Asexuality/pansexuality petition

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http://www.petitiononline.com/asm55579/petition.html

This is a petition for the inclusion of asexuality and pansexuality as sexual orientation options on social networking sites. I'm not going to waste time explaining what these are (the page contains such an explanation), but if you want a more detailed discussion I would suggest you view this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRkaPYe9fLw

What makes you think that the billion dollar Facebook is interested in respecting Asexual people. Sure, if they made a million every week from it, then they would be interested.

The least we can do is try.

Don't be so damned defeatist.

Asexuals must find the internet to be awefully boring.

From you definition, I fail to perceive the distinction between a "bisexual" and a "pansexual"

There is a difference between physical sex and psychological gender.
Physical sex is at least partially binary (though not entirely - ask an intersex person). Gender, however, is in the head, and is not binary at all. It is a spectrum, or a cloud.

The term "bisexual" assumes the existence of only two categories of people to be sexual towards; the term "pansexual" does not.

What other categories of people exist towards whom to be sexual?

Bisexuals are limited to adult humans (of either gender) but-my guess is if you're pansexual any mammal will do- maybe even a car door would do!
Just a guess.

Signed!

As I just explained, gender is not binary. Not everyone fits into the psychological boxes of "man" and "woman."

But what does that MEAN in plain English?
Give us an example please.

"Plain English" is not very good at describing gender.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genderqueer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_variance (although this article needs some improvement)

Genderqueer and generally gender-nonconforming people are excluded by a mentality which conflates sex (body) with gender (mind), posits feminine women and masculine men as the only valid targets of desire, and ignores the existence of anyone in-between - non-binary transgender people, androgynes, butch women and femme men, genderqueers and people who simply don't limit their desire according to a binary view of gender.

Gender is a matter of deeply felt internal identity; it is linked to the body, of course, but the link is a lot more complicated (and in some cases, much more tenuous) than most people assume. The term "bisexual" glosses over all this messiness in favor of a limited and constrictive, almost retrograde view; that being the case, "pansexual" is preferred by many. I use "queer," myself, although I'll identify as pansexual if pressed.

The derisive comments about car doors etc. are not appreciated.

Gender is almost completely a social construction. I am female and happy being so, but I am not particularly feminine. Neither am I particularly masculine. I have psychological features of both stereotypes, probably steering towards the feminine because social conditioning has worked on me to a certain extent, just not as much as on my neurotypical sisters for example. I am also bisexual when I am not being asexual (the latter most of the time). When I am attracted to someone, it is the person that counts and their physical sex or gender is irrelevant (the attraction tends to be mental rather than physical). Generally I like quite androgenous people anyway though - I find strong gender stereotypes very unattractive in both sexes (or indeed any evidence that people have pandered [subconsciously] to social constructs - basically means that they are too different to myself to be viable partners).

This is a sensible position - although I probably believe in a little more biological basis for gender than you do, and I would make room for some people simply being naturally inclined to masculinity or femininity, regardless of cultural gender enforcement.

There isn't really a proper sexual orientation option on facebook though really. And the "interested in" thing is optional, so you don't have to put anything if you don't feel happy with the options. Whereas gender isn't optional. So I think having an "other" option for gender is more important than adding asexuality or pansexuality

And pansexuality differs from bisexuality in that bisexuals are (obviously) attracted to two sexes/genders - male/female. Pansexual means someone who's capable of being attracted to someone regardless of sex or gender, including people who don't fit in to either

Oops, just noticed this is for social networking sites in general and not just facebook. But I still think sexuality is almost always optional, whereas gender/sex hardly ever is

The point is that pans and aces shouldn't have to put that they don't know or "other" whereas everyone else can identify their orientation.