Mary Gonzalez Is Texas' First Pansexual RepresentativePosted: August 13, 2012
By H. Scott English
http://www.inquisitr.com/300072/mary-gonzalez-is-texas-first-pansexual-representative/When Mary Gonzalez was elected to the Texas House of Representatives as an open lesbian, it was thought she broke some serious barriers. This time she may have broken some national barriers as well. Gonzalez is the first politician in the country to openly identify herself as a "pansexual".
Gonzalez tells the Dallas Voice that she instead identifies herself as "pansexual." While the term pansexual is easily confused with the term bisexual, Gonzalez explains that this isn't the case. This is because pansexuals don't believe in a gender binary and are attracted to all gender identities.
Gonzalez said that she doesn't believe in any preconceived gender binary because "gender identity isn't the defining part of my attraction." She doesn't believe she is solely a lesbian either because she has dated transgender people and other types of "gender-queer" people.
Mary Gonzalez comes out as pansexualPosted on 10 Aug 2012 at 9:00am
by ANNA WAUGH | Staff Writer
http://www.dallasvoice.com/mary-gonzalez-pansexual-10123439.htmlTexas' only openly LGBT legislator will be nation's 1st out pansexual elected official, after saying she rejects both 'lesbian' and 'bisexual'
After coming out as bisexual at 21, Gonzalez said a few years later she started dating "gender-queer" and transgender people, and later identified as pan.
"As I started to recognize the gender spectrum and dated along the gender spectrum, I was searching for words that connected to that reality, for words that embraced the spectrum," she said. "At the time I didn't feel as if the term bisexual was encompassing of a gender spectrum that I was dating and attracted to."
Gonzalez was the focus of a Dallas Voice cover story in late June. The article referred to her as gay, lesbian and openly LGBT, because while Gonzalez had disclosed privately that she was pansexual, she had not granted the newspaper permission to use that term.
After the article's publication, Gonzalez informed Dallas Voice that she still didn't embrace the term lesbian and was comfortable coming out as pansexual.
"During the campaign if I had identified as pansexual, I would have overwhelmed everyone," she said this week, adding that people don't know what being pan means. "Now that I'm out of the campaign, I'm completely much more able to define it."
