Plurisexuality- What is it?

Many members of the LGBTQIA+ community have never heard of the term plurisexual, so lets talk about it. Plurisexual is an umbrella term for sexual orientations involving attraction to more than one gender. Let’s dive deeper!

Plurisexual identities include bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, queer (for some), and more. It can be used as an identity label for some people, but is more often used in research and clinical writing.

It is useful to have a term like plurisexual when discussing experiences specific to plurisexual identities, such as biphobia or bi-erasure. Despite what the names imply, these terms apply to not just bisexual people! Using language like plurisexual allows someone to speak inclusively about bisexual, pansexual, etc, people or experiences without having to list each potential identity label.

The opposite of plurisexual is monosexual, which is an umbrella for sexual orientations involving attraction to only one gender. This includes identities such as heterosexual, gay, lesbian, and queer (for some). As you can see, monosexual includes some identities that fall within the LGBTQIA+ community and some that do not.

Now you may be wondering why we need to have another label or letter falling within the seemingly endless string of letters encompassed by the term LGBTQIA+. I see plurisexual as a functionally beneficial umbrella term, that allows for expansive understanding of the identities that fall underneath it.

For example a research study on anxiety in LGBTIQA+ adults could analyze whether there are differences in anxiety level between people who are plurisexual and those who are not. The researchers could categorize participants as plurisexual that self-identify as bisexual, pansexual, or polysexual, and compare them to monosexual participants that identify as lesbain or gay. Now instead of ONLY learning about anxiety for their LGBTQIA+ sample, the researchers can ALSO explore if there are differences WITHIN the LGBTQIA+ sample they have.

I plan to dive into the research on plurisexual adults more in future posts, but for now you can enjoy learning a little LGBTQIA+ lingo.