Over the years, the LGBTQ+ community has made significant strides in advocating for acceptance and understanding, challenging norms and promoting inclusivity.
Among the various identities within this community, pansexuality has gained increasing visibility, with celebrities leading the way in breaking down barriers and normalizing love beyond gender boundaries.
Pansexuality refers to an individual’s capacity to be attracted to others regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.
We’re taking a look at some stars who have proudly come out as pansexual over the years…
Wayne Brady
“To me, pan means being able to be attracted to anyone who identifies as gay, straight, bi, transsexual or non-binary. Being able to be attracted across the board. And, I think, at least for me for right now, that is the proper place. I took pan to mean that not only can I be attracted to any of these people or types physically, but I could be attracted to the person that is there,” Wayne told People in 2023.
Janelle Monáe
Janelle told Rolling Stone in 2018 that she initially identified as bisexual, “but then later I read about pansexuality and was like, ‘Oh, these are things that I identify with too.’ I’m open to learning more about who I am.”
Brendon Urie
“I’m married to a woman and I’m very much in love with her but I’m not opposed to a man because to me, I like a person. Yeah I guess you could qualify me as pansexual because I really don’t care. If a person is great, then a person is great. I just like good people, if your heart’s in the right place. I’m definitely attracted to men. It’s just people that I am attracted to…I guess this is me coming out as pansexual,” he told Paper in 2018.
Bella Thorne
“I’m actually pansexual, and I didn’t know that. Somebody explained to me really thoroughly what that is. You like beings. You like what you like. Doesn’t have to be a girl or a guy or a he or she or they or this or that. It’s literally you like personality. You just like a being,” she explained to Good Morning America in 2019.
Nico Tortorella
“My name is Nico Tortorella. I am a non binary, happily married, polyamorous bi/pansexual author poet performance artist,” Nico wrote for It Gets Better.
“My sexual and gender freedom has always been a work in progress. Isn’t everything?”
Cara Delevingne
“I always will remain, I think, pansexual. However one defines themselves, whether it’s ‘they’ or ‘he’ or ‘she,’ I fall in love with the person — and that’s that. I’m attracted to the person,” she told Variety in 2020.
Madison Bailey
“I feel zero shame, and I don’t feel that way because nobody’s ever really shamed me for it and I know a lot of people have had lot of hate and lack of support. I know so many, countless stories of queer people that did not have support. But if you’re asking me personally, that’s just my experience with it. It was worth it. I feel lighter, I feel happier that I can just be so open and honest. It feels nice,” she said after coming out as pansexual on TikTok in 2020.
In a TikTok, Madison explained what pansexuality means by writing on the screen: “Girls. Boys. Trans boys. Trans girls. Nonbinary babies. It’s what’s on the inside boo.”
JoJo Siwa
“I still don’t know what I am. It’s like, I want to figure it out…I don’t know, bisexual, pansexual, queer, lesbian, gay, straight. I always just say gay because it just kind of covers it or queer because I think the keyword is cool. I like queer. Technically I would say that I am pansexual because that’s how I have always been my whole life is just like, my human is my human,” she said after coming out in 2021.
Miley Cyrus
“My whole life, I didn’t understand my own gender and my own sexuality. I always hated the word ‘bisexual,’ because that’s even putting me in a box. I don’t ever think about someone being a boy or someone being a girl. My eyes started opening in the fifth or sixth grade. My first relationship in my life was with a chick. Once I understood my gender more, which was unassigned, then I understood my sexuality more,” she told Variety in 2016.
Jena Malone
“I’ve been learning a new way to tell it. Using words to guide me not define me. That my sexual identity has more to teach and to tell me. Finding words that feel more right to explore in my telling. Pansexuality. Sapiosexuality. Polyamory. A fuller spectrum of understanding that my story is demanding of me. And I’m honoring it today with this soft and sleepy little stretch of a dance,” she said along with a video of her dancing to the song “Book of Bringhi” in 2022.
Tess Holliday
“I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship to my own queerness, and I think the word pansexual speaks to me more than bi does,” she explained to Nylon in 2019.
Mae Whitman
“Just taking a moment to say I am SO proud to be even a small part of a show like The Owl House. Being pansexual myself, I wish I had such incredible characters like Amity and Luz in my life when I was growing up. Queer representation is sososo important :,) keep it up world! #TOH,” Mae wrote in a tweet in 2021.
Demi Lovato
“I also don’t know if I’m going to end up with a guy, so I can’t really see myself maybe getting pregnant. I’m so fluid now — and a part of the reason why I am so fluid is because I was super closeted off…yeah, pansexual. I heard someone call the LGBTQIA+ community the ‘alphabet mafia,’ and I was like, ‘That’s it. That’s what I’m going with,” Demi said in 2021.
Tammy Slayton
“It means love is love. I would date anybody whether they’re transgender, straight, gay,” she said on 1000-Lb. Sisters.
