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Is it possible to be "Pansexual?"
Pansexuality (also referred to as omnisexuality)[1] is a sexual orientation, characterized by the potential for aesthetic attraction, romantic love, or sexual desire towards people of all gender identities and biological sexes.[2][3] Some pansexuals suggest that they are gender-blind; that gender and sex are insignificant or irrelevant in determining whether they will be sexually attracted to others.[4] As defined in the Oxford English Dictionary,[5] pansexuality "encompasses all kinds of sexuality; not limited or inhibited in sexual choice with regards to gender or practice."
Pansexuality can also mean the attraction to a person's personality, rather than their physical appearance or gender.
The concept of pansexuality deliberately rejects the idea that there are only two genders.[6] Pansexual people are open to relationships with people who do not identify as strictly men or women.[7]
Whether it is possible or not is really unknown. The intentions behind a person's sexual decisions is ONLY known by that person.
Now, if I ever met someone who claimed to be pansexual, I will probably be able to figure out if their sexuality is truly motivated by pansexualism. But, I have not personally met someone like that.
If pansexuality means "attraction to males, females, and people who are both or neither or in between", I can imagine that some people are pansexual. Think about the guys who like to look at shemale porn. Some of them are probably also attracted to usual females. Then imagine that some of that group are attracted to guys as well. That sounds possible, and would probably count as pansexuality.
But if pansexuality also means that you find all sexual practices arousing, like all positions, all fetishes, all shapes and sizes of partners, all fantasies, then probably not. Short of having some disorder that makes you sexually aroused by everything you do, I don't see how one person can like every sexual practice that has ever been devised :/
In the third category I was thinking of transsexuals and intersexuals. I just raised shemales as the example since they're probably more familiar to people.
Transwomen are still of one sex or the other, though. And, by virtue of being transWOMEN, of one gender. Not that it's possible for an organism to base its attraction to another on what roughly equates, outside of queer theory, to a set of personality traits.
True, someone who has clearly reassigned to a different sex could simply be called a man or a woman. But I think it's not unreasonable to find a separate term to describe people who are attracted to transmen or transwomen as well as those biologically born as men or women, as such people are a somewhat unusual breed. Many people - probably most people - would be rather disgusted at the thought of dating and sleeping with someone who used to be a different sex.
And what about transsexuals who have only partially reassigned their sex - e.g. someone who looks like a man, with a beard, flat chest, and muscular arms, but has a vagina? Attraction to such individuals is somewhat different from being straight, gay, or bi, in the way that we generally think of these terms.
And what about intersexuals, people who have some genetic anomaly that causes them to be born with genitals that do not suggest whether they are male or female? A relationship with an intersex individual can't be described as either an opposite-sex or a same-sex relationship, especially if the intersex person doesn't identify with either gender (say, by asking people to refer to them as "sie" rather than "he" or "she").
Someone who can be attracted to all of these people would pretty accurately be called "pansexual" - granted, I've yet to meet or hear of someone who is like that, but I don't see how it is impossible. And I guess someone who is attracted to most or some of these people can also be called pansexual, for want of a more precise term. (If there already are words to describe a-man-who-likes-men-and-women-and-men-who-have-breast-implants, or a-woman-who-likes-men-who-used-to-be-women-and-people-who-are-born-without-a- definitive-sex, I don't know them.)
Many people - probably most people - would be rather disgusted at the thought of dating and sleeping with someone who used to be a different sex.
This hasn't been my experience--particularly of bisexuals, but even of some self-proclaimed heterosexuals. This is possibly only because I live in a metropolitan city, though.
And what about transsexuals who have only partially reassigned their sex - e.g. someone who looks like a man, with a beard, flat chest, and muscular arms, but has a vagina?
"Sex reassignment" is a bit of a misnomer, I think. It's not like they can ever "reassign" their chromosomal patterns. Reassignment surgery's more akin to an elaborate, permanent costume.
Attraction to such individuals is somewhat different from being straight, gay, or bi, in the way that we generally think of these terms.
In various subjective connotations, maybe. But is the attraction any different, biologically?
And what about intersexuals, people who have some genetic anomaly that causes them to be born with genitals that do not suggest whether they are male or female?
Sex is not defined by genitalia.
A relationship with an intersex individual can't be described as either an opposite-sex or a same-sex relationship,
Sure it can. The intersexed aren't actually "both" or "neither" sex--they're simply mutations upon one or the other. You'd still call an individual with some hideous physical mutation a human (or, at least, you should, 'cause they are), so why wouldn't an individual with a few extra Y chromosomes be anything other than male?
especially if the intersex person doesn't identify with either gender (say, by asking people to refer to them as "sie" rather than "he" or "she").
