Pangender

Pangender is a term for people who feel that they cannot be labeled as male or female in gender. As such it has a great deal of overlap with genderqueer. Pangendered people feel that they do not fit into binary genders, instead identifying as mixed gender (both male and female) or as a third gendered. The term is sometimes used by some in the LGBT community, such as the Radical Faeries to be one that is inclusive, meaning "all genders".

Whereas sex refers to someone's anatomy, gender refers either to gender identity or gender role, which are roles and qualities that society associates with being either men or women.

Pangender individuals are happy living "in between" and have no desire to live exclusively as one gender or the other, which makes the group a distinct minority within the transgendered population. In some cases, pangender individuals are born with the physical sex characteristics of either males or females, but frequently display the cases, outward appearance, behavior and/or clothing of the opposite gender. In other cases, a pangendered individual is born intersex.

Because gender identification is so closely intertwined with sexual gratification in western culture, the sexuality of pangendered individuals is difficult to discuss. For example, terms such as "homosexual" have little meaning when applied to a pangendered individual - is the person only attracted to other pangendered individuals, or are they attracted to the person who are the same gender as their birth certificate proclaims their sex to be (even intersex individuals are frequently assigned one of the two dominant genders at birth)?

Pangendered individuals, as well as transsexuals, are sometimes dismissed as fetishists ignoring the issue of gender identification altogether.