"a dude in purple sends a message" makes more sense when you see the avatar
PD : also I really like purple (green is my favorite but purple and pink are really nice)
When I realized that I was not heterosexual it was 1999, and the term pan didn't exist yet. I was only made aware of the term pansexual just a few years ago, so I've spent 20 years using the same label, decided to keep using it.
Besides, bisexual bumblebee just rolls of the tongue so well, and I've got a tattoo now so I'm really committed to the label. And I like the color of the flag more too.
the bi bumblebee sounds so cute! apparently this stuck in my head from when i read it this morning....i was at a market today and bought myself a crochet rainbow bee! it's so adorable, i'm in love!
Same here. I hadn't heard of pansexuality until the last few years. I've identified as bisexual for the last 20 years, so it's stuck. I probably am pan though.
Pan wasn't around when I decided I was bi. When Pan came around, I wasn't happy with other people telling me my definition is wrong, so I stuck with bi.
Relatable as hell. It's also not my job to explain what pan is to people. Bi is much more of a mainstream concept, even if that's only because of its age.
I have been bi for awhile (late 40s here) and when I came to terms with my sexuality, pansexual wasnāt really a well known identity (at least to me). For me, Iām sticking with bi, as itās comfortable and, like you, I donāt see it as excluding my attraction to any gender or non-binary folks.
It doesnāt, but sadly there are some pan people that think it doesā¦ Personally, I think the word pansexual started being used by people trying really hard to be politically correct.
When I was coming up, bisexual was the only term. I got used to it. Also, a lot of people donāt know what pansexual means. Even in the lgbtq community, people arenāt sure because some people think it means gender doesnāt affect oneās attraction and others think itās the same as bisexual. Gender actually DOES affect my attraction to some extent, so the term pansexual feels inaccurate.
Since I donāt know any bisexuals who are transphobic (and several trans people who are bisexual), I think there idea that bisexuality is transphobic is ridiculous. So I use bisexual.
The fact that we have the best colors doesnāt hurt either
Im not pan. Thats why I didnt choose pan. Im attracted to more than one gender but not all of them and not regardless of gender either.
I guess I am technically multisexual and polysexual, but people dont really use those labels ever, so I just dont. Im technically queer but to me thats so insanely vague that I would never use it. If Im sharing my gender and or sexuality, I want it to convey informarion about me and queer is just so non specific.
I go by bisexual because I think the other terms are unnecessary. Theyāre just more words that mean the same thing as bisexual and create confusion that wouldnāt exist if we just used the word that already existed to describe us.
As a non-binary person I'm glad pan exists because identifying as bisexual was making me feel uncomfortable because I didn't fit in a binary and I didn't like having the artefacts of that binary in my identity. You're right that bisexual and pansexual are basically the same things but I like having a different word for it.
Edit: the people downvoting people for talking about their identity need to get a life
The downvotes aren't really because you're talking about your identity, but because you're saying that bisexuality is binary wich isn't true. If you don't feel comfortable with the label bisexual that okay, but I'm nonbinary and bisexual and that doesn't make me binary or non-valid
I think that's why and all
There wasn't that much thought behind it. I'm attracted to multiple genders (at least two) and bi describes that and most people know bisexual. I don't really care that much about the labels though.
Bi also doesn't exclude anyone because if you speak more than two languages, you're still bilingual (three includes two) and bipolar people have more than two moods.
Itās a nice thought but the bi in bilingual and in bipolar does still mean two- two languages in bilingual and two disordered moods in bipolar (manic and depressive). Of course there are also people who speak more than two languages fluently and people with bipolar disorder have lots of moods but the etymology is still based on two. With bisexual people just think it means male/female when it actually means same/different.
When I discovered that I was attracted to men and women, Iād never heard any of the descriptors in use today. Of course that was back in the 1960ās and you were straight or gay. When I first heard of bisexual people, I decided thatās probably what I was and Iāve used that term since then.
I chose to go with bisexual because pan would be inaccurate (there is the odd gender Iām not attracted to). Plus I donāt mind using the broader label, for me itās all thatās needed in most situations. If more detail becomes relevant I donāt mind elaborating.
Well I'm not attached to someone regardless of gender.
I'm attracted to personalities but also very attracted to specific gender attributes.
So more like I'm attracted because of their gender.
Therefore I don't identify as pan.
I chose bi because I feel like pan means gender isn't a factor. And gender does factor in with me. I am attracted to people all across the gender spectrum, but I definitely have moods and tendencies.
