119 COMMENTS
Hello, is anyone out there still straight? Actress Shailene Woodley has declared herself pansexual.
- The Australian
I was in the middle of an interview for a business story when suddenly the banker who knows I have a background in writing about sex and relationships asked: “Hey Ruth, can you tell me, what does pansexual mean?”
He’s about the 10th person to bring up the question in the past month.
It’s bandied about in articles all over the web. Last year Shailene Woodley, star of the dystopian Divergent movie series and the teen weepie The Fault in Our Stars, confessed she is pansexual and “falls in love with human beings based on who they are, not what they do or what sex they are”.
Josh Hutcherson the 22-year-old Hunger Games actor, recently told Out magazine: “Right now I’m 100 per cent straight. But who knows? In a year I could meet a guy and be like, ‘Whoa, I’m attracted to this person.’ ”
Even Texas state representative Mary Gonzalez openly identifies as pansexual, becoming the first elected US official to be out as such.
So what is it, this pansexuality, omnisexuality or flexi-sexuality? Why has it gained such prominence? And how is it different from bisexuality?
It comes with the premise that “love is boundary-less”. It comes with the ability to love people of any age, religion, appearance and gender, including gender-mobile (androgynous, transsexual).
It is not to be confused with polyamory, the acceptance of multiple consensual relationships, and is regarded as more fluid than bisexuality in that it’s non-binary.
The book Sex and Society by Marshall Cavendish says pansexuality encompasses only consensual adult behaviours. On the Pansexual is Perfect website it states: “Love is my way of life: Love doesn’t know distance, gender, colour and race. It’s all-consuming and beyond compare … I hope everyone is blessed with special someones in life.”
So it’s queer, straight, bi, older, younger, but also being open to all behaviours: you can love an S & M master just as easily as a Buddhist master. It’s people.
Gen Y (the millennial generation) seems to be leading the charge. The flex-gen is flexible in every aspect of life, from working hours and locations to changing religions and careers. Fluidity is the catchcry of the “whateva” generation. They seek “opportunities”. So it isn’t surprising the concept has now reached the body and heart.
Some social observers are hailing a true sexual revolution — the biggest revolution since the free-love 1960s and 70s. It’s hip, and cooler than bisexuality ever was.
While females have always experimented with each other (up to 45 per cent, according to Boise State University), more interesting is a trend identified in The New York Times and elsewhere of an increasing number of younger guys who identify as “mostly straight” — as in not always straight.
Facebook is full of the images of the group grope, and more. A study in The Lancetfound that four times as many women report having had same-sex relationships compared with two decades ago.
Google Trends data shows that an internet presence for “pansexuality” began in September 2007. Since then it has gained significant hits.
But why now, and wasn’t it always thus? Kimberly O’Sullivan, a social commentator, historian, journalist and prominent pansexual, says the idea has been out there forever.
The Kinsey Reports found sexual preferences to be non-static.
When News Limited (now News Corp Australia) conducted a sex and relationships survey a decade ago, it showed couples in the suburbs fantasised mostly about threesomes, followed by more-somes.
Gender-bending has always been a favourite kink. But, O’Sullivan says, the revolution isn’t that pansexuality is happening.
“The Facebook selfie gen haven’t reinvented the wheel,” she says. “It’s that it’s becoming socially acceptable.”
She is sceptical about the dimensions of the phenomenon. “We’ll know the revolution has truly come when people aren’t just experimenting with their sexuality, as they always have, but when they are prepared to stand up in society and declare: ‘I love this person, I want to get married or defacto.’ People still care a lot what (others) think of their sexual choices.”
And pansexuals, if they have previously strongly identified with a particular sexual preference, can face significant ostracism from their social groups once their new preferences become known.
O’Sullivan, 58, is a dear friend. She was my researcher on my Triple M sex and relationships radio program in the 90s, and is one of the clearest examples I know of being pansexual. Her story is so fascinating it became the subject of a 1999 Australian Story episode, Kimberly’s Wedding, which I was involved in.
She was a hardcore lesbian, one of the original “dykes on bikes”, and the first woman in the Mardi Gras Hall of Fame. Enter biker Bob, a Hell’s Angel. He was one of my fans who listened to our radio show. He wrote me letters and Kimberly answered him, then met him for coffee. A short time later she tossed in her leathers for a dress and pumps, grew her hair long and married him.
