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Culture July 11, 2017
Remember, you're the only person who can label yourself.
When it comes to sexuality, the scale is wide and large.
And the best part is that our language is constantly evolving to describe different types of people. Now, there are terms to describe people who are only attracted to women, people who only experience attraction after friendship and people who are attracted to both genders.
But what are you called when you’re attracted to multiple sexes or gender identities? The LGBTQ community labels that as “pansexual.”
As Miley Cyrus explained in an interview with Paper about her sexual identity, “I am literally open to every single thing that is consenting, doesn’t involve an animal [and] of age. Everything that’s legal, I’m down with … I don’t relate to being boy or girl, and I don’t have to have my partner relate to boy or girl.”
Because of this, pansexuality is one of the broadest forms of sexuality. The prefix “pan” means all. And in the context of sexuality, it means pansexuals are capable of forming sexual and romantic attraction to all people, whether or not these people identify within the gender binary.
GLAAD, an LGBTQ media watchdog organization, defines pansexual as part of the bisexual group. Bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, polysexual, fluid and queer all describe people who are capable of being attracted to people of any gender. But, they’re all different.
As we’ve said previously, sexuality is a broad spectrum, each label has its own community and characteristics. To make it easier, we compiled a list of the defining characteristics of the pansexual community.
As shown above, each portion of the flag portrays the different forms of sexual attraction they experience. The pink section represents people who identify as female. The blue represents people who identify as male. And the yellow in between represent all the people who don’t fall into the male-female gender binary.
Though the flag is simple and comprised of only three colors, it promotes a very powerful message of visibility and recognition for the pansexual community.
The symbol combines the male, female and transgender symbols into one. And the “P” at the top of the symbol, as you probably already guessed, stands for the “P” in pansexual.
Although it’s nothing new to the LGBTQ communities, celebrities have helped bring pansexuality to the limelight. Miley Cyrus was one of the more popular celebrities that came out as pansexual.
But outside of Hollywood, we have some pretty amazing women, too. Jazz Jennings, a transgender advocate and YouTube personality, also uses her platform on YouTube to talk about her experience as a pansexual and transgender teenage girl.
“Being pansexual basically means to me that you are attracted to anyone, no matter their sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, everything,” Jennings told Cosmopolitan. “[There are] no limits. I’ll date anyone. It’s more that I love someone for their soul.”
Rapper Angel Haze, who also identifies as agender, explained that their sexuality means finding a connection with anyone. Haze told The Guardian, “Love is boundary-less. If you can make me feel, if you can make me laugh — and that’s hard — then I can be with you.”
Overall, sexuality spectrums are beautiful because they create a space where everyone feels included. By increasing visibility and awareness for everyone, we increase equality in our society.
