Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness FAQ

Your friendly local transgender non-binary panromantic pansexual, Sujitha, is here to aggressively clarify some things for you.

Who is a pansexual person?
One is pansexual if their sexual attraction towards someone does not depend on the person’s gender. 

Who is a panromantic person?
One is panromantic if their romantic attraction towards someone does not depend on the other person’s gender.

That means it’s possible for pansexual and panromantic people to feel attracted to people of all genders. Lucky!

Can someone be panromantic and not pansexual?
Yes!
I want to specify that it is possible that someone’s romantic and sexual orientation may not always overlap. This is known as cross orientation or mixed orientation. For example, one can be bisexual and heteroromantic. This would mean being sexually attracted to people of two or more genders but romantically attracted to people with a different gender.

How is pansexuality different from bisexuality?
Honestly, the difference is very subtle. I would even go on to say that for all practical purposes, bisexuality and pansexuality are the same. A bisexual person is someone who is attracted to more than one gender. Their attraction still depends on the gender of the other person to some degree. That wouldn’t be true for a pansexual person. The reason I choose to introduce myself as a pansexual and panromantic person is that this difference feels important to me. That may not be the same for everyone; that could be the reason they choose to introduce themselves as a bisexual or biromantic person, and that is completely valid too.

Are bisexual and biromantic people transphobic?
The short answer is, no.
Let’s clear up something while we’re on this topic. Cisgender and transgender are adjectives that describe whether a person’s gender matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. I’m not trying to minimize the struggles that come with living as a transgender person. What I’m trying to say is that whether someone is cisgender or transgender does not play a role in others feeling attracted towards them. Bisexual and biromantic, and heterosexual and heteroromantic peeps are completely capable of being attracted to transgender and even cisgender people.
Unless someone specifically states that they will not consider dating transgender peeps, they are not transphobic.

Are pansexual, panromantic, bisexual, or biromantic people attracted to more than one person at a time?
Not necessarily.
Feeling attraction towards more than one person is something that does not depend on someone’s sexual or romantic orientation. It happens to homosexual/homoromantic and heterosexual/heteroromantic people too. The perception that bisexual/biromantic people cheat on their partners is rooted in biphobia.

With that said, feeling attraction towards multiple people at the same time is normal and completely fine as long as one doesn’t act on these feelings. And even if they do want to act on their feelings and pursue relationships with more than one person at once, there are ethical ways of doing that where all the partners are aware of these other relationships and consent to it (maybe I’ll talk about polyamory in a different post).

That’s all I have for you today. If you found this helpful, please share this widely so others may benefit from reading this. I might keep editing this article to add more relevant questions as I come across them, so be sure to save this.

If there are other questions you’d like me to address, you may contact me on Facebook (fb.com/sujithski) or Instagram (@sujithski). 

Image credits to respective creators.