I understand homo and heterosexuality, and I understand that there are people who class themselves as bi with many different variations depending on what that might mean for them. But pansexualism? Isn’t that just bisexuality?
As I understand it pansexualism is sexual attraction regardless of sex, rather than because of it (which is what makes it distinct from bisexuality where attraction is still gender specific). Or is this completely wrong?
Edumacate me please dopers.
As I understand it, pansexualism means that you’re bisexual but want to have a nifty New Age-y label to use to announce to the world that you’re a completely unique snowflake.
You’re not cynical much, are you clockwork?
Me? Never.
Presumably pan- would include hermaphrodites and transgendered people. (Yeah a fully transgendered MTF would just consider herself a woman but there’s also that in-between state where they haven’t had all the surgeries yet and they aren’t quite fully either)
And probably not caring about “gender role” (blanking on a better term atm), so being capable of being attracted to someone whether they have a “masculine” or “feminine” identity or something else entirely.
IME it can be with some people, yup. “I don’t fit any category - I’m attracted to all different types.” :rolleyes: “Right, that either means you’re pan- or polysexual, or actually you’re straight but want to be able to identify with an interesting minority.’”
It can also be genuine, of course; as well as not minding about sexuality, not minding about gender in any way (like Rigmarole and Ferret Herder said) and often not taking age or most of the other main categories into account (not including little kids, that is) and being into all different sorts of sex, vanilla and not. That doesn’t necessarily mean there’s lots of sex being had, though, just a very wide variation in the types of partners there have been.
For Captain Jack it also includes aliens. 
Yeah, I had never heard of this term until I heard it applied to Captain Jack in this particular way. When I saw real people using it to describe themselves, I kind of went :dubious:. TBH, I tend to assume that people using it are bisexuals who like Torchwood.
Isn’t it convenient that they’re so iconoclastic and free-thinking, yet happen to conveniently draw the line exactly where society would demand that they stop?
I would say that bisexuality acknowledges gender, pan-sexuality ignores it.
Wouldn’t the term imply a more universal acceptance than bisexuality per se WRT standards of attractiveness and fitness? I can imagine many bisexuals stipulating in a personal ad “No Fatties, please” or “under 40 only”, but a true pansexual should get over the body-image, leg-hair, racial, ageist and other hang-ups.
That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t feel free to reject you if you liked funk-metal, though. 
I figured it meant wanting to do it with anything that had a pulse and said ‘yes’ with either of those conditions open to negotiation.
For the most part, society demands that they stop at the point where they express any sexual interest that isn’t strictly heterosexual in nature, so I’m not entirely certain what point you think you’re making here.
Just because someone is bisexual doesn’t mean they’re going to like every possible gender variation or combination of sex traits, but with someone who is pansexual the lines don’t matter as much.
I have a friend who is genderqueer and said friend’s boyfriend (I’m a little fuzzy on pronoun preference) identifies as pansexual. The boyfriend is apparently quite happy with the combination of breasts, makeup and feminine clothes alternating with a strap-on and masculine clothing, and sometimes all combined.
Bisexual is a binary definition, so some people don’t want to use it outside of a binary context. If you think non-binary gender identities are silly or weird, then obviously pansexual isn’t going to make much sense to you.
I figured it meant you had the hots for satyrs.
My partner is pansexual, and can find himself becoming attracted to an amazing variety of qualities and characteristics. He’ll comment on a man having a sexy nose or hands, or a woman having a sexy mouth or feet, or someone’s voice, or even someone’s vocation or hobby. He almost doesn’t see gender in people, as if we all were some kind of neutral gender, without affecting our hotness. Rather than thinking “men have penises and women have vaginas,” to him “some people have penises and other people have vaginas,” and it probably wouldn’t matter if someone had neither or both. Even when speaking about a person, he sometimes uses the wrong pronoun. And he has commented that if I were a woman, he’d feel no differently about me.
He also doesn’t have any preference regarding a person’s age (he doesn’t care that I’m 20 years older than he is 
), with the possible exception of children. I say “possible” because he’ll acknowledge a child’s “potential” sexuality (“That girl’s gonna have a whole lot of boyfriends in a few years”).
He also communicates with animals on a deeper level than most people. And no, that does NOT mean he’s into bestiality.
We’ve been together, monogamously, for almost 23 years. He says he doesn’t miss having sex with women any more than with other men.
There are folks who don’t feel like they fit into the gender binary. Some consider themselves non-gendered, whereas some feel more gender fluid, fluctuating between identifying more as male and some as female. Etc.
The word ‘bisexual’ covers the vast majority of people, but the fact that it’s got “bi” in it implies something about being attracted to both of two different categories of gender. “Pan” in ‘pansexual’ replaces that ‘both’ with ‘all’ - IE, there are more than two categories and people from any one of them could be attractive to me.
Personally? Most of the time I’ll just say I identify as bisexual, but pansexual is ultimately a more accurate description. For me it’s sort of like the difference between saying “I am from DC” and “I am from the Virginia suburbs of DC”. That is to say, it’s true, but the extra detail is only relevant in certain contexts.
No, you don’t get thrown in jail for being gay, and indeed you get plaudits and credit if you pick the right social circle. (I expect there are few pansexuals in redneck country - but many among intellectual creative types.) In those circles, pedophila is about the point when being more open-minded starts to cost you social status rather than making people think you’re cool and free spirited. And it just so happens that “pansexuals” stop there. Again, if it was merely a matter of free inquiry, self-discovery, and forging your independent sexual path, you’d expect people to independently draw that line in all different places…so it’s striking that this group all happens to pick the optimal point for status seeking in such social circles.
You owe me a new keyboard! 
I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware that children were a gender.