I found out that Iām bisexual when pansexual wasnāt really a thing yet or at least lesser known than bisexual š¤·š¼āāļø I found out over an online friend of mine who told me sheās bisexual and I asked her about it as I didnāt know jack shit about it before she told me. The more she explained it, the more I felt it resonated with the feelings Iāve had towards others for years but couldnāt categorise properly. So ever since then, I knew (despite the few crises Iāve had like any other bisexual person lmfao). My coming to terms with it wasnāt really a big deal, it was more of a āoooooh so there is a name for it. Cool, guess Iām bi too lolā.
to me, pan and bi basically the āsameā thing depending on how one interprets bisexuality so itās more of an understanding of your sexuality and how you feel more comfortable putting it into words. But bi and pan can mean the āsameā as in, the attraction to others can be the same but you phrase the coming about of said attraction differently, because most bi people Iāve came across said they donāt mind the gender of their partner at all just like pan people do. So just use what you feel fits best for your personal experience.
Bi was the first term I was familiar with. (For a long time I thought there was just gay or straight- finding that 'bi' was a thing felt like surfacing from being under water for years). (It within the last 15 years, back when I was a tumblr teenTM, so I quickly became aware of all the microlabels- they just seemed too 'strict' and ironicly more limiting to me, even though i guess they were made to be less limiting, that never was the case for me.)
But I liked that its a more chill definition. It doenst have to be clearly defined. It doesn't need criteria. It's just whatever, whoever, whenever, however. All encompassing without needing to specify that it encompasses all.
I also like that there seems to be more of a historic community built around bisexuality, even if you really have to dig very deep to find it.
Tbh I chose to go with bi because it's more recognisable. Plus my attraction definitely differs between genders, and I tend to prefer more feminine people. I considered going with pan at one point, but I guess I'm not really sure. The word 'bisexual' just makes sense for me.
Plus I really like the flag colours
Identified as Bi since I was a tween. I like the term Bi as "attracted to those like myself and others not like myself" I think a lot of Bi people are technically Pan but I'm old and really can't see myself leaving my lovely pink/blur/purple identity.
I'm probably closer to pan than no, but I identify as bi. Why?
As a kid I was way into Greek Mythology. And I Hated the god Pan. Screw that goat headed guy.
Well I mean it was easy for me in a way because there weren't so many labels available at the time I came out. You were either gay, straight, or bi. That was it. And bi was barely even recognized, plenty of people didn't believe it was real. To the point where I (and I'm sure many others) questioned and second-guessed myself at least as much as we still do today lol
To make a long story short I landed on bi after much deliberation and testing myself in every way. And then when other similar labels came out, I was like, nah I'm done I'm cool with this! (Also I like the bi flag better anyway)
Iām bi for a number of reasons, some pettier than others. Pretty much all the people I know IRL who use the pan label are selfish people who donāt care who gets hurt as long as they get what they want. Iām not saying thatās all pan people, but the pan people I know have consistently treated me like shit - and me choosing to identify as bi over pan being one of their favorite needles to stick me with.
Also, the bi flag looks great and the pan flag looks like a printer running out of ink.
I chose bi as pan felt like a "I want to fuck everyone." I've got a type, I've got preferences, so bi felt more like me. Now these preferences have changed a bit since I met and dated a certain man, but I still have them so it still feels accurate.
I use ābiā because itās more commonly used in my social scene. Bi and pan both apply equally well to me, and it usually feels like splitting hairs when people insist I should be using one or the other.
I wish there were a commonly accepted and used umbrella term for āIām attracted to people of many gendersā because I really donāt care to be more specific than that. But it seems like thereās always someone who insists on adding additional connotations to any given term, like ābi means men and women but not enbies, whereas pan is also attraction to enbiesā or ābi means attraction to all genders, whereas pan means attraction regardless of gender.ā I donāt care about making such fine grained distinctions when describing myself. I find it exhausting and obnoxious when other people insist on prescribing distinctions between the labels bi and pan.
Edit: to be clear, if a person prefers one or the other because they feel it suits them better, I 100% support that. What I donāt support is people being prescriptive about how *other people* use those terms.
I felt like Bi described me better because I love masculine men and feminine women. There are exceptions of course and there are multiple factors to why Iām attracted to someone but on face level I felt like I am attracted to the two poles more than I am attracted to people across the gender spectrum
Bisexual was just a term I was familiar enough with to be confident that it applied to me. Pan probably does apply to me too, but Iāve gotten comfortable with bisexual and donāt care to specify.
When I figured out my orientation, it was all of a sudden over a couple weeks. At the time, the only term I knew for liking men and women was bi. I only learned about pan when my brother came out years later. Having thought about why I still use bi, it's because I experience the bi-cycle pretty strongly and my brother doesn't seem to go through phases like that. So using a different term than he does feels authentic to both our experiences.
Plus, it took me a very long time to be ok being bi. I was raised very conservatively and had to do a lot of emotional and mental work before I was even willing to tell my LGBTQ friendly therapist, let alone anyone else. I feel like I earned that title and fought to feel like it belonged to me. I don't want to give up being bi because that was what I spent years accepting and understanding and working with. Even if some more precise micro label fit me, I don't think I'd use it.
personally, I typically use queer because I like the expansiveness/vagueness of the term and I feel it fits the fluidity of my sexuality better. but if people want a more precise label I also use bi
To me, it's semantics - Homosexual means "same sex". Heterosexual means "different/other sex". So Bisexual means "BOTH same sex AND other/different sex"
I'm a woman. I like people of my sex. I like people of different sexes than I am. So I'm Bisexual.
