Abrosexuality

Abrosexuality is a sexual orientation defined by fluidity: the gender(s) a person is attracted to, and often the intensity of that attraction, shift over time rather than remaining fixed. A person who identifies as abrosexual might experience attraction to one gender for a period, little or no attraction at another point, and attraction to a different gender or genders after that, with the pace of change varying widely between individuals, from hours to days, months, or years (WebMD).

The label is generally distinguished from pansexuality and polysexuality, which describe attraction to multiple genders concurrently rather than in shifting phases, and from asexuality, which describes a stable absence of sexual attraction: "abrosexuality is different from pansexuality because of its changing nature," and unlike asexuality, which is "unchanging," an abrosexual person may pass through periods that resemble heterosexuality, homosexuality, pansexuality, or asexuality without settling permanently into any one of them (WebMD). The neighboring multisexual labels are themselves defined institutionally in terms of degree rather than sequence: the Human Rights Campaign defines a bisexual person as someone "emotionally, romantically or sexually attracted to more than one gender, though not necessarily simultaneously, in the same way or to the same degree," and defines pansexual in nearly identical terms as describing "the potential for emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to people of any gender" (HRC), allowing for unevenness in attraction but not describing the kind of discrete, alternating phases abrosexuality names.

Because major clinical bodies define sexual orientation broadly as "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes" (APA), abrosexuality is best understood as a label for the pattern of change itself: the orientation is the fluidity, not any single fixed target of attraction. The APA also notes that most people "experience little or no sense of choice" about their orientation (APA), a point that bears on how abrosexuality's shifts are described in identity-community usage: as something that unfolds over time, not a deliberate or conscious redirection of desire.

Examples

Abrosexuality names a pattern of change rather than a target of attraction, so what it covers is best seen over time rather than at any single moment.

What the term covers. Attraction that settles on one gender for a stretch, recedes, and returns directed elsewhere; shifts in intensity as well as target, so that a period indistinguishable from asexuality can be followed by one that looks pansexual; and a pace that varies enormously between people, described anywhere from hours to years. Some abrosexual people also use abroromantic for the same movement in romantic rather than sexual attraction.

What the term does not cover. Pansexuality and polysexuality describe attraction to multiple genders held concurrently, not in sequence. Graysexuality describes attraction that is consistently faint or conditional; an abrosexual person may pass through a gray phase without gray describing them. Questioning names uncertainty about a label, where abrosexuality names a label for the movement itself. And because bisexuality is already defined as attraction to more than one gender "not necessarily simultaneously, in the same way or to the same degree", the two overlap for some people.

How the word is used. It is internet-native vocabulary, built from Greek habrós ("delicate") and circulating on DeviantArt and Tumblr from around 2013, with a flag following about 2015. It appears in consumer health writing and LGBTQ glossaries, in no diagnostic manual, and in almost no peer-reviewed research: most large surveys offer no box for it.

History

The term is generally traced to online communities such as DeviantArt and Tumblr, where it began circulating as part of a wider vocabulary of identity labels (including many other terms built on the same "abro-" prefix) coined by young people to describe patterns of attraction not captured by existing terms (Dictionary.com). Sources differ on precisely when it entered use: Dictionary.com traces informal circulation to around 2013, while WebMD describes 2015 as its "first recorded use" (WebMD). An associated pride flag, with five horizontal stripes running dark green, light green, white, light pink, and dark pink, began circulating in the same community spaces around 2015 (Medical News Today; flagcolorcodes.com). Like many identity labels that originated in fan, art, and blogging communities of the early-to-mid 2010s, abrosexuality spread primarily through informal community glossaries and social media rather than through clinical or academic literature, and it remains sparsely studied in peer-reviewed research (Medical News Today).

Demographics & research

Population-level data specific to abrosexuality is limited, since most large LGBTQ surveys ask respondents to choose from a fixed list of orientation labels rather than write one in. The Trevor Project's 2019 U.S. National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health is one of the few large studies to capture it at all: among the 24,836 youth who answered the survey's sexual-orientation question, 6% opted to write in a label rather than select one from the list provided, and abrosexual was one of the terms youth supplied, alongside asexual, polysexual, graysexual, androsexual, and others (The Trevor Project). The brief does not break out a separate frequency for abrosexual within that write-in share, so no reliable estimate of how many respondents specifically identify with the label exists.

Terminology & related identities

Abrosexuality sits within the broader "multisexuality" umbrella of terms describing attraction to more than one gender, alongside bisexuality, pansexuality, and polysexuality, though its defining feature is change over time rather than a stable, simultaneous pattern of attraction (Medical News Today). It is also frequently discussed as a subtype of the broader concept of sexual fluidity: Wikipedia's entry on sexual fluidity notes that abrosexuality "has been used to refer to regular changes in one's sexuality, though this may involve clear-cut shifts or phases in a slightly more rigid structure than 'traditional' sexual fluidity" (Wikipedia), distinguishing it from fluidity as a general descriptive concept rather than a claimed identity label. Some abrosexual people also use abroromantic to describe a parallel pattern of change in romantic, rather than sexual, attraction; WebMD notes that "people use both abrosexual and abroromantic to describe a person with a fluid or changing sexual orientation" (WebMD). Abrosexuality is also frequently discussed alongside graysexuality (gray-A), related but distinct, since gray-A describes an attraction that is consistently infrequent, limited, conditional, or ambiguous, rather than one that changes targets over time; an abrosexual person may pass through a gray-A-like phase as one stage among several, without gray-A describing their overall pattern. Because the label describes a pattern of change rather than a fixed target of attraction, an abrosexual person's experience at any given time can resemble heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, or asexuality, without any single one of those labels describing them permanently.