A so ee
(P: aruife

 

By Justin Stock and Helen Clay

Asexual Visibility Day. The Douglas College Pride Collective

will be in the concourse of the New Westminster Campus in
support of this effort. To give some background information on these
often poorly understood topics, Justin explains what pansexuality
means and Helen writes about asexuality.

ik February 17" marks the world’s first Pansexual and

Pansexuality, bisexuality and me

Pansexuality is defined as an orientation characterized by possible
romantic or sexual attraction to members of all genders. Many

people ask me if that just means I’m bisexual: in a word, no. Part of
pansexuality is including people that fall out of the gender binary (i.e.
either male or female). The prefix “bi” indicates two, whereas “pan”

is a Greek word meaning “all”. Pansexuality is a new concept to many
people, and indeed up until last year | was unaware of the full range of
genders.

One of the key ways to understand pansexuality is to re-evaluate
your view of gender. The first thing to recognize is the difference
between sex and gender. Sex is biological: your chromosomes,
hormones and genitalia; whereas gender is a social role you usually
(but not always) fulfill according to your sex. Gender identity is your
perception of yourself as male, female, both, neither, or perhaps mixed.

Transgender is an umbrella term that covers a variety of people.
Trans means “to change” so transgender is to change your gender.

A transsexual is someone who identifies full-time as a gender that is
different from their biological sex. Many (but not all) transsexuals opt
for hormones and/or surgery to varying degrees, medically changing
their sex to line up with their gender identity.

Transgender also covers cross-dressers and drag kings and
queens. Cross-dressers are people who wear clothing traditionally
considered inappropriate for their gender, for example, men wearing
dresses. Typically cross-dressers don’t permanently identify as
members of the gender they are cross-dressing as, but may do so
temporarily while in the persona of the other gender. People that cross
dress typically do it for self-pleasure and not to entertain others. Drag
kings and queens are people who dress as members of a gender other
than their own to entertain, usually for an audience, and may or may
not identify as transgendered.

Beyond these categories of transgendered, there are people who
permanently reject the gender binary of male or female and have a

12