a 1 minute read…

Hey everyone,

I am Ymke and I identify as pansexual. As you all hopefully know, pansexual does not mean an attraction to pans (even though I love my wok pan), it means being attracted to a person regardless of their gender identity!

Personally, it took me quite some time to find a fitting label for my attraction and me being queer in any way didn't come to my attention until I was 16 years old. I first thought that I was bisexual because of my attraction to multiple genders, but after a few years I realised that the gender of the person I am dating does not matter as much to me and that I am more interested in what kind of person they are.

The attraction to multiple genders makes pansexual seem similar to bisexuality, which is an attraction to more than one genders (this does not mean that they are equally attracted to those genders). However, this does not always include all genders and for a part of the bisexuals, gender matters.

But anyways, when I came out as bisexual to my parents one of them started laughing and one of them asked "Is this because of the internet?". This pushed me back into the closet a bit and it made it harder for me to explore my sexuality. Nowadays they are of course fine with me being pansexual, but their first reaction has had a big impact on how I deal with my queerness and how I expect others to react.

Luckily I have grown a lot since then and I can say that I am now secure in my pansexuality. Besides that I also find it really amazing to be able to fall in love with people regardless of their gender

Happy pan visibility day!