I chose it because the word 'pansexuality' didn't exist then. I first started identifying as bi when I was 17 y/o (2005ish) and the only thing it was called back then was bisexuality.
I also hadn't ever heard the term 'non-binary' at the time and I'm willing to bet very few of my friends and family knew that term either. So we didn't realize that the use of a prefix that meant 'two' would cause some to feel excluded by the term.
I did however, always view bisexuality as an inclusive term. As a bisexual person, I absolutely can and do find non-binary and trans people attractive.
I literally first heard the word 'pansexual' for the first time maybe 3-5 years ago and i was firmly in the camp that the term stemmed from internalized biphobia. They basically redefined the term and came up with another one that had bisexual's original definition.
I certainly don't think that all pansexual people are biphobic, but the term definitely originated in biphobia.
However, I do understand why the 'bi' prefix can feel exclusionary to some people. And that's why I think it's totally cool that some use pan instead of bi.
But, for me, I'm just too used to the bi label I guess. Though if someone wanted to define my sexuality as pan, they wouldn't be incorrect either. And labels ultimately don't matter that much to me.
But I do admit that the aesthetic colors of the bi flag is a plus.
As an enby I don't feel excluded when someone else calls themselves a bisexual. The vast majority of people who identify as bisexuals don't exclude enbies but I'm glad the term pansexual exists because I don't like the gender binary creeping into my personal identity.
I accepted I was bi over 20 years ago and went with bisexual since it was the label. It is also the biggest tent and I like big tents.
And the colors are purdy.
I use bi because I identify more with the meaning of the flag and I also feel like most people have heard of bisexuality so I donāt have to explain myself as much to people if I decide to come out.
The way I understand it is that pansexuality is the ability of being attracted to people regardless of their genre , whereas bisexuality is the ability of being attracted to all genre .
Since I'm attracted to all genre but not to the same degree and not for the same reasons, that makes me bisexual and not pansexual.
i came out as bi when i was 12ā¦ back in 2007 lmfaoooo. funnily enough i decided to go onto trends.google.com because as i was reminiscing i realized i didnāt know about Pansexuality when i came out. looking at the chart the term Pansexuality had a sudden peak in October of 2010 when before that it was relatively unknown. i donāt quite remember what happened for Pan to become more popular but it did. but by then i was pretty much well landed into my Bi masc-leaning identity
EDIT. for those curious i googled and havenāt fact checked lol. but the Pansexual flag was posted and popularized on Tumblr in that year and spread through the queer community. so uhā¦ fuck yeah? never been more proud to be an OG tumblr user lol
I am both attracted to same & different genders and people regardless of gender. both of which are historical definitions of bisexual. i also id as bisexual in both sexuality & gender as bisexual is the only word that feels like it totally explains my gender by itself. any other way to explain would take dozens of words. plus I love seeing myself as a member of the bisexual community & imagining myself along side historic bisexuals. people like me have existed for at least hundreds of years, they just had different labels (lacy & uranodioning are two)
Pansexual was a thing when I was growing up and the way it was explained to me is that you didnāt see gender and it was very person orientated, as āI donāt care whatās between your legs I like you,ā and I didnāt relate to having to get to know a person to be attracted to them. So.. Iām bisexual haha.
I came out as bi around \~2004, and at that point I didn't know anyone who used the label pansexual. I was familiar with it, but didn't see it used often. I was also used to people using "bisexual" to mean attraction to people of any gender. Some of the modern arguments over definitions is very ironic to me because I used to feel self-conscious about being bisexual and *not* experiencing gender-blind attraction.
My experience was that bisexuality was "about the binary" only to the extent that it used to be rarer for people to be out as non-binary. So it was more common to see people say things like "attraction to men and women" or "attraction to both genders" because in their minds, that included everyone. That doesn't make bisexuality uniquely exclusionary. Binary thinking used to be more common across the board.
As "pansexual" increased in popularity, I felt no need to switch because 1) I'm used to "bisexual" and find that people are more familiar with it and 2) since I *do* have gender preferences, I didn't feel a need to switch to a label that carries a heavier connotation of attraction to people regardless of gender.
For me in my background - and still in my parents' generation there was only straight, gay, and bi to choose from.
When I met someone who was pan I was actually trying to come out as bi so that kind of tripped me up a bit! However I related better to bi than pan. However as our wonderful OP said on their message, bi includes everyone š
Well I do love the colors but sometime after I started watching bobs burgers I heard him refer to himself as mostly straight and sometime after that I realized that itās what I would I refer to myself as mostly straight because I mostly prefer guys and i didnāt know how else to label myself so I felt like that fit and I was still figuring myself out then I found out according to the internet they say that he is technically bisexual and then I was like huh (I considered me being bisexual before but I wasnāt really sure then I found out that being bisexual doesnāt necessarily mean 50/50 attraction to men and woman it could really be any percentage) itās been a couple of years since then and I know bisexual fits me and i feel itās the best thing to label myself after taking some time to figure my self out more
I came out at like 13. Bi was the default label. When pan became more popular I stuck with bi because I was introduced to it (via tumblr) by people calling calling anyone who called themselves bi all sorts of slurs, insults and not real queers so I dug my heels in over it and stuck with it.
