(Screenshot via YouTube.)

Miley Cyrus opened up that she feels  “very neutral” about her gender and sexuality in an interview with Variety. 

Cyrus, 23, identifies as pansexual and says the term has always been more fitting for her than bisexual.

“My whole life, I didn’t understand my own gender and my own sexuality. I always hated the word ‘bisexual,’ because that’s even putting me in a box. I don’t ever think about someone being a boy or someone being a girl,” Cyrus says. “My eyes started opening in the fifth or sixth grade. My first relationship in my life was with a chick.”

Cyrus says she began to identify as pansexual once she learned what the term meant.

“I went to the LGBTQ center here in L.A., and I started hearing these stories,” Cyrus says. “I saw one human in particular who didn’t identify as male or female. 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.”

“Even though I may seem very different, people may not see me as neutral as I feel. But I feel very neutral. 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 continues.

Cyrus publicly came out as pansexual last year in an interview with Paper Magazine. She explained she told her mother she was interested in women when she was 14 years old.

“I remember telling her I admire women in a different way,” Cyrus told Paper Magazine. “And she asked me what that meant. And I said, I love them. I love them like I love boys.”

Cyrus is currently engaged to Australian actor Liam Hemsworth.