Pan and/or Bi?

Hi and thanks for your post. It is healthy that you are trying to understand and explore your identity. It's also healthy you recognise you attracted to more than one gender and you also recognise that Pansexual is used to describe someone who is sexually attracted to people regardless of gender. Personally, I found it very confusing when I first was exploring my identity and the more I discussed this the more information I found out. Hope the below helps.

"While there are many overlaps between pansexuality and bisexuality, the official definitions differ in their approach to gender. The prefix pan- means “all”, so pansexuality is an attraction to all gender identities or attraction regardless of gender identity, while bisexuality is the attraction to multiple gender identities." (Stonewall website)

There may be individuals who align with the way pansexuality is defined yet identify with the term ‘bisexuality’, and that’s completely valid. Others may use pansexual and bisexual interchangeably. Our identities are personal and specific to each and every one of us – that’s what makes us all unique!

Everybody has a sexuality. It's made up of a few different things, such as your sex, gender identity and roles, sexual orientation, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction. People can express their sexuality in their thoughts, desires, attitudes, behaviours, practice, roles and relationships. Sexuality is influenced by different factors, like, biology, psychology, social settings, economic factors like money, culture, history, religion and spirituality or how you see yourself.

Sexual orientation is who you're sexually attracted to and is a spectrum. So, you can be sexually attracted to someone of a different gender or someone of the same gender, or maybe no one at all. Some people experience little to no sexual attraction, and these people often consider themselves to be asexual or on the asexual spectrum.

Gender is how you identify yourself. Examples of gender identities are male, female, trans, nonbinary.



I hope the links below helps

www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/5-common-misconceptions-about-pansexuality

www.lgbthero.org.uk/what-is-sexuality