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I’m pan, and I think of it like this:
Pan means you’re attracted to people regardless of their gender. Bi means you’re attracted to more than one gender.
No hate though, if anyone else defines them differently. That’s just how I see it.
Yea, pan here, too. That’s how I always understood it. Gets a bit more nuanced though, when you include omnisexuality.
Omnisexuality??? Ok, I accept that as Gen X I’m old. I grew up stating I was Bi because that’s the term we had at the time. Now I still say Bi, but clarify “or really Pan as the kids call it nowadays because I believe all the toys in toy box are fun to play with and I value the person (and personality) over plumbing”. Now what is Omni?
Omni people don’t like mixing Greek and Latin.
Or they really hate flutes
Generally, it’s described as:
Bi: attraction to more than one gender
Pan: attraction regardless of gender
Omni: attraction to all gendersThe difference between pan and omni is small and they’re often used synonymously. Most people I know, that fall into this category, identify as either bi or pan. Omni is exceedingly rare but it’s also not that new. I remember it already being an established thing when I first read about it almost a decade ago.
Edit: formatting
So what would be attraction to a specific band of aesthetic characteristics independent of sex or gender be?
Depends on the band. There are words for only attracted to fem guys and women, or masc women and men, but i forget them. Im sure someones made a word for other bands too
Androsexuality and gynosexuality. Honestly I would like those even if I wasn’t bi, much clearer than heterosexual/homosexual. Also they work better with nonbinary people
I cannot answer you that but there are certainly labels that describe specific cases of that.
I think of it like this: bi is attraction to masc men and fem women.
Pan is attraction to all configurations of gender, genitals, and presentation.
Nah, people like twinks and femboys also more likely to call themselves bi.
That definition of bisexuality would exclude 100% of the bisexual people I know, including myself. I don’t think it’s grounded in any sort of reality for bisexual people.
yeah, this is how i’ve always seen it
I never thought of that because I never tried to define it. I’m just happy you found something that makes you happy.
Debating identity definitions 😞
Accepting that identities are fluid definitions we made up 😎
Correct! “Whatever floats your boat as long as it’s consensual, just be safe and have fun” should be the only thing we need.
Agreed.
But humans are humans, and a big part of our wiring is forming tribes and excluding people from those tribes. Thus the exponential proliferation of classifications.
Fair point!
Then I’ll adjust my initial statement to: " ‘whatever floats your boat’ should be the way we approach any identity as long as it’s all consensual, be safe and have fun."
Removed by mod
Basic answer: Bi likes two and maybe more, where Pan explicitly likes any, which you use just show’s your starting point.
Real answer: Those who resonate with using Bi as a label likely started or wants to start on a common level of understanding of LGBT, whereas people who resonate with Pan start deep into LGBT discourse.
True answer: It’s which flag you like better.
True answer: It’s which flag you like better
My bi ass feels called out by this, so I’m going to say that makes you based
I spent a while trying to find a simple answer to this. I think it’s most easily interpreted as:
Bi: Implies you like both of the genders. No real preference.
Pan: implies you recognize there is a range of masculinity and femininity, and of course cis and trans, and thus you are attracted to a range of genders. Not explicitly feminine or masculine, but likes anyone on the spectrum of genders.
bisexuality isn’t inherently transphobic!
not saying you’re necessarily implying that, but it’s a general stereotype which, while it can be true on an individual level, certainly isn’t when taken as a whole
here’s the bisexual manifesto, also, since it goes hard: https://bitheway.carrd.co/#manifesto
Oooh I had not seen that. With this in mind, I have to just assume that pan came about not knowing that bi had already by definition not limited to the two typical genders.
I had not thought bi to be transphobic, nor that bisexuals actually fit into interest in just two separate genders. I just thought it was perhaps an outdated term that sounds that way. Thank you for the clarification!
There really needs to be more discussion on this stuff. I only recently discovered the terms gynosexual and androsexual. Those could have been super useful when I was younger.
I’ve heard some people describe pansexuality as being attraction without regard to gender. This makes intuitive sense to me, speaking as a bisexual whose attraction to different genders feels different qualitatively
Isn’t that omni? I’m attracted to all people but like you the differences hits different so omni feels like a better fit than pan, but I still call myself pan or bi because nobody knows what the hell omni is.
Is there a label that includes everyone except golfers? Asking for a friend.
