Know Your Sexuality: Pansexual
Skeptics will say that now there are too many types of sexual orientation, whereas with two, heterosexual and homo, they still have not learned to cope. Meanwhile, this process is not something that could somehow be controlled or organized: in the desire to know oneself, humanity is moving towards understanding its desires. And since sex is still in the category of basic knowledge, it is quite logical that so much time is devoted to the study of one's sexuality.
Introduction to Terminology
Pansexuality should not be confused with bisexuality – these are different concepts. Let me remind you, a bisexual is attracted to both universally recognized gender – men and women. Pansexual does not see gender at all. This means that he is experiencing sexual attraction to bigenders, agender, genderfluids, pan-men, genderqueers, and any other gender identities.
In fact, the pansexual is “gender blind”, seeing in front of him not gender, biological or self-identified, but human. The concept of pansexuality is much broader than any framework of bisexuality, since a pansexual can enter into a relationship with a transgender or transsexual person.
Stereotypes and Panphobia
The emergence of new concepts entails the emergence of a mass of myths and stereotypes that can interfere with self-identification and in-depth understanding of the sexuality. Often people consider themselves bisexual as they do not know or do not understand the difference.
- Pansexual is just a buzzword. No, the term, although it appeared relatively recently, characterizes a quite common phenomenon. Being a pansexual is not fashionable, to be a pansexual means to be yourself, if this is your comfortable state.
- Pansexual is an escape from bi-phobia. The number of stereotypes in relation to BI people is as great as in relation to gays and lesbians, and even in the LGBT community one can stumble upon a negative attitude towards bisexuals as to those who are undecided. Sadly, but pansexuals expect the same, so what kind of escape can we talk about?
- This is all a stormy youth – you’ll overgrow. As a rule, the arguments are the same as for the first point – time will pass and everything will be forgotten. Orientation can be flexible, in rare cases, and vary throughout life, but the breadth of the pansexual view – not.
And yet, whatever prefix you choose, the main part in any term is “sexuality”. You do not need to label people and yourself as well, when it is more important to recognize your sexual attractions and your desires.
