, there are those who draw a clear line between themselves and bisexuals, and those who use both terms to describe themselves, considering them completely interchangeable. Ultimately, the terms “bisexuality” and “pansexuality” are not mutually exclusive, and it all comes down to which label each individual who identifies as bi- or/and pansexual prefers.

Like any other sexual orientation, pansexuality isn’t linked to one’s gender identity. Pansexual people can identify as male, female, or outside the gender binary system, for example, as agender, bigender, genderqueer, genderfluid, androgynous, etc.

Pansexuals, just like other groups within the LGBT community, have their own pride flag that was created sometime in the mid-2010s. The pansexual pride flag consists of three horizontal bars: magenta, yellow and cyan (the colors of the CMYK color model, except for black). The magenta bar represents sexual attraction to people identifying within the male spectrum, the cyan bar represents sexual attraction to those who identify within the female spectrum, and the yellow bar represents sexual attraction to non-binary people.

The pansexual pride flag was created to increase the visibility of pansexuals, as well as to distinguish them from bisexuals (who also have their own pride flag consisting of three horizontal bars, but their colors are pink, blue and purple, representing attraction to the same sex/gender, attraction to different sex/gender, and attraction to both one’s own sex/gender and different sex/genders, respectively).

Pansexual Visibility Day was launched to increase the visibility of pansexual people both within the LGBT community and among society as a whole, as well as to combat prejudice and stigma against pansexuals, which can cause discrimination and ostracism.