Perhaps. Being neither pansexual nor omnisexual, I don’t feel especially well equipped to comment on this, but I get the sense that the semantic relationship between “pansexual” and “omnisexual” is probably similar to the relationship between bisexuality and pansexuality. That is to say, effectively being synonyms, except for subtle distinctions that can contextually matter to the people who identify as those things. So like, I would say that “bisexual ≈ pansexual” and “pansexual ≈ omnisexual”. Like if I were to think of this in terms of the evolutionary relationships between words, it feels like the concepts of pansexuality and omnisexuality are more closely related than omnisexuality and bisexuality.
Like I say though, I don’t have a good personal sense of what the distinction between pan and omni is — though I’m realising that this may be an opportunity to develop my understanding. Are you able to articulate what it is about “omnisexual” that resonates with you more than “pansexual”? My personal experience with labels is that finding a more specific one that feels like it fits better is that the better label hits more of the right notes than the previous label — so what I’m asking is what notes does omnisexual hit that pansexual doesn’t (or what notes does “pansexual” hit that don’t feel right for you?).
To give an example of what I mean about things fitting better, I find that whilst I still readily identify as bisexual, I find that “queer” better captures my vibe nowadays, because it gets at the fact that my preferred mode of relationships is actively anti-heteronormative (even when in a straight-passing relationship)
You articulated that better than I could. For the pan/omni difference, for me it is the pan “gender blind or not seeing gender” definition that feels slightly dissonant. I appreciate all gender presentations and genitalia in different combinations and find it interesting and sexy and definitely part of the equation and I feel pan misses the mark on that. It’s mostly an academic distinction to me but someone coined the term because they felt it was an important enough distinction to warrant a different term so it’s clearly important to some. Who am I to disagree?
I think the main problem here is that even people within the community confuse “sex” with “gender”.
Sex is a biological concept. According to biology, mammals have two sexes. Period.
Gender is a social/cultural/psychological concept. There’s a whole spectrum of genders.
Wouldn’t that mean that “bisexual” is someone attracted to the physical/biological attributes of of both sexes, while “pansexual” is someone attracted to the range of social/cultural/psychological attributes on the gender spectrum?
I think you’re missing nuance with ‘mammals have two sexes. Period’ - there’s a range of intersex possibilities, chromosomes that don’t match organs, chromosomes that aren’t xx or xy (e.g xxy), genetic chimeras with more than one set of sex chromosomes. What you mean is ‘usually’
This is somewhat of a tangent to your point, but this is a really cool article that looks over how human biological sex is more complex than most realise: https://scatter.wordpress.com/2022/01/30/sex-as-a-social-construct/
I like this approach because it is quite disruptive to the framework that you describe, wherein sex and gender can be simplified by understanding them as completely separate, and sex framed as a simple binary. To be clear, this isn’t me saying you’re wrong; I like the phrase “all models are wrong, some are useful”. I also think that the model you describe is also one that I sometimes find useful in talking about this stuff, even if I think it’s an oversimplification. I like things that disrupt this simplicity because I’m a big nerd who also happens to be a scientist in a different side of the life sciences — I used to think of science as something we could apply to the world to get the unruly chaos of life to obey our understanding. Increasingly, I think that we could do with being a bit more humble and realising how many of the things we think we’ve solved actually have hidden layers of complexity. I think this is very cool and exciting, because I am a massive nerd.
My understanding is that the bi in bisexual never refered to two genders, it’s always been about homo- and heterosexual
Easy: bisexual people are REALLY into cycling and pansexual people can’t contain their lust for Andean flute music.
From my experience this is honestly as good as any other definition in this thread.
How about pansexuals who just say bisexual because there is better chance that people will actually know what you’re talking about
(Just in casual conversation with strangers, obviously.)
I honestly think this is the most common scenario. Both people who self-describe as bi and pan will have varying preferences, and I think it’s typically more about audience and communication than any universally definable difference.
This is similar to how a binary bi or pan person who tends to date people of the same sex or gender might self-describe as gay; they’re not creating a binding contract when they do so, rather they’re providing an easily-digestible description of their sexual or romantic character to others.
Hi, that’s me.
Although even “pansexual” is a shortcut. I think my actual sexuality needs hyperbolic geometry to explain.
Ah, a Lobachevskysexual.
