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I thought JoVo explained it very well. A pansexual loves people. They could love anyone. Bisexuality specifies that they are attracted to females and males. Anyone could technically be pansexual as long as they are open about love.

This doesn't really effect their sexual orientation. Even if a man is heterosexual and is attracted to females, they could still find love in another a male or other person technically making them pansexual to an extent. They are still heterosexual.

A bisexual person is attracted to males and females, but not all people are male or female. Just because someone is bisexual does not mean they are attracted to people other than male or female.

A pansexual person can love any kind of person and be attracted to any kind of person.

[This is completely my own interpretation]

But males and females are people, and although intersexual was recently explained to me, they still fall into the line of sexes somewhere, in my mind, allowing a bisexual to love an intersexual. And since transsexuals are also one sex, physically, and will always be one sex or another, physically, than that means if someone loves them, they are too bisexual.

The first time pansexual was explained to me, in the real world, was that pansexuals just loved a person's soul, regardless of their casing, and in that respect could love animals for their souls, since the casings didn't matter.

Having an open mind and only loving people, that is simply bisexual, to me.

So I am not spotting the difference, since you all are trying to say that pansexuals only love people... Which would make them bi.

Some are not always one or another, Q. Some only transition partway because they feel that they are neither male nor female, but are actually a mix of the two. That's where they grey area is of what exactly they call themselves, if they want to at all, some label themselves and genderqueer, self-made androgynes and other labels. About the same time is when the term "pansexual" appeared, describing people who began not caring about the differences of male and female or the technical separations of sexual orientation.

And you can live by that definition, Q. No one is going to, or can, change your mind about the current definition of terms. Bisexual, in the minds of many, has become outmoded because of the "bi-" prefix meaning only two.

Pansexuality is just trying to break the restraints of current sexual and gender-based labels. I guess taking a less romanticized and, er, spiritually based explanation would be better. Like I said above, pansexuals are saying all of the nit-picking about things like gender, the physical sex, and sexual orientation no longer matter to them and the only deciding factor is who they find themselves attracted to, not what they are.

Thank you Keithing. As I've said before, I'm not very good with words.

Aye that's a problem for me too. If you think I'm bad with words when typing you'd never want to talk to me in real life. I get nervous and stutter sometimes. To me, talking in a normal conversation is like the shy kid standing in front of the class giving an oral presentation. I always try my best to pronouce things right and to not stutter but I worry about it more and I end up speaking poorly anyways. Of course what I just said was probably entirely exagerated. I tend to exagerate my flaws. sweatdrop

That's exactly it.

The major difference between a pansexual and a bisexual is etymological rather than ontological. "Bi" means "two," implying that one's attraction, as a bisexual, is directed at two separate and intrinsically distinguishable elements, namely male and female. "Pan" means "whole," implying a holistic attraction to the entirety of the human race. It deemphasizes the separation between the genders because it sees this separation as a fallacious construct that has become ingrained in every human culture and language over millennia of conditioning and is based upon a biological imperative that we, as humans, are capable of overcoming, that is, the inextricable longing to reproduce as much and with as many mates as possible.

Bisexuals and pansexuals, for the most part, comprise the same groups of people. The former word is just more common, and the latter more correct.

Well, there's a least one more thing (which I think is worth noting). Those people who identify as pansexual are pretty much gaurunteed to be comfortable with concepts such as transexuality, intersexuality, and etc (and to be willing to allow themselves to be attracted to the people those concepts pertain to). With those who identify as bisexual, there is no such gauruntee.