She joked: “Well, if you’re going to go for a man, you might as well choose a real butch, not one who eats quiche — or why bother?”
A decade after the program aired, Kimberly, now divorced, answered the question herself — falling madly in love with a woman who was becoming a man. They stayed together through all the trials and tribulations of hormone replacement, but later broke up. Whereupon she met the love of her life. A conservative, rural “bloke”, and dad.
They live together in a little township in central NSW and she works as an archivist in a nearby library.
The last time I saw her she was in a floral dress, and had wavy curls. “Buddhists have a saying,” she says. “ ‘You should love like a blind man.’ If you couldn’t see someone and fell in love with them, you wouldn’t worry about their external appearance.
“Love sees no gender,” she adds. “There’s no real difference being with a man, woman or transgender. I’m amazed at how similar it all is, all the normal highs and insecurities — ‘Am I good enough? Will they leave? Will they ring?’ We need to concentrate on being healthy and happy in our relationships rather than limited to a preconceived type. Everyone wants love in their lives.”
A recent documentary project of mine featured “Karen”, a grandmother whose husband transitioned to a woman in his 60s with the full operation. She had stayed through the ordeal and went to gay marriage rallies.
She told me: “I’m not a lesbian. I fell in love with a person. And “Betty” is still the same person I fell in love with.” I know two other couples in the same position.
The time has come for the psychological professions to step in and be a midwife to these social changes that free us from labels, says Serena Patterson, a Canada-based women’s studies scholar. “Gender (can be) a jail, a gift, a rigid script … a key to unlock sexual passion, a life sentence to drudgery, a trap, or a chosen path,” she says.
Even the law is attempting to catch up. Last year, Norrie May-Welby, a Sydney-based gender-mobile person, won a landmark case to be legally considered gender non-specific, and now calls her/himself a “xie” or “hir” as opposed to she or he.
Canadian magazine Flare last year said of the pansexual trend: “Welcome to the sexual revolution . ‘Whatever’, with it’s open-ended implications and universe of possibilities, makes an awful lot of sense.”
COMMENTS IN THE AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPER REPUBLISHED HERE
119 COMMENTS
Someone just keep stretching the boundaries till there are none. Then you must deal with lawlessness, through which anyone becomes prey, save Christ’s intervention.
I really don’t care what others do. As long as it’s consentual.
I’d never heard of Pansexual until this rather *eyeroll* piece. Which made me chuckle about the silliness of we humans. And the obvious immaturity anf lack of self-control yet need to pigeonhole every detail of our supposedly “individuality”?
I do think it’s mostly just a trendy thing at the moment to not “conform” to declaring sexual preference. Most people i know and have known in my lifetime over the age of 35yrs are pretty much either heterosexual or homosexual. Not “grey” at all when it comes down to it. Most of the Gay people have tried to be in heterosexual relationshipsat some point. And that because of societal pressure most surely. I’m always happy when they can just be themselves.
I like people as just people too. Nothing new or groundbreaking there. This is nothing different to how humans have mostly been…unless religion has interfered with decency and common sense.
I do wonder if people these days seem to think that every deep relationship has to involve actual SEX and that’s the issue? I’ve certainly had very deep and some might say fallen in “love” with great people over my life. But i don’t need to actually have sex or live with them in a relationship.
God will not be amused.
So, fulfilling own desires is a rule in a persuite for a natural pleasure while reproduction is a brand of such self-fulfillment with a partner willing to by a way of an instant pleasure of sexually-various encounters.
Is this a pansexual pandemic?
Story reflects the confusion that some people feel about their desires. What impulses should you repress and what should you license? For those who trust in a tradition the picture is clear cut; for those who want to conduct their own life long experiment, the outcomes are mixed. Good luck with your choices!
Good heavens….what a load of tripe.
Shouldn,t that last sentence have a (non) in there
@william Agree, nonsense!
Gender matters. This is an assault on our identity as a man and woman.
“… with it’s open-ended implications and universe of possibilities…” They must be kidding. The only sexuality that has any possibilities is heterosexuality. That’s it. These people are truly deluded. You would almost think they were a bunch of young people who have never lived a life.
Straight….. Code for boring , old fashioned, inflexible, and statistically what 98% of Australians still identify as according to the ABS.
If there ever was an argument that being gay was simply a life style choice and not genetic your article makes it perfectly.
Alternative sexuality is the new black.
Why does everything these days have to have name? The human race did not start only yesterday and everybody got on quite well, loving whomever they pleased, without silly terms. What a load of garbage.