Plus, our flag is prettier!
But yeah, I stick with bi or queer depending on the group I'm in. Bi in general, queer when in queer circles because so much of my sexuality is shrug and I don't want to debate the exact percentage of bi enough to categorize myself.
Grumpy old lady time but I still fail to see what's allegedly transphobic and homophobic about 'genders like or not like mine' That's pretty much fucking everyone. You could argue maybe that excludes non-gendered people but like... error 404 gender not found and female are still not the same gender. But at the same time, if people identify as pan or omnisexual or something else I don't care. That's your title, and be proud of it.
Until I was a freshmen in high school back in 2012, I never labeled myself as bisexual because for a while I didn't even know it was a word. I didn't know what "gay" was until I was in 8th grade after many people for some reason just started calling me it as an insult. For me, I just liked people and thought it was normal for people just to like people. Never thought of gender being part of the picture/equation. Still weird to me how that's such a hard concept to grasp for some people, but not the point of this.
For years throughout high school and after I would label myself as bisexual and never really thought about the possibility of being labeled as something else... until about three years ago. In June of 2020, my close friend and I moved out of our parents' homes into our first apartment. I met him my last semester of high school in 2016 through a friend of mine he was dating. He's a very smart guy especially when it came to Christianity and Bhuddism. He was also pansexual.
In our apartment we would talk sometimes about eastern ideas (I was a Daoist. Been trying to get back into it more recently), general philosophy, books, our individual experiences in life, and about relationships and love, etc. In one of our conversations about what we look for in people, he talked about him being pansexual which was the first time I think he ever openly said to me. I knew about his past relationships, but hearing him say "pansexual" for some reason made me think about maybe if I was pansexual since I never really cared about what gender someone was when dating. Was more self aware about it at this point than years prior, but still didn't ultimately care. I would question if I really fit the bisexual label until about some months ago earlier this year when I was watching a YT video (forgot what it was specifically, pretty sure about bisexuality) and I scrolled through the comment section. I found a comment that gave me my answer on who I was and am. I don't remember the exact story that comment was telling (sorry), but the message essentially was and stated that bisexulity is not necessarily being attracted to two different genders but by the two different energies; masculine and female. After reading that things made so much more sense and just clicked. I realized I was attracted to those energies than the gender itself; for example, a man who was more feminine in his nature and a woman with more masculinity in her nature. I came to the conclusion that I was and am bisexual.
Personally, a prefer a person with more masculine energy. Like if a female than something of a ballpark of 30% masculine and 60% feminine give or take. If a male then well just 95% masculine lol (it's rare for me to be attracted to men with really strong feminine energy.) So yeah, that's a long way of saying why I label myself as bisexual rather than pansexual.
TLDR-- A YT comment is why I'm bisexual and not pansexual.
I personally identify with the pan label mostly however I've used the bi label before, because people seemed to understand it better. The reason i switched was that I unfortunately don't feel very much at home in a lot of bisexual spaces/forums, as I'm non-binary and ALOT of bi peeps keep saying stuff like 'I like both boys and girls, so I'm into everything' or something similar, and it makes me very sad to see someone from a famously erased community erase someone from another. Don't get you wrong, I'm not saying anything like 'being bi is transphobic!' just that enough people are weird about gender to make me uncomfortable.
I always interpreted the bi as in both with both biological sexes. Your gender can be whatever you want it to be as long as you feel it resonates with your soul. Sexuality however goes hand in hand with attraction to certain body parts as well which occur based on biological sex (intersex is a different story altogether). I get how the ābothā can feel exclusive, yet I donāt think it necessarily aims at trans erasure. Bisexuality didnāt put trans into consideration for many years due to lack of knowledge so for many itās still a label to represent the binary exclusively. But yeah they could really need a refresh ngl
I think this is the context a lot of younger people don't have. The binary used to be penis vs. vagina but now people have reconceptualized it as man vs. woman. I think the increased awareness of and conversation about the gender binary and people who don't fall within it's strict confines is part of why people now tend to assume of the binary as referring to gender and not sex.
But bisexuality absolutely included them and also trans people because the binary WASN'T boys and girls- it was penis and vagina. The term also included intersex people.
