LGBTQ: Pansexuality

I received a comment on my post Easter/Atheism from a guy named Markus who stated: "In this post you say you're pansexual but in previous posts you said you were bisexual.  Are they the same thing?  What is pansexuality?"  I received a question asking what pansexuality was after my presentation yesterday as well.  It appears that pansexuality is mostly unknown and confusing.

In order to understand what a sexual orientation is I think you first need to understand what gender is.  Many people confuse gender with biological sex.  Gender is how you view yourself.  Biological sex is determined by what parts you have or even more basically whether you have an XY(male) or XX(female) chromosome.  Usually your gender aligns with your biological sex but many times it doesn't.

To put it in the simplest terms:
Gender is what you view yourself as including but not limited to male, female, both male and female, neither male nor female regardless of biological sex
Bisexuals are attracted to men and women
Pansexuals can also be called onmisexual and are attracted to all genders
Polysexuals are attracted to more than one but less than all genders

So when I say that I'm pansexual, I'm also bisexual by default (and lesbian and straight).  As a pansexual I can be romantically attracted to any person regardless of their gender or biological sex.  I have dated a bisexual man, a female-to-male transgender man, a straight man, a lesbian woman, and a person who defined themselves as neither man nor woman.  So basically to answer the question, a pansexual is always bisexual but a bisexual is not necessarily pansexual.