“Yes, I am bi. And I would even say that I am pan”. Guest of the program “Les Rencontres du Papotin” broadcast this weekend on France 2, the queen of French pop Angèle confided in her ityusing terms still too little known to the general public.
The proof : the Larousse dictionary (in its online version) is not very clear on the subject, and defines panism as “the libido explanation of all human phenomena”.
The explanation is simpler in the mouth of the Belgian singer: “I can fall in love with a boy or a girl, witha non-binary, transgender person. It is not a choice (…). It’s just someone. The feeling of love, having butterflies in the belly, girl or boy, for me it’s the same. »
An explanation confirmed by author Kim Rice, in the Encyclopedia of Human ity (2015): “Panity is defined as , emotional, romantic attraction or spiritual for others regardless of their biological sex, gender expression or orientation”.
Angèle, Christine and the Queens, Miley Cyrus…
Like ity or heteroity, panity is a orientation in its own right. Not to be confused with biity, which corresponds to attraction either for women or for men, thus excluding people from what is regularly called “the third sex” or any other gender. The etymology of the two words makes it easy to remember: “bi” can be translated as “two”, while “pan” means “all” in Greek.
The difference remains, in fact, tenuous. Pans can, for example, claim to belong to the LGBT community, under the letter B, originally corresponding to bis. Panity, on the other hand, has its own flag with three horizontal stripes. It is commonly accepted that the first, pink, represents the woman, the third, blue, represents the man, and in the middle a yellow band for the other genders.
According to sociologist Arnaud Alessandrin, a specialist in the subject, the phenomenon arrived in France in the 1990s, but has really been developing in the territory since the 2010s. His survey carried out with the ociation Lutte contre les discriminations (LCD) shows that, out of 1,147 LGBTI people, the term “pan” accounted for 7.1% of responses, the vast majority among people under 30 years old.
On the celebrity side, singer Christine and the Queens was the first star in France to talk about her panity on television in 2014 in We are not lying, on France 2. Two years later, superstar Miley Cyrus also confided to Variety magazine, hating the word “bi” because “it locked him in a box”. In 2018, American singer Janelle Monae did the same in an interview for Rolling Stones magazine. It’s now Angèle’s turn: “I’m delighted if I can help. I don’t want to hide it because I find it important to talk about it and make it a normal subject. »