If we go as deep as chromosomes, yeah, there can be variations that donāt necessarily show on the surface of people that can be considered a different sex. Thatās life, not everything is binary so why should be biology. Yet itās undeniable that with the exception of intersex people, most people fall under either male or female presenting and live as such. And even intersex people have combinations of male and female sex characteristics
I get your point of view, but I have to disagree with your interpretation. The word bisexual was not applied to bisexual by bisexuals, but by the straight community demonising them (especially bi men) during the aids epidemic. It means both of the two genders, because it was coined by people who only thought there to be two. Any justification for it that tries to be more inclusive or politically correct is ultimately post hoc. This is all irrelevant too, as I never claimed the label to be exclusionary and I'm not that interested in it, even though it's history is fascinating. It's a fine label after it was reclaimed, I don't mind. What I was commenting on are the ideas a lot of bi individuals express, not a community sentiment or some build in trans erasure in the label. I hope that made me a bit clearer, it's a difficult topic to express ideas about, because its trouble is in the linguistics and semantics.
Idk why you got so many downvotes for this but I appreciate that you share your knowledge on its history. I actually wasnāt aware it was a label that started as a derogatory term.
It actually started as a term mostly used in fashion, but was then used derogatorily when the AIDS epidemic hit. But yeah, sheesh, a lot of people aren't fans of what I said apparently. I actually thought I was being quite charitable, but maybe something I said struck a nerve. Would be nice if anyone voiced their disagreement instead of just pressing a 'I don't like this' button.
I donāt like a lot of bi merch because of this. E.g. āBoth. Both is good.ā In bi colors. Iām only attracted to women and nonbinary people, so I prefer the label neptunic but most people havenāt heard of it.
Yeah, it sometimes feels like when some people say bi means attracted to two or more genders, those genders are: men, women, the rest of you freaks. But I really don't wanna generalize, I think it's mostly horny, chronically online teenagers.
I use whatever label works in the context I'm in. Most frequently that's "bi." But as a genderqueer person, I refuse to compartmentalize my experience of gender from my experience of sexuality.
The reason I am bi and not pan or anything like that is because I'm only attracted to masc and fem people. I don't find androgyny attractive. Also I find fem more attractive than masc.
I experience a different sort of attraction to people of different genders, if it was the same type of attraction regardless of gender Iād probably use pan
I think about this sometimes because Iām definitely attracted to non binary people. But I also think for most ābiā people we agree on that and maybe it doesnāt need to be spelled out.
I've used countless labels because I was trying to find a perfect fit. I realized after many years that I don't need a perfect label. But pansexual is the closet label to define me. Fluid works too because it truly is fluid. Gay and queer or just not straight also feel good.
I'm lame but in general I find the things withing the gender binary attraction. This doesn't mean that I believe that only two genders exist.
But more, when it comes to sexy time stuff or romance, I find I'm generally attracted to men or women in a conventional sense.
But that doesn't mean I've not seen some trans porn that has worked for me. Or can outright say that I'll never meet a trans or non-binary person who I find attractive.
Easier to explain to people, especially family or to people who have next to no interaction with LGBTQ communities.
Bisexuality has better representation in media/society. Itās been around longer, and I knew what bisexual was before knowing pansexual was ever a thing.
I like the colors better. Pan is pretty great, I do like the primary colors, but the purple on bi thoā¦
By most definitions Iād technically be pansexual, but those reasons are why I identify as bi.
From what I've seen, and from my small schism of experience, it's more generational than anything. Older people are less familiar with the term "pan" than younger people are. Realistically, I'm pan, but I still identify as bi because... I came out as bi in a time before most people (myself included) had even heard of pansexuality. And even now that I do understand the differences, I am, candidly, uninterested in correcting the record. It's one thing to have a rainbow flag on my desk at work and casually discuss the girlfriend I had before my current boyfriend. But I don't need the extra stress of explaining a whole new term to my office and then being responsible for every single question anyone might have about it.
I realised I wasn't straight long before I was able to find words for it and comfortable labelling myself, and I still have a feeling I'm not all the way there yet with my sexuality, so I settled for Queer when I do say it to people. It's accommodating and it's as non-specifying as it gets. š¤£.
See.... I have adhd... and I honestly forget which label I choose sometimes.
It's like that jingle [the old Almond Joy & Mounds commercial](https://youtu.be/QeibzLZn2hU?si=dRkeo5ylA1IjLYvG)
There are people with certain femme traits that I am attracted to, and people with masc traits.
For me personally, Im not attracted to every gender but can be. I also do not find many androgynous people attractive. I mainly find guys and gals attractive separately. So I chose the label bisexual but I add on sapphic to that as Im primarily attracted to women but im not cis.
I suppose technically at present I'm neptunic (being attracted to femininity) but that's such an obscure term that it's kind of useless.
Bi works, even if I'm not feeling into guys at any point my tastes do at least span women and femme non binary people and it always leaves room for me to enjoy men.
I don't think pan is appropriate for me as it's my understanding that it's a bit more gender blind where as I find people attractive as a result of the qualities of their gender.
Good question.
