5 Things You Might Not Know About Pansexuality
It’s time to talk about Pansexuality! As it is one of the lesser known, and therefore frequently misunderstood sexualities, here are some things you might not have known about Pansexuality!
- What is pansexuality?
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Basically, if you identify as pansexual it means you can be attracted to anyone, regardless of their gender or biological sex. This is can be either sexual or romantic attraction, or both.
- It’s not the same as bisexuality!
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Simple answer: Nope. While there is overlap between the two sexualities, bisexuality means you’re attracted to two or more genders, whereas pansexuality is an attraction where gender isn’t a factor
- It’s not the same as polyamory either!
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For some reason, this is a common misconception that many people who are pansexual face. As stated above, pansexuality just means that you have the ability to be attracted to people regardless of their gender, whereas polyamory is the opposite of monogamy – meaning you are in a sexual or romantic relationship with more than one person at the same time.
- #4 Yes, you can still be Pansexual if you’ve only ever dated people of a specific gender!
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This is a common problem both bisexuals and pansexuals face. That if they only date someone of the opposite gender, they’re straight, or if they’ve only dated someone of the same gender, they’re gay and not willing to admit it. This simply isn’t true and is still a big problem both outside and in the LGBTQ+ community. It is about who you are attracted to and are open to being with, not who you’ve been within the past. Think about it in heterosexual terms, if you’re a girl who’s never had a boyfriend that doesn’t automatically make you a lesbian or mean that you don’t want a boyfriend, does it? The same thing goes for pan- and bisexuality, it is not about who you have dated, but who you are open to dating!
- What exactly do the stripes on the flag mean?
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Although many people are familiar with the rainbow flag representing the general LGBTQ+ community, it isn’t that widely known that each sexuality has its own flag, and even less known what the individual strips stand for. In this case, the pansexual flag represents genders. The pink and blue stripes represent the male and female gender respectively, whereas the yellow in the middle signifies the third gender, i.e. anything that isn’t cis-gender like intersex, genderfluid, transsexual, and so forth.