The 24th May marks Pansexual and Panromantic awareness and visibility day. These are two terms that not everyone might be conscious of so an awareness and visibility day such as this is really important. So what do these two terms mean?

Pansexual people – people who are attracted to others regardless of their gender identity or biological sex.

Panromantic people – people who are romantically (not necessarily sexually) attracted to others regardless of their gender identity or biological sex.

So is pansexual the same as bisexual? Not exactly – bisexual (bi) and pansexual (pan) are similar but there is a difference. Bisexual means to be attracted to your own gender and other genders (some people think it means to be attracted to both men and women, but this isn’t always the case and can include non-binary people). Pansexual means to be attracted to all genders so someone’s gender doesn’t factor into attraction when someone is pan.