Mary Bowerman

USA TODAY Network

Miley Cyrus spoke openly about coming out as pansexual earlier this week and reinforced what many in the United States are starting to realize: Sexuality can't be wrapped up in a tidy bow.

Cyrus identifies as pansexual, or someone attracted to people of any sex or gender, but for many across the United States the term remains unfamiliar. Cyrus’ openness about her sexuality had many asking: Where does P fall in the LGBTQ lineup?

Anytime you have labels, it's challenging because the categories that people place themselves in continue to change, according to Octavio R. González, an English professor at Wellesley College who specializes in queer literary studies.

“You have a lot of movement that is really based on a fluid understanding of gender, which is generational,” according to González.

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Cyrus touched on her own gender fluidity in an interview with Variety's Power of Women L.A. issue. Cyrus, who never felt particularly feminine or masculine, said she realized she was pansexual after becoming a part of the LGBT community in Los Angeles and meeting a gender-neutral person.

"I saw one human in particular who didn’t identify as male or female," she told Variety. "Looking at them, they were both: beautiful and sexy and tough but vulnerable and feminine but masculine. And I related to that person more than I related to anyone in my life… I think that was the first gender-neutral person I’d ever met. Once I understood my gender more, which was unassigned, then I understood my sexuality more. I was like, 'Oh — that’s why I don’t feel straight, and I don’t feel gay. It’s because I’m not.'"

Cyrus said the "bisexual" label never came close to capturing her sexuality. But many still confuse bisexuality with pansexuality, although the two are not interchangeable, according to GLAAD President & CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis.

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Although pansexuality does fall under the so-called "bisexuality umbrella," and bi tends to be more than one, Ellis said.

“The golden rule, honestly, is to call someone by how the identify,” she said.

A common conception of bisexuality is that bisexual people find themselves attracted to men or women, reinforcing a gender binary, which is rigid construct based on the choices of male or female. But Ellis said that’s not the case.

“The reality is that bi means more than one,” she said. “The bi community feels very strongly that [bisexuality] is not being binary either."

Ellis said that "pan" is more about all-inclusive.

González said people who identify as bisexual have many times felt like they were sort of invisible or not taken seriously within the LGBT umbrella movement.

"Pansexuality is different than bisexuality in that in some ways it is tied to the trans revolution where you have a ground swell of cultural forces trying to re-understand gender as non-binary," he said.

He notes that as pansexuality becomes more of a mainstream term and is taken seriously, bisexuality may also reemerge as a "fundamentally valid or legitimate form of desiring or understanding."

And whether it's LGBTQ or LGBTQP, when it comes down to it really comes down to how the person feels.

“Sometimes the labels aren’t the most useful way of understanding these discussions or ways of experiencing sexual experience or gender performance,” González said. “For me, it’s important not to get caught up in the labels.”

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