Celebrating Pansexual Visibility Day

Today is Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness and Visibility Day. Like many aspects of my identity, pan wasn’t a word that was around when I was growing up.

I knew I was gay by the time I was 14 or 15 but didn’t know anyone else who was, or have anyone to talk to about it. I didn’t know anything about Section 28. I just assumed no-one else I knew was also gay. I didn’t know that none of the adults around me were allowed to talk about it. The arrival of the internet meant I was able to start talking to other gay people online and I counted down the days to going to university so I could actually meet other gay people.

I was unapologetically out at university. I was in a steady relationship with a girl for almost 3 years and we didn’t hide that we were going out together. Then she met someone else and I moved for work. I dated a bit but didn’t find anyone and then moved for work again.

I was absolutely devoted to my career. The hours were long, the job high pressure, and I loved it. I didn’t have much of a social life but had a couple of short relationships with men. And gradually, I slipped back into the closet.

When I moved to Cambridge, almost 20 years ago, I was only out to one person. When I met my now husband, she used to call him Simone. And then I got married and found that everyone assumed I was straight.

During lockdown we watched Schitt’s Creek. It was the first time I heard the term pansexual and I realised that it felt right to me.

In a way it doesn’t matter. I’m in a very happy relationship. But whenever I find myself in conversations where it’s assumed everyone else is straight I feel invisible. And that’s 99% of the time.

It would be easy at this point in my life to stick with being straight-passing. But queer rights are under threat. I honestly thought life was getting better. There are so many LGBTQ+ characters on TV now and I can read books with people like me in, which when I was a teenager was something you had to go to a specific store in London to find. I follow lots of brilliant people online. I felt very much like we were accepted but over the past couple of years there’s been a shift.

Politicians have jumped on being ‘woke’ as a wedge issue, as if being a nice person is somehow bad, and LGBTQ+ people are suffering as a result. The UK has fallen 6 places in the ranking of the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Europe. It is now 22nd out of 49 countries. The world feels less safe.

And I think the only way to counter that is by being visible. By saying we’re here, and you know us. Yes, we’re a minority but that doesn’t mean we don’t matter.

So happy Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness and Visibility Day! Here’s to us!