Tom Daley leads the new pansexual pack

In athlete Tom Daley’s “coming out” video on Monday he neither said he was gay nor bi. In the YouTube video Daley said: “Of course I still fancy girls but right now I’m dating a guy and I couldn’t be happier.” Some were quick to say he had come out as gay or bisexual (including Metro and Pink News), but many did remarkably well to avoid putting words in Daley’s mouth. Undefined sexuality is difficult to get your head and headlines around.

I am 21 and have been in relationships with both girls and boys since I was at secondary school. As a student in London I have many friends who are similarly open to affairs with whatever gender but don’t feel well represented by traditional labels. Perhaps we are privileged to be in an open-minded environment where we can explore our sexuality, but this is the way that things are going.

Daley’s choice of words, however deliberate, highlights growing acceptance of the new fluid sexuality. Yet men in the public eye are lagging far behind women in being open about their sexual preferences.

Being with a man but also liking women may technically be defined as bisexual, but many now ask why we must reduce sexuality to this shorthand term. Perhaps Daley will subscribe to a traditional label in the future (he is only 19), but his current ambiguity reflects an increasing openness in the way we think and talk about sexuality.

In Hollywood the conversation is already evolving. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Daley is rumoured to be involved with Dustin Lance Black, the LBGT activist and screenwriter of Oscar-winning film Milk, about the openly gay US politician Harvey Milk. Josh Hutcherson, star of The Hunger Games, said that at the moment he would probably “list himself” as straight but “defining yourself as 100 per cent anything is kind of near-sighted and close-minded”.

I connect far more with the idea that sexual orientation lies on a spectrum that is far broader than just gay, bisexual or straight and changes throughout your life. The Kinsey Scale is the best known embodiment of this concept and has six points of classification, with other researchers arguing that there should be as many as 10. But we are not about to start saying “today I’m number four”. Growing numbers of people use broad terms like “queer” or “pansexual” to describe their sexuality as something more ambiguous than just straight, gay or bisexual.

American actress Amber Heard, who is currently seeing Johnny Depp but has been in relationships with both genders, says: “I will never beg for an easy classification or label … or assume to know what the future holds for me. I have always been and always will be just who I am.”

Recently there has been a marked increase in female celebrities talking about liking girls as well as boys. Many women such as Jessie J, Lady Gaga and Megan Fox are open about being attracted to women and there has been excited speculation about Rita Ora and Cara Delevingne’s close relationship. It’s a trend that is backed up by statistics.

In The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles from 1999-2001, eight per cent of men and 10 per cent of women said they had had a same-sex experience. In the most recent version of the survey, released last week, the number of women had sharply risen to 16 per cent. Speaking about the change, one of the survey’s authors, Professor Kaye Wellings, noted, “We can see signs in the media that there have been changes in the representation of women. There have been celebrities who have apparently embraced same-sex experiences.” But the number of men who had had same-sex experiences went down to only seven per cent in this year’s survey. Are men simply more rigid in their sexuality than women? Or is the difference due to it still being more taboo for men to experiment?

Perhaps Tom Daley’s story and the support he has received will encourage more men in the public eye to talk about their sexuality. Then, as people become more open, we may get bored with “coming out” stories altogether.