May 24th is Pansexual and Panromantic Visibility Day, an opportunity for us to lift up Pan voices, celebrate the Pan community, and reaffirm the unshakeable place Pan people have in the Gender, Sexuality, Relationship, Diverse (GSRD) community.

Pansexual and Panromantic—often shortened to ‘Pan’—fall under the multisexual umbrella, a category that also includes, but is not limited to, Bisexual, Omnisexual, and Polysexual. It’s important to clarify that, while there is a commonality between these identities, Pan people claim a distinct identity apart from these other labels. Pansexual and Panromantic can be defined as a person who experiences attraction without any regard to gender, sometimes described as being ‘gender-blind.’ This does not mean that Pan people are attracted to everyone, but rather that they have the capacity to feel attraction for anyone, without gender being a factor at all.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the origins of “pansexual” can be traced back to a 1914 reference to ‘pan-sexualism’ in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. It was used in a critique of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical method by J. Victor Haberman, a fellow doctor. He used the term as he dissected one particular part of Freud’s theory; Freud’s insistence on “the pan-sexualism of mental life which makes every trend revert finally to the sexual.” While the term was exclusively clinical in its usage, we have records from Harlem and Chicago’s south side about people who loved beyond “labels and boundaries” from as far back as the 1920s. The first emergence of Pan as an identity label came relatively later, in the 1970s. In 1974, a New York Times article about ‘the sexual revolution’ used the term as a distinct label, although the tone was rather derisive. “I see that a lot of people are going bisexual this year,” it said. “This seems to be different from going homosexual, which was last year[…] I know what comes next season. It’s pansexuality.” By the 80s, Pansexual had truly developed into a distinct identity and had also grown roots in San Fransisco’s kink community as a way to say you were comfortable with many sorts of experiences. The community continued to grow through the nineties, aughts, and into the 2010s as characters and celebrities alike opened up about their experiences.

The Pan Flag began to see widespread use in 2010, after the design was posted on an anonymous Tumblr account by its creator Jasper V. Since then, it has been adopted as a beloved symbol of the community and has seen use across the globe as a way to spread awareness and increase recognition of Pan folks—and the vibrancy and unique struggles of their community.