I’m not straight. I’m not gay. I’m not bisexual. I fall into a largely misunderstood category of people. I am pansexual.

Many people hear the word pansexual and come up with the same tired joke about frying pans. I’m guilty of making these jokes myself. It’s understandable; people often make jokes about things they don’t understand or that are outside of what they view as normal.

Pansexuality has nothing to do with cooking implements. In her thesis My Most Authentic Self, Ashley Marie Green defines pansexuality as potential sexual attraction to individuals of all genders.

Narrow-minded people may be confused about how that differs from bisexuality. Simply put, pansexuals are not so much attracted to men and women, but to people, regardless of gender.

We can want to lick the sweat from Ryan Reynolds’ abs, to feel Scarlett Johansson’s lips against ours or fall in love with the genius of Stephen Hawking. That’s not to say, of course, that physical attraction is meaningless.

Personally, I care much less about a person’s gender than I do about the humanity inside them or how attractive I find them.

Later in her thesis, Green talks about how pansexuality is more of a “sexual borderland” and that it doesn’t fit neatly between the perceived binary of heterosexual and homosexual. It is both and neither; it is fluid in a way that other identities are not.

Even amongst the LGBTQ+ community, I’ve not often felt represented, though that’s likely just my own experience. It probably doesn’t help that the term pansexual has only really been around for 30 years.

I am glad that the world seems to be heading towards a more progressive attitude in general. It gives me hope that in another 30 years, pansexuality will be just as prevalent in modern parlance as homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual are today.

In any case, this is not me coming out to the world at large. For as long as I have known about my orientation, I’ve never hid it. I just hope that reading this can help somebody to discover their own identity.

Don’t be afraid if your identity doesn’t match what society tells you it should. Embrace your differences and fight for the representation that you deserve.