Bisexuality

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Bisexuality is a sexual orientation. Bisexual (sometimes shortened to bi) people are romantically or sexually attracted to both men and women.^[1][2] It can also mean attraction to more than one gender.^[3] A third meaning can be an attraction to the same gender and another gender.^[4] Sometimes it is talked about as having romantic or sexual attraction to someone regardless of their sex or gender identity. This is also known as pansexuality.^[5][1] Some bisexual people love men and women the same and some people love one more than the other. Some bisexual people have preferences to one or more sexes, however some may not.^[6] A slang expression for bisexuality is "to swing both ways."

In 1948, Alfred Kinsey published the Kinsey scale. The Kinsey scale shows that sexuality is a continuum. This means it moves little by little from heterosexuality to homosexuality. On the Kinsey scale, a 0 is someone who is only heterosexual. A 6 is someone who is only homosexual. Someone who is equally homosexual and heterosexual (bisexual) is a 3.

In biology, bisexual can define an organism that has both male and female organs. This mostly refers to plants.

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} "Sexual Orientation". American Psychiatric Association. Archived from the original on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
2. ↑ Jabbour, Jeremy; Holmes, Luke; Sylva, David; Hsu, Kevin J.; Semon, Theodore L.; Rosenthal, A. M.; Safron, Adam; Slettevold, Erlend; Watts-Overall, Tuesday M.; Savin-Williams, Ritch C.; Sylla, John (4 August 2020). "Robust evidence for bisexual orientation among men". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 117 (31): 18369–18377. doi:10.1073/pnas.2003631117. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 7414168. PMID 32690672.
3. ↑ "Understanding Bisexuality". American Psychological Association. 2019. Archived from the original on 8 March 2019. Retrieved 8 March 2019.
4. ↑ "Pansexuality | Definition, Meaning, & Facts". Britannica. Archived from the original on 7 April 2024. Retrieved 19 January 2025.
5. ↑ "Sexual Orientation & Homosexuality". www.apa.org. American Psychological Association. Archived from the original on 16 February 2019. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
6. ↑ Bailey, J. Michael; Vasey, Paul L.; Diamond, Lisa M.; Breedlove, S. Marc; Vilain, Eric; Epprecht, Marc (2016). "Sexual Orientation, Controversy, and Science". Psychological Science in the Public Interest. 17 (2): 45–101. doi:10.1177/1529100616637616. ISSN 1529-1006. PMID 27113562. S2CID 42281410.