Author Archives: Clio Toogood

I am a party member and activist in Trafford

New words, old prejudices

By Clio Toogood | Wed 27th May 2020 - 2:00 pm

A friend shared a tweet with me from pink news yesterday; it highlighted Layla Moran’s coming out story for Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness and Visibility day. The comments on this tweet were a veritable smorgasbord of unkindness and prejudice. There are various themes of hate, the party, the day, Layla herself, trans people. The one that I want to focus on though is the comments that object to the word pansexual. I think these are the comments that are quite likely to seem harmless or even valid to a wider audience. They are not.

“Virtue signalling nonsense” “Pansexual? What community what? People go deeper every day; we need to start talking straight again. This is crazy” “So a new name for bisexual then?” “For those unsure, a Pansexual is someone who will will have sex with anyone with a pulse. In the old days, we called them Squaddies”. These are a few of such comments, I could go on, but frankly, it’s exhausting and demoralising.