5 Lessons of a Sassy Pansexual

Being pansexual is a little like explaining to people that an all you can eat buffet is not actually “all-you-can-eat.”

For me, pansexuality means that I am attracted to select people based on who they are, not their gender. This means for me that being pansexual reduces my pool of available partners (see my future book “The Picky Pansexual”), as opposed to the common perception that pansexuals have unlimited sexual horizons and many more sexual opportunities because it is presumed that everyone is on the menu. Often, this is not the case.

Lesson #1: Sexuality and gender identity is fluid

My experience of pansexuality comes to me as an understanding about sexual fluidity. I first realized that I was pansexual after starting to question my gender identity. I don’t believe in the binary. It holds no truth for me. In fact, it turns out that I have predominantly dated non-binary people for the past seven years. Or put another way, I was a de-facto pansexual before I figured things out.

Academia helped me understand pansexuality through cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubin would say that there is a sexual hierarchy of identities on offer. Rubin notes that there are “historical periods in which sexuality is more sharply contested and more overtly politicized. In such periods, the domain of erotic life is, in effect, renegotiated.” And the defining characteristic or essential quality of this structure is its necessary revelry for gender. Gender is mobilized as a deciding factor in who I can fall in lust for or love with. In reaction to this, pansexuality repurposes sexuality around the individual rather than around gender. It says who you are is more important than your parts.

Or put another way, there is a delicate balance in sexuality between the sex that you have (or do not have if you are asexual) and the reality of attraction. So, I like to think of pansexuality as a buffet that is frequently closed!

Lesson #2: Most pansexual people do not want everything that is on the menu because most of the menu is disgusting.

We are not attracted to everyone. In fact, we share this selective sexuality with our bisexual family members. They too are not sex-crazed sluts who have abandoned gender norms in order to pursue a life a debauchery. However, I would like to take a moment to hole-heartedly support and endorse sex-crazed slutiness and the abandonment of gender norms in order to pursue a life of debauchery. I can think of nothing better and this would warrant an exciting new ethnographic project, (look for my future book “The Pulsating Pansexual” in stores soon!).

Lesson #3: Being pansexual and polyamorous has killed my sex life

However, this story is a complicated one, because I am both pan and poly. Being pansexual and polyamorous is more than clever alliteration. And the reality is that being pansexual and polyamorous has killed my sex life.

Polyamorous relationships slowed me down sexually more than monogamy! Yikes! I think people have a picture of pansexual life as a continuous Kooky party orgy at the Bearded Tit in Redfern. And while that was a good party, the reality is that managing two relationships is often harder and produces less sexual energy than when I am single.

What drives me to the buffet table? The answer I would hope to give is that kinks drive my appetite in a safe, healthy, and consensual manner. But the truth is actually dirtier than this. It is more likely that my sexual appetite is influenced by respectability politics. Who I throw under the bus is directly related to who I throw out of bed. I found this in the shift from identifying as gay to pansexual.

Lesson #4: There was peer-pressure to identify with the existing privilege that comes from being perceived to be a gay man.

I neither identify as a man or as gay. I had fought for “gay rights” for 18 years as an LGBTQ lobbyist and maybe somehow coming out as pansexual was seen as a betrayal of that elite identity. Pansexuality does not have the social and queer currency that “gay” identity has at this point in time. As a result, there are some from within the community who judge me unfairly.

“What, you like girls now?” I was asked by the gay, white, cisgender, men to belittle me. “First” I said politely, “Go fuck yourself and the patriarchy you rode in on.” Second, “The gender binary is a broken, hollow, and archaic model of statecraft and control that ranks up there with the dowry and the baby bonus as policy tools for the masses.” So, why would I rely on a flawed model that erases identities and reinforces gender-assigned-at-birth as the fundamental basis for understanding my life, love, lust, and loins? Pansexuality offers a powerful and disruptive alternative.

Lesson 5: There is sex after pansexuality.

So what is life after pansexuality? It has opened my mind and my heart in ways that I did not think was possible. Indeed, being sexually fluid has taught me to accept my gender identity (I’m non-binary) and accept others.

The lessons that pansexuality can teach the world suggest that we look differently at what is on offer and consider today as a good time renegotiate the bounds of sexuality. Today is also the right time to consider the factors that influence the respectability of our appetites. And finally, pansexuality allows us to use our sexuality as a site of contestability. To contest the principle prioritization given to assigned gender, which often commands our sexuality and directs our identity.

Dr. Christopher L. Pepin-Neff is a writer and academic. His views are his own. www.pepin-neff.com