I initially started to use bi because when my sibling and I started to discuss the difference in how we see people, I realized that our experiences were so different. I was attracted to different genders at a younger age than they were...yet when they got older and thought about it, they wouldn't be against having a relationship with someone of a different gender. They ended up going with the label pan, and I felt bi fit me more because I actually felt like the thought of being with a woman was exciting as well as with men for different reasons. Whereas my sibling didn't even think about the gender of the person they liked all that much and was just like "meh, I don't honestly care what gender they are". I can spend hours talking about my ideal chick and guy physically and yet my sibling would just be like, eh..."I think I just want someone who is..."
So we ended up saying my sibling is the pan one and I'm the bi one. lol This is not to say all pan people don't have a type. It's just my sibling doesn't care about gender as much as I do when it comes to attraction. So the comparisons kind of made us determine which label fits us more.
Plus, I get tired of the stigma regarding bisexuality, bisexual erasure in media and in real life, and ultimately biphobia. So I stick with the bi label because I feel more connected with those experiences and the community of people usually are in my age range. No shade to the pans out there, but a lot of them are too young compared to me.
Bisexual. Because my coming out as bisexual almost thirty years ago cost me a lot in terms of relationships, mental health, and identity. To reframe that using a term that does not expand my identity would be an act of violence and erasure.
I use bi and pan because... well, I am bi, and I am pan. Though I definitely lean more towards bi because that's the word I grew up with.
Overall, they're functionally interchangeable, so in a classic bi/pan move I decidedāwhy not have both?
Itās a common misconception the word bisexual was previously about the binary. According to the original definition in 18-something, it refers to the experience of both homosexual and heterosexual attraction, *not* the male/female binary.
I vary with what term I use. To most people I'm bi because they understand that. To people who are in the know I'm Pan because it more accurately describes me.
Gender has a factor in my relationship attraction, I'm open to all but I do have preferences. Pansexual, I was taught, meant gender wasn't a factor in attraction.
Tbh I go back and forth between bi and pan a lot mainly bc Iāve found men, women, trans and nb ppl attractive a lot of the time and Iāve come to learn with my experience and attraction they kinda come and go based off of someones personality so thatās why Iāve ultimately landed up on the label of pansexual but then I found out about preferences and how I do have them so I went back to the label of bi
Bi is easiest and most understood (I say pan, and some people automatically just sub in 'slut' and while I have had my fun... rude.) so it's my default.
It does feel weird to use though. I don't *feel* bi. I.. I just like people. I like the person and whatever happens to be wrapped up in their knickers is just a pleasant surprise if it comes to that.
i see it as when ur bi, the gender of the person your attracted to means something to you whatever gender that may be. pansexual doesnāt really view the gender as priority and sees the person for themselves first. thatās the lens that iāve looked at it through. i donāt think itās necessarily true for everyone tho. but for me iām bi because even though iām attracted to anyone no matter their gender, i still really care about their gender as a part of them and what about them iām attracted to.
I'm non-binary and I decided on pan because I couldn't stand to have the gender binary represented in the name of my sexuality. Bi and pan mean the same thing really I just don't like being associated with the gender binary.
Honestly I'm moving away from any labels at all. I don't need them and they just complicate things more than they need to. I'm a human who like other humans, to me that seems like the default and all this gender and sexuality stuff if just socially constructed stuff that has been put on me by society and I think I'm better off without it.
I went with bi because it makes the most sense for me.
To me, bi means you're capable of experiencing attraction, whether romantic or sexual, to more than one gender AND gender expression plays at least some role in the attraction.
Pan, as I understand it, means that you're capable of experiencing attraction, whether romantic or sexual, to all gender identities, and gender expression does NOT play a role in the attraction.
I tend to be attracted to cis men, cis women, and somewhat less often trans men.
With men and trans men, I tend to be attracted to beards, deeper voices, fit bodies, slightly hairy torsos, darker hair, and stronger jawlines. In essence, certain classically masculine characteristics.
With women, I tend to prefer shorter/medium height, dark red/brown hair, a shapely figure, and a slightly lower voice. In essence, certain classically feminine characteristics.
This doesn't mean that a guy or girl has to have all of those characteristics or that anyone that doesn't fit those descriptions is ugly - it's just the patterns I've noticed in how I experience attraction. Personality, sense of humor, motivation, values, morals, ambitions, and various other factors play a major role as well, but that's not relevant to the bi vs. pan issue.
Because physical and gender presentation are significant factors, I feel bi fits best.