Does self-perceived gender play into sexual attraction? I don't know about you, but if I see a hot chick on the street, I'm still gonna think she's hot when she tells me that she "just feels like" a man, if a little weird.
(If there already are words to describe a-man-who-likes-men-and-women-and-men-who-have-breast-implants, or a-woman-who-likes-men-who-used-to-be-women-and-people-who-are-born-without-a- definitive-sex, I don't know them.)
I've always thought "bisexual" covered it adequately.
Sex is generally considered to be the set of biological characteristics (including genitals) that give a person a particular role in the reproductive process, and that's how I'm using the term here. I'm not using any particularly technical definition of any words, since I think we're arguing about general, everyday-use terms, and not medical definitions.
I don't think that attraction towards a transsexual somehow differs biologically from attraction towards someone who hasn't changed their sex. But they do differ in that since a transsexual person is not unambiguously male or female, attraction to such a person cannot unambiguously be called a same- or opposite-sex attraction.
And I do think that inter/transsexual people are not fully male or female. As you said, you cannot completely reassign your sex. Someone who was born male and has done everything that modern science allows him to do to turn female will still be biologically very different from someone who was born female. Hence she isn't totally a woman. But she is also not a man, not in the sense that people generally think of "man".
As for intersex individuals: If someone has partly male and partly female reproductive organs, and has both XX and XY chromosomes, who is to say whether they're a man or a woman? What about someone who has female chromosomes but appears male? Or a person born with atypical male genitalia and has always considered herself to be female, perhaps due to sex reassignment surgery performed at birth?
You could design a test for determining masculinity and femininity. Say, draw up a list of biological and/or psychological characteristics; someone with 40% male and 60% female characteristics is "female". Or say that anyone who has a Y chromosome is a male, regardless of outer appearance or social designation, and the rest are females. But these techniques would cram people into boxes that they don't necessarily fit into - it'd be taking a grey area and trying to draw a line through it, arbitrarily deciding that one part is black and the other part is white.
A somewhat friendlier approach would be just to ask the person if they consider themselves to be male or female, and take that to be their actual sex. But this still excludes people who consider themselves to be androgynous.
And if you cannot definitively say that someone is a man or a woman, you cannot definitively say that attraction towards them is homosexual or heterosexual. You might call them bisexual, but the problem with using "bisexual" as a blanket description is that the prefix bi- implies that there are two discrete, definite sexes. It doesn't reflect the idea that the attraction is towards someone who doesn't clearly belong to one of the two sexes. Hence "pansexual" can be useful in such a situation.
P.S. I think self-perceived gender does usually play a huge role in sexual attraction. I'm assuming you're a heterosexual male, attracted in the sort of girls that most men think are hot: If you saw someone on the street who dresses like a man, talks like a man, acts like a man, and maybe has bulging muscles like a fit man, would you possibly be attracted to this person, even though this person is a biological female who identifies as a male and carries him/herself accordingly? (I don't think there's such a thing as a hot chick - in the conventional, mass-media sense of the term - who identifies as a man. If she identified with the societal stereotype of man, she would attempt to fit into that stereotype, and hence would not be considered hot by most people.)
Yes, it's possible. We call it bisexuality. Pansexuality is a redundant term.
The concept of pansexuality deliberately rejects the idea that there are only two genders.
This is an unnecessary distinction. Whether you are male, female, transsexual, hermaphroditic, or a crossdresser what you use in the bedroom will be masculine, feminine, or some combination of these. That's what matters, practically speaking, and pansexuality just complicates definitions as per the following examples:
There are heterosexual men who like "she-males" but are not attracted to men or "he-females." Are these men demipansexuals?
How about bisexual women who are not interested in transvestites or transsexuals? They enjoy all genders, however.
What "pansexuality" seeks to define is the attraction to people who are not strictly male or female. Bisexuality permits this as per my first example, the man would have a slight bisexual bent. We already have words that specify these "in-between" genders and heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual women and men will specify if they are attracted to transsexuals, trannies, etc. Creating a new sexuality just complicates this (why not save it for when we make first contact, then it would mean something unique and not covered by existing language; the openness to be attracted to other sentient lifeforms).
Pansexual is just something stupid and new that people, mostly kids, can use to "identify" themselves. But when it comes down to it, the things that they say it is I don't think they'd really do.