@Hubert Because that’s the only way you can put it into a sentence.
There used to be only one word that covered all of it: “fornication”
“Pansexual” is just “bisexual” with some makeup and a wig. It’s the latest fad word. Remember “womyn”, designed to remove “men”, and “significant other”, designed to further evaporate marriage? “Pansexual” is designed to further break down traditional sexual roles and values. Like the other fad words, it won’t last.
There are lots of straight people out there they are just not in the media or the arts where all the boring (although they don’t think so) look at me egotists are.
Article is not worth the paper it is written on and surprised such trivia is in this paper.
I am a straight male. I cannot see that I will ever be attracted to another man and whilst the thought repulses me some what, each to their own. That being said I find two women in a sexual relationship quite arousing but not sure that would be classed as pansexual.
@Mutchu I guess if the gay lobby has been working hard for 20 – 30 years to “educate” the young they will have some success. This article and the new semantics are the proof. Repulsive to some is the right word. But hey, this is the new world.
Clearly, we’ve so exhausted all genuine subject matter that now we are resorting to peripheral rubbish as the last resort to amuse ourselves. Sad.
Seems like many don’t know if they are Arthur or Martha and at the end of the day who cares. I don’t.
It’s hip to be gay.
2011 Census – There were 33,700 gay couples out of 8.18 million households or 5.68 million families. The Trouble with Pansexuals is that sometimes they catch a glimpse of themselves in the mirror, fall in love and than seek out alien transcendence through scientology. Yes, the new norm!
@Michael A very noisy and boring minority – there are no Noel cowards or Oscar Wilde’s amongst this lot!
You have to give the homosexual lobby ten out of ten for persistence. Viva la difference.
It is time to separate church and state.
Marriage is a province of the church and should be left to those with religious beliefs. What ethical person can argue that they should be allowed to marry in a church they never attended and do not embrace?
“Civil union” should be the universal terminology for the state’s version of marriage which no longer discriminates between heterosexual and homosexual unions.
If you’re not making your vows before your God, what’s wrong with celebrating your ‘union’ before your family and friends. Use the terms husband and wife, perhaps even see yourself as married to avoid confusion, but allow the churches the right to follow there old and sacred traditions.
I chose not to marry because I had no church and I see no role for the state in my personal relationship
My “union” has survived twenty five years and produced thee beautiful adults, all ethical and apparently unharmed.
@Graeme
Marriage is not the province of the church. It is the province of the state. Churches add rituals etc. to the marriage ceremony.
No, people shouldn’t demand to be married in a church they don’t attend. But I found that if the price is right they’ll conduct the ceremony anyway.
@Graeme I chose not to marry because I consider it a silly and expensive ritual that has no bearing on anything. I must profess to not understanding why when straight people are trying to escape the chains of marriage in record numbers, gay folk are in such a hurry to get into it. Still if it’s all about the equality to do stupid things, who am I to argue.
Me, me, look at me!!!!!
@Aaron Yep!
What utter rot.
Why can’t people just be happy with themselves the way they are, rather than trying to invent fashionable new sexualities they can flash about like an accessory. I don’t understand what’s wrong the status quo; heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, non sexual, that about covers all the bases doesn’t it? How many ways can you skin a cat?
Soon people will be inventing new genders, new races, new species for themselves, where does this self indulgent rampant individualism end?
Perhaps there is such a thing as ‘pansexual’, but more likely it is just a pretentious way of saying bisexual, now that particular term seems to have lost its edge as it’s become more mainstream and acceptable. Or perhaps it’s straight folks want a funky new word that sets them apart from the crowd without having to commit to like physical bits of the same gender. And apparently the explanation for all of this expansion of sexual identity is more flexible working hours! What !!
Unfortunately don’t a sexual revolution underway here, just a pretentious one.
@Adam Pretentious being the operative word.
@Adam Bisexual people don’t date transexuals. Bisexuality means you like two genders (male and female), it’s a rather self-evident word. You can be bisexual and be disgusted by trans people.
Totally agree with Bryan.
Time for a referendum on gay marriage to see where the majority will vote. More important issues confronting us.
@Laraine Yes, there was an argument yesterday on a conscience vote for politicians, no mention of a peoples referendum???
I am not going to pretend to speak on behalf of the 97+% of “Normal” and no I won’t apologise for saying “Normal” ordinary people, but I am so sick of listening to a such a small pathetic % of people that create 97% of the noise!!