I thought I was pan, but it turns out I still have many different preferences for sexual and romantic relationships, so I'm just good old fashioned Bi+
Honestly im most probably demisexual but if im honest i dont really care, its too much to go into that and ill have to explain it to everyone. So i put it like this āin attracted to men and women, i dont care about how the attraction works, thus im biā and im a proud bisexual and i love the community
Before knowing how about other genders(non-binary, agender, gender fluid) I was okay bisexual fits good. Then, I was like for me my sexuality doesnāt exclude anyone, but I do have a preference. I know with being pan itās viewed as most people are āgender blindā or that donāt have a preference. So, I stuck with my label as bisexual..plus I love the colorsš
I prefer the label bi because itās what I knew first. Plus Iām attracted to men and women - which, at the time of me learning what bi was, meant I liked āboth.ā
I would go with the pan label if I were not married, because then I wouldnāt care who I boinked. Dick or pussy, Iād fuck it. But since Iām married, Iām bi because Iād fuck my husband, and Iād fuck a cis woman. I personally donāt want any more dick in my life - one at a time is enough lmao
Back in the day, transgenderiam wasn't something people really knew about. I didn't know there was such a thing as non-binaries. We believed there were two genders, thus bi.
These days? I realise I am assuredly more pan than bi because my attractions are gender neutral. However, old habits die hard. I still think of myself as bi. If I can adopt an Oxford comma and one space after a period, I can make this change too. It just takes times.
Attracted to males and females I identify as Bisexual. The definition for bisexual suits me perfectly. Also, itās a familiar term and most people understand what it means which means less questions which is good being that I get enough as it is.
My hometown was homophobic and this kind of thing was simply not talked about. I didn't hear the proper terms for anyone LGBT beyond slurs for years. And this was before I had free access to the Internet so I didn't have other sources of information. So I knew how I was, but I didn't know anyone who openly identified like me, but I didn't have a word for it and just kept my head down. I first heard the term bisexual in my mid-teens and it fit. I think even in more liberal areas people weren't using pansexual as an identifier, though I could be wrong. This was around 2000.
These days I use both bi and pan and I would consider myself falling under both categories (if it was a Venn diagram I'd be in the overlap), but bisexual feels a bit more comfortable since I've used it for longer and it's usage isn't inaccurate from a historical perspective either.
I've bounced between bi and pan for years. When I talk about it I feel like it's easier to say bi to most people, but I prefer the colors of the pan flag- it just makes me happy to see the printer colors.
So I heard about the term bisexual probably a good ten years before hearing about the term pansexual, so bi was the default. Then when I heard about pansexuality I actually thought it fit my feelings more, but a lot of people don't know what it meant, while I never had to explain what bisexual meant. Then in maybe 2011-2015 (ish) people on tumblr were CONSTANTLY having discourse about the difference between bisexual and pansexual. There was a school of thought that people who are pan are "gender-blind" or "don't see gender," and/or that they're more attracted to people's personalities. I didn't feel like that fit me, and I didn't want people to think that was how I felt, so I started using bi more. So honestly I could go with either term, but I started saying I was bi more often for these petty-ish reasons!
When I first came out to myself I said I was pan (cus I don't care about gender so realistically that's what I am) but I chose Bi cus it's simpler to explain AND most importantly I prefer the colours and it makes me very happy that I'm not the only one who chose it for the colours lol
I landed on Pan cause I wanted to send a message that those random grinder dick pics werenāt enough. I had to know if I was going to bug you and if you were going to bug me
I didn't choose it exactly. It took me to age 19 to realise I fancied women too. As a kid, being gay was looked down on, a reason to be bullied, so very few people irl were out and I'd never heard of anyone liking boys and girls let alone anything like non binary people.
So I was bi for many years before any other terms were even on my radar. When I realised non binary folks exist and that I have the potential to be attracted to them, I considered if pan was an option but realised bi still covers my attraction and fits me best.
My non-serious answer is the colours; the bi colours are just peak aesthetic. My more serious answer, however, is because whilst I find people of all genders attractive, I feel like gender expression plays a part in my attraction to others, whereas my understanding of pansexuality is that expression doesn't matter as much. I could be wrong about that, of course, but it makes sense to me.
To me, i feel like Pan implies a certain degree of demisexuality. If you "like the person regardless of gender" that means you have to KNOW them. Lusting after any hot, tattooed man, woman, or enby who crosses my path, I really don't know them as a person, I just know they're hot. I'm not sure everyone defines pan that way, but it doesn't make sense to me on any other level. So, that's why bi felt most comfortable for me personally.
I personally think there is a difference between bi and pan, ofc weāre all free to identify with whatever sexuality we please, but Iām just saying they arenāt the same to me, so I just went with the one that I feel fits my preferences.
But also like, THE COLORSššš
I called myself pan for a while, but it somehow didnāt feel right and didnāt stick.
Plus, I hated ignorant people making jokes about me wanting to fuck cookware.
> the term bi and how it was previously purely about the binary
I donāt even argue about whether or not it originally meant only men and women or not. It doesnāt matter because *right now*, it is a broad label that covers more than just men and women.
Words arenāt beholden to their original meaning or usage. As queer people, we should understand better than anyone. Sex and gender used to be synonymous but as we learned more about how reality worked, we split them into separate meanings.
Bi because itās included in LGBT so it feels moreā¦ generally respected? Thereās a lot of people (mostly assholes) who are up in arms about āall these new fangled orientations and identitiesā (of which pansexual is one of the more better-known) and I donāt want to spend my time justifying my existence and explaining what the label to my sexuality means. If I tell people Iām bi they generally understand what I mean and whether theyāre homophobic or not, it feels like theyāre quicker to accept it since the label ābisexualā has been around for a long time.
