“Gender, genitals, and sex have no barring on who I’m attracted to,” says Rachel, a 29-year-old living in Hartford, CT. Some pansexual people say their orientation has nothing to do with gender. That pan-phobic assumption is as absurd as thinking a straight woman is attracted to every single man on the planet. The key phrase here is “ potential for attraction.” Someone who is pansexual is NOT attracted to every single human on the planet. Like all gender and sexuality identifiers, the definition of pansexual varies based on who’s giving the definition, says Jesse Kahn, LCSW-R, CST, the director and sex therapist at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in New York Cityīecause the prefix “pan” means all, a common definition of pansexual reads: The potential for attraction -romantically, emotionally, or sexually - to people of all genders, or to people all across the gender spectrum, says longtime sex educator Searah Deysach, the owner of Early to Bed, a pleasure product company in Chicago that ships worldwide. First things first: What’s the exact definition?