Really, just because the Media (TV, Movies, Publications) have a huge representation of Gay people pushing their barrows that “Gay” is the new “Normal” and that the percentage of “Gay” people is so large one does not have to believe this and accept that this is not a huge fallacy!
@Bryan Strongly agree. When I went to uni, the left and alternatives were small rowdy bunches of students. Social media and such stories are a loud echo chamber. It does not indicate any significance.
@Bryan You are far from alone of being sick of the noise and bored to death of the look at me crowd who do not have the moral courage to be different (unlike their predecessors) and want both the white picket fence and being seen as normal whilst at the same time declaring they are not.
They are like a punter who at the racetrack backs a 100 to 1 shot and then complains because it does not run like an even money favourite.
And if you want to experience real discrimination just try working in a Gay dominated environment as a straight!
@Bryan A small number of the “gay” community want to be seen as “normal” when patently they are not. Is homosexual the same as heterosexual?, no it is not, and that is what they are fighting against. My neighbours on both sides get on with their lives and wish this minority would just go away.
A small minority with a lot of self importance who like to talk about themselves, and talk and talk.
@Margaret Many people are different whether mentally or physically, it actually requires mental courage to be different from the herd, it needs none to attempt to join or hijack it.
This article is so unnecessary. Who cares what other people think or do? And the point about Gen Y is simply ridiculous…
“Hello, is anyone out there still straight?” Yes. Me. And 98.8% of the Australian adult population according to a 2003 ‘Sex in Australia’ survey of 20,000 people, with a special weighting to Sydney’s homosexual centre, and conducted by the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health & Society (ARCSHS) at La Trobe University. Published in Australian & NZ Journal of Public Health, Vol 27 No 2 2003 ISSN 1326 0200. Also, nationwide 1.4% of women and 0.9% of men said they were bisexual. I suggest you have to look at the type of people making the claim, and of course anecdotal evidence is no evidence at all, scientifically speaking.
Well, many societies have differentiated between sex and love. Greek had many words for love – a lot were nothing to do with sexuality.
@Susan We have lots of words for ‘love’ too: kindness, affection, commitment, longing, philanthropy, crush, and so on.
This is all getting all too strange. “xie” or “hir”?? What is this obsession with being gay or not? Surely there are far more important things to worry about than someone’s sexual/gender wants? I don’t give a rat’s yahoo what gender someone is – whether they are black, white or brindle. Is there never to be any privacy in our lives? I like both my own and other people’s sexual preferences securely behind closed doors. It’s no bodies business but our own.
This is the healthiest thing I have read about human beings for years.
Can’t have read much then. I’d say it was the silliest thing I’ve read about human beings for years myself. Self indulgent piffle really.
@Anne Think you got it one Anne.
I am sooo PanMcDonald these days !
@Hans What does that mean? You have an irresistible attraction to double cheese burgers? With or without pickles? I don’t get it.
as an older man, I love my Brothers and I love my father more than Breath
Why is love only about sex with some people get over yourself and stop being so hormonal
Some people have too much time on their hands.
@DOUGLAS The author…just for a start.
@DOUGLAS It’s the hands that are the problem.
Whats the difference between pan and bi, there are only 2 sexes as far as I know. My 13yo daughter declared herself a pansexual recently?? WTF. At least if she goes with girls she wont get pregnant. Knowing her she will play it out just to prove the point that I’m old and stupid. Such is youth and the all pervasive social pressure that goes with being one. Reminds me of when I was young it was cool to have an earring, untill everyone had one even the nerds. Western human behaviour is simply becoming narcisism on steroids and a declaration of alternate sexulality in some way is a poor way to make oneself look cool, thats all.
@Mark There are asexauls, androgynous folk (as mentioned in the article), as well as trans people that don’t fit in as either pure male or female.
@Ed @Mark Well, they have made themselves not to fit.
@Mark Tatts have been added to the piercing to make yourself really, really, really cool. I dread what the next step will be.
Quote: Shailene Woodley’s new creation, the Pansexual. They – “Fall in love with human beings based on who they are, not what they do or what sex they are”.
Oh how trendy, how very ‘now’. What BS! Shailene Woodley is just an attention seeker.
Most people are straight, those who aren’t are gay and then there are some AC/DC among us. It’s just who they are.
