So do you think this is a pretty typical meaning of pansexual (a term I'd also never seen prior to reading this site)? I read this as basically de-emphasizing sexuality per se, in favor of focusing on the individual person. Or is pansexual more commonly used because bisexual is too limiting, eg might not be seen (perhaps I'm wrong here though) as encompassing transgender?
And if someone else referred to you as bisexual would you think this was incorrect?
No hidden agenda here at all, just curious.
Your reading is essentially correct.
I would guess that many people who call themselves bisexual are actually pansexual, they just don't know the word exists. Just like lots of people have lived successful poly relationships without knowing there's an actual term for it.
For example, I have met many "bisexuals" who like women and men equally and also like transsexuals. After those are all crossed off your list, there isn't really much left to be turned-off by, gender-wise...
Of the other pansexuals I've spoken with, all seem to identify roughly the same way as I do. It's all about "the spark" and it's either there or it isn't, but whether it's there is independent of your sex or gender.
I most definitely think of it as incorrect when people refer to me as bisexual, and I make a point of informing them. 95% of the time, they have never heard the term pansexual, and had always just assumed that's what bisexual meant. Oh, how I do love breaking people's brains...
I have met a few bisexuals who understand the concept of pansexuality and have decided that no, they're bisexual not pansexual. I'm thinking in particular of my one friend who is open to romantic relationships with women, but only sexual relationships with men other than her husband. I don't know how she feels about transsexuals. In her case, she married her high school boyfriend and later discovered that she had attractions to women. She told him that she had to explore that, and if he couldn't accept it, she had to leave him. So for her, it was very much about a romantic dichotomy: to be satisfied emotionally, she feels that she needs to be in romantic relationships with one man and one woman. Since she's already married to a man, she's got that box filled, so she had to go out and find herself a woman. I suspect she's exactly the kind of person for whom this "bi-monogamous" term was coined.
It seems to me, a non-bisexual, that a component of bisexuality is the desire for both men AND women... an appreciation of the uniqueness of each gender, the soft caress of a woman, the firm grasp of a man... the Motherliness of a woman, the Fatherliness of a man... Of course, it could also be all about tits'n'cock! Again, just my observations as not "one of those," so if any bisexuals want to disagree, I fully welcome it.
Just throwing this into the mix: I have actually met bisexuals who have said they would not be attracted to a transsexual. To me, this reinforces my belief that bisexuals are attracted to the
cisgendered aspects of both men and women, rather than indifferent to gender.
For bisexuals who aren't attracted specifically to the Manly aspects of men and the Womanly aspects of women, but rather are just easy-going either way... where do you draw the line? No transgendered? What about cross-dressers? And where-oh-where do
gender-fluids fit into your world?