To mark Pansexual Pride Day, Lu Hobden (they/them) pens a message of support to their TransPan family
First off, Happy Pansexual Pride Day to all my wonderful pan family!
I am pansexual and agender, which means my experience is a little bit different to those who are cis, or somewhere else on the trans spectrum.
The absence of gender can and has made some people who aren’t pan change their mind about even wanting to know me – let alone be in a relationship or any other way involved with me. I think it’s because I don’t easily fit into a box. From one day to the next I can look very androgynous, femme or masc and the extremes, purely because what I’m wearing that day feels comfortable or I feel like I look good.
And who doesn’t want to feel they look good?
Some find it hard to figure out their way around wanting to use the word “partner” or the seriousness of “significant other” and that seems to stop things in their tracks. Others just can’t understand how someone could exist without gender.
But it’s not all bad and often my gender identity and my sexual orientation have collided in a good way. I have no gender which means it doesn’t affect how I view other people, regardless of who or what they are or what they want their pronouns to be.
My way of communicating this is: “People not parts. Why would gender matter to me when I don’t have any myself?”
People are attractive to me – not the parts they may or may not have”
I live my life outside of gender. Someone else’s gender doesn’t influence whether they’re attractive or to me or not.
This has been a fairly recent revelation. I only realised I was pan during the lockdown of 2020 and had understood myself as bisexual for years but I realised that my attraction to people was influenced by personality and gender simply didn’t come into the equation.
Pansexual made sense very quickly and I realised that by trying to force myself to present cis and narrowing my scope to man or woman wasn’t true. It wasn’t me.
People are wonderful and gorgeous. It’s not their parts that make them that way – it’s their personality. That’s me. People not parts.
There’s still so much panphobia around, and misunderstanding about what pan means, even within the LGBTQIA+ community. That’s why Pan Pride Day is so important – to reach out to all and to show people that they are not alone and regardless of gender (or absence of) the pansexual community is a very loving and welcoming place to be.
Today is a day for all pansexual people. Remember, you are all amazing and strong whether you’re out or not. You are valid. You matter. You are wonderful just how you are and please never change because of other people trying to convince you otherwise.
To my fellow TransPan friends, you’ve got this. We’ve got this. We are tough and we are powerful. You’re not alone and we fight together. Enjoy this day and spread the word of #PansexualPrideDay.