I fell in love with Walt Disney’s Jiminy Cricket at age six and even set up my doll’s house to receive him. He never appeared and being jilted at six was horrible. But I am now curious as to what that made me?
@Jordana
One of those people Cory Bernardi warned us about? 😉
Sorry, Jiminy came and lived at my house.
Oh gawd it just keeps getting weirder.
@clyde Yeah mate, I think that I am going to be glad to die after all these changes over all the years. I thought until this morning that I had escaped unscathed for I have never watched bellbird, the sullivans, days of our dreary lives, listened to the Lawsons or Blue Hills, and now this comes along to ruin the day and I don’t even know or care what a blessed Pansexual is tho someone once told me that it became compulsory to be something else in SA after six months residency. I figured out that he was under the influence of West End or Southwark beer but got transferred out after five months, three weeks, and six days just to be on the safe side.
Very wise. Can’t be too careful in these matters. You might have been made to wear pink shorts too just like Don Dunstan.
As if the number of people declaring their sexuality or coming out will change general views on the matter…
@john But it proves that nobody is born ” gay” or ” lesbian “. It is a choice of life style. End of story.
@Karin @john A contentious point, but I am sure some are turned by events in their young lives. One thing psychologists agree on, first sexual experience stays with you for life.
I suspect it is a natural response to overpopulation, similar to fish.
I call myself a pansexual because I love beautiful cookware.
@Pierre what a crock !
@Pierre Comment of the day! Puts it all into its right perspective, as long that is as you can also cook!
@Gerald @Pierre Agreed still chuckling at it, RSF a good follow up too,
It more likely the number of gays is overstated considerably. But it was well known in the past some would seek to increase the number in their places of work, if they could. So we may be seeing a deliberately overstated figure in the general population. And campaigns pushing a line are not out of the question in certain circles. The real concern will arise where it becomes compulsory.
@Logical This is the era of the minority, minute to minute media has a lot to answer for.
Is anyone out there still straight?
Yes.
@john Yes,me,me,me,me,me,me,me,me,me,me,me!That’s eleven straight guys left in this world.Oh,you lucky ladies left that are also straight.
It’s the late 70s all over again, when all the pop stars were playing androgenous roles. It’s yet another fad.
Yes and this article is stupid. I am not saying that cause I am homophobic I am saying it because does any of this really matter any more. If we are as sophisticated as we think we are then surely people are people and sexual orientation is just part of who they are. Whilst nonsense like this is peddled it just allows the haters to continue to hate.
I suppose we can now call our friends across the ditch as ewe-sexual now.
BS peddled as fact.
I think men are very flexible when it comes to sexuality. Despite the downplaying of male bisexuality by the mainstream media, it’s actually quite common. Men are very sexual, don’t forget. If women are absent, men often turn to other men.
Females tend to fake their sexuality a lot, so there is no comparison.
@Jason If you say so Mate…. Lol.
@Jason Beware a man that professes to know female sexuality, let alone sexuality in general.
@Jason
No, if women aren’t available men will keep to themselves.
@Jason J speak for yourself.
@Jason I have to say, real respect as far as you saying that.
It’s sad that in this day and age articles like this are news. No one should care, but unfortunately, because society has this “must be monogamously heterosexual” pressure, being natural and doing whatever you feel like carries enormous guilt for most people. The only real thing to care about is ensuring everyone involved is honest and also responsible when it comes to contraception and diseases.
@Rupey Its not news, it’s in the lifestyle section of the paper.
Why do we keep promoting every brand of sexual deviance?
No wonder so many young people are suffering from mental health issues when we keep throwing this bilge at them.
@Mark
Firstly, they are not deviancies. They are differences.
Secondly, they are not being promoted, they are being discussed.
Thirdly, mental health issues are contributed to greatly by unjustified denigration.
@Mark It sells magazines…?!
How about we re-embrace “shhh sexuality.” That’s where you have whatever consensual sex you’re into but you keep your mouth shut about it.
I wonder how the pansexual trend is working out in the 95 per cent of the world’s population that shakes its head at the decay of the Western world.
@Stephen 95%..mate you need to get out more..I would say 30 to 35% of the community is so called straight and when I mean straight, I mean iron rod straight,no flexability at all, 15% totally gay, and the rest well call them bi, pansexual, or women that have sex with women, or men that have sex with men or what ever you want to call them.
It has nothing to do with a decay in society.
@Stephen Oh Stephen, mate. Decay of western society. One only has to look at history to see this exact statement made by the ancient Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Someone get a new hymn book please.
