I don't want to sound like an uninformed jerk asking this, but I want to clarify something. I'll give a little background about what I heard I was just in my psychology class and the topic was about attraction. About 1/3 of it was about homosexuality, almost every part of it were things that I already knew about, the focus was just on homo, hetero, and bi. There was one point when my professor said "There are also people who are questioning who identify as pansexual." Then she went back to the main points of the lecture. She didn't say anything else about that, and I didn't have the courage to ask what she meant. That sentence stuck with me, I'm not sure if she meant they are the same, or if she just didn't say "There are also people who are questioning or who identify as pansexual." I always thought that I knew there was a difference. Is it possible that she misspoke and missed the "or" in her sentence. Or could being pansexual and being questioning actually be compared. If she didn't have a degree in psychology I would think anything of it, but now I'm a little confused. Just wondering what your opinion is about this. Sorry if I sound like an idiot
because unlike heterosexuality and homosexuality, the difference between pansexuality and bisexuality comes down pretty much, from a scientific and socieological perspective, to symantics. A bisexual is a person who is attracted to both genders, as is a pansexual. pansexuals tend to say that they dont see gender, but it is not considered much of a distinction, because it comes down again to symantic word games, since bisexual people, when they are attracted to other people, dont base the attraction on a persons gender, but on the person. There are 4-5 different terms for being attracted to people of any gender. its like how some people dont like to be called homosexual or heterosexual. Bisexual, pansexual, heteroflexible, allsexual, gender-blind, etc. people create their own labels all the time. but any distinction people try to create between the labels are considered so subtle that most professionals prefer to just stick to a basic term.
Your right, labels do seem to cause confusion, that what just happened to me. I guess the fact that she might have said that questioning and pansexual are the same thing just made me wonder. I'm part of this community so I like to know as much as I can and I don't want to get my facts mixed up. It's amazing what one missing word can do. -If anyone else has an opinion I'd like to hear it.
I am for people deciding which label they prefer, but from a perspective of scientific inquiry, you want simplicity when complexity is not required. I wouldnt say that the teacher was being insensitive, they just are keeping in line with the approch one takes academicly when talking about such topics.
