What is pansexuality and how do you know if you’re pansexual?

Homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, or pansexual: do you know the differences between these sexual orientations? Do you think you might be pansexual or does someone you know have questions about bisexuality and pansexuality? We will tell you more about it.

What is pansexuality?

Someone who is pansexual is attracted to other people, regardless of their gender or gender identity. A pansexual person doesn’t focus on the appearance or physical traits of another person. Only someone’s personality is important and their gender is irrelevant. The name pansexual comes from the Greek word pan, which means ‘all’.

Sex therapist Dr. Kelly Wise describes pansexual as “someone who is attracted to other people, regardless of (biological) gender and identity. That is irrelevant. Pansexuals feel that gender is a fluid concept”.

Who does a pansexual fall in love with?

Pansexuals can fall in love with people of any gender, as well as gender neutral people. So pansexuals can be in love with a man or a woman, but also with a transgender person: someone who is born in the wrong body and now identifies as the opposite gender. And they can also fall in love with people who are genderqueer (non-binary): people who don’t identify as either male or female. A person’s gender is irrelevant.

There are many misconceptions about pansexuality. Clinical sexologist Kat Van Kirk works with teenagers and the LGBTQ community in the US: “Pansexual teenagers sometimes struggle to identify with the community and to feel supported by it. Even some of the organisations don’t quite understand what pansexuality is.”

Pansexuality is completely harmless and has nothing to do whatsoever with paraphilia like necrophilia, pedophilia, or sex with animals, or inanimate objects. It is also not an orientation that is fixated on sex. 28-year-old Daniëlle says: “It’s not like I have an enormous sex drive or that I need more people to satisfy myself, and that that is the reason I’m pansexual.”

Difference pansexuality and bisexuality

The line between pansexuality and bisexuality is somewhat unclear. Simply put: bisexuals are attracted to people who fall in the binary gender model: men and women who have the same gender as when they were born. Pansexuals can fall in love with anyone, even non-binary people. There is also a sexual orientation that is called omnisexuality. This is almost the same as pansexuality, but with acknowledgement of gender. So omnisexuals do acknowledge gender.

Binary and non-binary gender

We all know the binary genders: a man or a woman. Someone with non-binary gender (also called genderqueer) doesn’t identify with either of those. Non-binary is an umbrella term. For example, it covers people with multiple genders, people who change their gender (gender fluid), and people with a third gender.

As we said before, the line between bisexuality and pansexuality is sometimes unclear. This is because there are many different people with many different desires. Some people want the term bisexuality erased from the list of sexual orientations: this is also called bi-erasure. One of their reasons for that is that bisexuality puts too much focus on binary genders and not enough on non-binary genders. Others want to keep this term, because bisexuality is just as legit as a sexual identity as homosexuality or heterosexuality.

Overview: a list of terms

Maybe you’ve read several terms in this blog post that you’ve never heard of before. Below you can find an overview of everything we mentioned:

• Pansexuality: sexual orientation where a person can fall in love with another person, without acknowledging that person’s gender or gender identity.
• Bisexuality: sexual orientation where a person can fall in love with binary genders: men and women.
• Omnisexuality: sexual orientation where a person can fall in love with another person, while acknowledging that person’s gender.
• Binary genders: the gender that a person is born as, so male or female.
• Genderqueer/non-binary: umbrella term for people who do not identify as exclusively male or female.

Famous pansexual persons

There is quite a number of people who made known that they identify as pansexual. It is remarkable that these are mainly women who were born in the eighties and nineties. Among others, actress and singer Miley Cyrus made public that she is pansexual. Actress and singer Bella Thorne and singer Janelle Monaé also identify as pansexual, as well as blogger Tess Holiday, singer Sia, and singer Lizzo. However, there are not just women on this list: Brendon Urie (from Panic! At The Disco) and Bob the Drag Queen also identify as pansexual.