@Martin Says @Stephen Actually it’s yourself needs to get out more. Stephen speaks of 95% of the world while you reference a circle that is 65% deviant. Thinking that represents world wide normality is indulging in a fantasy.
@Frank @Martin Says @Stephen Well since I have a Degree in Sexual Health…I think I know more than you !!
And more qualified.
@Martin Says @Frank @Stephen More brainwashed
Well! I must be pansexual too because I love everyone just like Christ did. But don’t take that to mean that I want to bed down with just anyone. Physically, people are male and female. Sorry, but if you look between your legs and the legs of someone of the opposite sex, you’ll see that God made a perfect fit. As for homosexuals, I love them too, don’t worry; hate never came into Jesus’ equation. Think of the time that he protected that prostitute in the Gospels. Homosexuality must be real but its something I just can’t understand when there are so many drop-dead women out there. What gives?!
@harold Brilliant. Have a read of Deb Hirsch’s book Redeeming Sex. Nails this exact issue.
@harold “What gives?!” Sexually transmitted diseases that’s what, not to mention the most successful societies ditching the very ethos that made them so.
@Roger @harold
What ‘very ethos’ is that?
The ADHD Generation justifying itself. A lot like their religion. They’re not religious, they’re ‘spiritual’ or whatever floats their boat at the time.
Well I guess that put’s a new twist to ‘I’ll try anything once”
Welcome to the sexual revolution? Really? I think unrestrained hedonism has been around for a very, very long time. I suspect this story won’t cut too much mustard in the suburbs.
Ah so now it has a label…that will make some feel better about themselves..others will just shrug and judge with an old label. Labels are so limiting. Article has revealed what many already know…its about the person not the gender; sex doesn’t always follow love.
@Andrew label it an you can sell it Andrew. simples.
My only uncertainty about all this is linguistic: the language already has a pronoun for neuter nouns: it.
Some people seem to have an objection to using the word in relation to human beings, and then I remind them that when new babies are born, the immediate questions are: is it healthy, what are you going to name it, what sex is it, how much did it weigh?
The word by its nature is neither dehumanising nor disrespectful, and if we stopped thinking of it as pejorative, then people like Norrie could happily use an existing word without having to invent xie or hir.
This concept raises a very interesting question as to the genuineness of homosexuality. For decades now we (heteros) have been lectured that homosexuals are effectively born that way and their sexual orientation is “hard wired”. Pansexuality suggests (as many suspect) that many homosexual relationships are purely a matter of social and sexual convenience – and possibly love. I have no problem with this but it would be nice to know where political correctness ends and reality begins in these debates.
Sexuality is on a continuum .. That fact has been established beyond doubt.
Some gay men are so overtly gay, their brain is obviously feminised and if you looked at them as children you would likely have seen that the traits they have as adults were clearly also present when they were kids.
Then you have “straight” me who go cruising for gay sex then go back to their wives. Or situationally gay men in prisons …
Some men do choose to be gay, others have it so hard wired into them that they could never be anything else.
This is not opinion, this is fact.
@Peter Not really – if your’re gay your gay, if you’re straight your straight.. pansexuality is more about not caring about boundaries.. After All, boundaries are just arbitrary rules society placed on us for mostly forgotten reasons.
You’re talking about a different group of people.
@Peter Perhaps not the genuineness of homosexuality, but the prevalence of the absolute, hard-wired kind. Me, I am pretty hard-wired, and had no choice in the matter, but I do meet many men who would best be described as flexible. Me, I’m stuck at the opposite end of the scale from you: if I catch sight of you, I’ll give you a wave.
@Peter Peter, you’re a champ; I salute you.
No contradiction-making love is a mutually consented process by adults as figured from an article.
Why is it I have the distinct feeling this is a first world fantasy – the rest of the world has real issues to be getting on with – you know war, survival, hunger, poverty, and just getting by. Pansexuality makes sense though in a society that believes it is entitled to reorder the world to suit itself, and considers that moral strictures and even ones gender are a cosmic inconvenience that is best sidelined.
@Matthew Yes Matt. It is an inside the beltway issue for a bunch of hipsters with too much time on their hands.
@Matthew What are the ramifications of pansexuality for individual identity, capacity to form long term relationships and the stability of families? Is it the case that freedom of choice is becoming the ultimate measure of these things, and other considerations fall by the wayside?