An energetic circus student who loves Cap’n Crunch cereal and cartoons, Vaughnjareya J. Faulkner is known for wearing an extremely colorful selection of wigs and makeup and he is always mistaken for a girl.

“But that’s okay,” he says. “Because gender is just another way for society to keep everyone from being viewed as human. I’m really pansexual, not just gay. I like everything. I don’t discriminate.”

Pansexuality is an openness to all sexual behavior. Whether it's gay, straight or bi-sexual, most people correlate their sexual identity with which gender they are attracted to. Pansexuals, however, are open to sexual relationships not with just males and females but with transsexuals, intersex and those with biological sexual differences.

Born biologically female, Faulker grew up a middle child in southwest Louisiana and came out as a lesbian to his mom when he was 11. “We weren’t raised to be male or female,” he says. “I played with all kinds of toys.”

He discovered he had a hormone imbalance during puberty when he grew breasts, became hairy and his voice dropped. After a few years and some experimentation he realized he liked both men and women and felt more comfortable identifying as a man with his low voice and unfeminine figure. That’s when he decided to tell his mother he thought he was intersex.

“I think my mom knew - she just didn’t want to accept it,” he says. His mom has recently stopped sending him feminine clothes but continues to send make-up. He doesn’t mind the make-up, because he loves to dress goth but would prefer purples, greens and black instead of the pastels his mom sends.

Faulkner met and fell in love with Alexia, a male to female transsexual, during Hurricane Rita in 2005 and came to live with her in Union City shortly after. When he was with her she pressured him to be a preppy, straight male, which he agreed to but always felt uncomfortable. When they broke up, Faulkner moved to San Francisco in order to express his sexuality more freely than his Bible-Belt-upbringing allowed. “I tell people I’m a gay male because people don’t know what pansexual is.”

Jess Hooton, the creator of the MySpace group “Sexual Orientation Definitions and Discussion,” which has almost 1,400 carefully selected members, defines pansexual as “a sexual orientation characterized by a potential aesthetic attraction, romantic love and/or sexual desire for anybody, including those people who do not fit into the gender binary of male/female implied by bisexual attraction.”

The term pansexual also refers to a resistance to acknowledge socially constructed gender roles. Pansexuals choose a partner for who they are and work with whatever sex organs are available when the time comes. However, Amy Sueyoshi, Assistant Professor of Human Sexuality Studies at SF State, says that gender roles have always been challenged in the queer community and that this characteristic isn’t necessarily unique to pansexuals.

Pansexuals often have an open outlook on sexual behavior, usually considering any consensual sex act acceptable. Some also perceive all activities and experiences as sexual or believe that all human behavior stems from the sex drive.

Jane Bogart, Coordinator for Health Promotion at UCSC and author of the book, Sexploration (Penguin, 2006), refuses to define pansexuality and generally lets individuals define their own sexuality.

“When you define something you put restrictions on it,” says Bogart. “By identifying as pansexual people are expressing a desire for a different label than those that already exist, one without predetermined stigmas attached. They are also embracing the fact that sexuality is more fluid than the categorical approach society takes.”

“By identifying as pansexual,” continues Bogart, “people are defying social pressure to categorize their sexuality.”

However, the label pansexual is a category in itself. But labels are often created to measure social inequalities, points out Sueyoshi, and at the same time to create a straight, uniform order in society.

“They give some people power and take it away from others. Usually, if the label comes from the top down, it’s restrictive, but if it comes from the bottom up, it provides a sense of community,” she says.

By rejecting society’s given labels, pansexuals are forming their own sense of community around the desire to not be pigeonholed.

“Choosing an identity should be a source of freedom, not pain,” says Sueyoshi. “Your actions don’t determine your identity; it’s how you choose to identify yourself…it’s a creative time in terms of sexual identity. Queer people are creating names for themselves more than before…Heteronormativity is being questioned.”

In general, Faulkner enjoys being a gender-bender and says, “being androgynous can be fun.” His current partner is also intersex and identifies as female. But Faulkner has no desire to get surgery or hormone injections. He doesn’t see the point in creating male genitalia that doesn’t work when the female genitalia he has works just fine and will come in handy when he decides to have kids. And he has all the male hormones he needs.

Faulkner identifies as pansexual because he says he’s open and respecting to more than just the two genders society created. “In the Bible it says to ‘love thy neighbor’ regardless of what they are,” he says. “In society you’re either male or female. In the queer community you’re either gay or bisexual. I love everybody for who they are, regardless.”