I think at this point I’ve seen far more people who identify as pansexual than bisexual.
literally me
yes
I suspect in the long ago, there may have been some drama about bi implying only two, and people taking exception to that but we have since moved on after realizing it was a stupid argument. There were far more important things to argue about, like kink at pride.
Yeah, I’m bisexual because I need either a penis or a vagina for sex. I’ve run into others saying that this makes me transphobic, but as an AFAB agender person, I find it deeply disturbing that there’s “progressives” out there who’ll admit they can’t respect me as a person if they don’t want to fuck me.
Yeah you’d think the community would be a little more accepting of people who don’t fit a strict definition, or don’t present a certain way.
But it’s just as judgemental and gatekeepy as every other community. You have to present a certain way or say you’re a certain thing to fit in. It’s very depressing and has made me even more cynical.
Honestly, I find most of the judgemental and gatekeepy tends to come from a handful of people who never grew up. Trauma tends to create a sort of arrested development, and people can mentally get ‘stuck’ at the maturity they were when it happened. Gatekeeping is a form of cope, where they function under the belief that if their criteria is narrow enough, they’ll be safe.
It’s the idea that if you can make a group where everybody is exactly like you, you’ll all get along. It’s flawed logic, because there are always parts of you that you don’t like, and it’s even more aggravating when you see your flaws in others, but it makes sense to me.
For a very long time I would respond to questions about my sexuality with “I don’t like labels”. I wasn’t being glib or evasive, I just didn’t like how diminishing it was to reduce my entire life’s experience and decisions to one word. I tend to interpret the more creative labels people come up with in the same vein. For me, trying to enforce a rigid definition on other people’s self-labelling misses the point entirely.
Is your stalac tight or full of might?
In my opinion they mean the same thing. I identify as bi because I like the flag more.
Same. Also, “bi” is only two letters and I’m lazy.
Based take
It’s so funny that the queer community debates this when we could really just ask the average non-queer person to clarify it for us, and you’ll find out that it really just means that we’re confused and actually we’re just gay.
Hey now, that’s not always true! Some of us are confused and just seeking attention.
Yeah, back in the day people really cared whether someone was octoroon or mulatto.
Today, many people are going to have to look up those terms.
They are going to find that Archer ringtone.
I know this might surprise you, but there is a small minority of the population that hasn’t watched every episode of every show ever made.
For those poor souls, it might be nice to add a link so they know what in G$d’s name you are talking about.
All you had to do was ask. No need to get incensed.
Does anyone else wonder how people like this survive in the real world? Like, they tilt themselves into a stroke over a reference to a song about asses in a cartoon when they could’ve just typed it into a search bar and giggled for 10 seconds like everyone else.
Also censorship is for fascists, let’s knock that shit off
Does anyone else wonder how people like this survive in the real world? Like, they tilt themselves into a stroke over a silly comment on the internet.
Don’t you have a comically tall sandwich to be constructing somewhere?
People are debating this because they are approaching this labels as descriptive point of view, instead of descriptive point of view.
Have you considered the descriptive point of view though?
Prescriptive* point of view, but yeah, pretty much.
Yeah, can’t speak for other sexuality labels. But I feel like Pansexual and Bisexual are practically same, and difference is simply different people using different labels that describes them more :3
Bi means someone finds male and female genders attractive (masculine or feminine). They probably aren’t attracted to androgyny or less “traditional” genders (since it becomes pan).
Pan means gender doesn’t matter. Enbies, trans people, and anyone else could be attractive.
In other words, Pan is Bi++
If we aren’t splitting hairs, they are mostly used synonymously, but “pan” is more precise for folks that open to partners regardless of their gender.
David: “I do drink red wine, but I also drink white wine and I’ve been known to sample the occasional rose and a couple summers back I tried a merlot that used to be a chardonnay which got a bit complicated.”
Pansexual is explicitly inclusive of gender having more than two options. A bisexual person might be attracted to both men and women but may not be interested in genderqueer, third gender, intersex, or other “other” category people.
bisexuality isn’t inherently transphobic!
it’s a general stereotype which, while it can be true on an individual level, certainly isn’t when taken as a whole
here’s the bisexual manifesto, also, since it goes hard: https://bitheway.carrd.co/#manifesto
Not to be confused with getlaidmites and getlaidtights. :)