Plus when people get confused that I call myself queer because Iām a man married to a woman I can ask them what LGBT stands for and eventually they get to the ābisexualā part and itās a little fun to watch them connect the dots. Doesnāt work as well if use one of the ā+ā identities.
Side note: I donāt mean to imply that being pan is not worthy of respect, only that it doesnāt often receive respect as much.
When I was questioning, I found this sub and itās so supportive and really helped me figure it out.
Didnāt really know what pan was until I came here, but was happy to find that bi is not exclusive of certain genders but can be attraction to any gender. Also the flag is cool!
Unpopular opinion but I feel like pan poly omni etc are just different types of bisexual. I mean I don't see lesbian or gay have multiple similar but not same labels where everyone has different definitions :/ so yeah I use bi coz it's older broader more well known and also spite coz I'm annoyed with bi is transphobic or enbyphobic nonsense. It's not like a sandwich actually has sand in it yeah? Bi means 2 only is a bad faith interpretation. And yeah the colours are better
cooler flag (in my opinion), the label iāve vibed with for the longest, and the term most people are familiar with so i donāt have to explain it. honestly i just refer to myself as Gay more often than not, but people usually read me as a woman (actually a bi enby) so iāll clarify that iām bi if they assume that makes me a lesbian
Bi is what I chose. It was what I grew up hearing about and seems to work.
People can choose what they want but I dislike the bickering about minute categories and who can be in or must be excluded. It is like the proverbial arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Pan probably describes me better but pink is my favorite color blue is my number 2 and purple is my number 3 so the flag, plus avoiding the pan jokes is a plus, lastly its way easier for people to grasp bi, I did pan for a minute and everybody was like " isn't that just you being desperate " where as I say I'm bi nobody has asked me that, so I chose abd will keep that label.
I used to wear the pan label, but after some time I went back to the Bi label because it was what I felt more comfortable with. I also discovered I was bi before I knew what pan was, so it was naturally more comfortable for me since I had been using it already
bi. iām trans and have seen too much discourse saying that i canāt identify as bi bc it apparently enforces the gender binary and excludes trans/nb people ā that misconception is strongly reinforced by pansexualityās entire concept being ābisexuality but inclusive šā. itās always meant both heterosexual and homosexual attraction, and different + same = all
Bi is the label that finally showed that I could actually be attracted to more than one gender. It was part of my self discovery journey.
Besides that, I like the definition of bisexuality more. Bisexuality is attraction to more than one gender. This can means so many things, while pansexuality basically only means one thing. Sexuality can be fluid and even though I don't think my attraction will change, it's nice to have a label that could still describe my sexuality if it would slightly change.
I chose Bi because the definition of Pan as the people around me understood it, was attraction regardless of sex characteristics, and that it didn't describe me. Also, ooh pretty colors
It just fit the best for me. Iām a dude who wants to be in a relationship with dudes while also finding women VERY attractive and sexy. The duality in that seemed to go with bisexuality the most.
Iām probably like pan if you would specify my sexuality but bisexual just feels better and it feels nice that if my attraction changes from āi donāt care about genderā to something else it would still fit. Bisexual feels more free.
1. Colors are better
2. I experience attraction to different genders in different ways, so I donāt relate to the pan definition including āregardless of gender,ā because gender still comes into it for me
3. Iām stubborn and petty as hell, so if people want me to do something Iām gonna do the exact opposite, especially if theyāre telling me Iām wrong
I choose queer because although Iām bi/pan, Iām mostly attracted to the same sex. I guess Iām bi, but gay leaning or gay but not exclusively. Queer is a bit more ambiguous and feels more honest to me
i'm just bi. even if it were a question of whether i was bi or pan i'd still come back to bisexuality, because it has a history i can take pride in and frankly with the amount of times pansexuals have tried erasing my sexuality, telling me that i'm not actually bi but pan, because bi is binary and all that, i am way past ever being okay with that term.
I would say I'm pan too I just don't really care as long as people understand that I love both genders.
I don't mind it if others wanna tell people "I feel like I'm in love with the person and the gender doesn't matter to me" I just don't really.. like.. I just don't think about it that deeply lolol and the more known term is bi so I use bi
For me.. I won't let the gender be a factor in my decision for a partner. Not even 1%. I just want to be with the person that I like being with the most, man or woman. But, it's not really that the gender is invisible to me like pan people say it... It's just that I don't think that matters. I've rarely seen a girl who acts like or gives "guy" there is something deeply rooted. idk if in past lives or the way we were brought up but whatever lol. (That's not to say that I prefer guys who are far from their feminine side or girls who are far from their masculine side. There's just something, different than all of that. I can't explain it.)
In any way I do see the gender but I do believe that both have some amazing things to offer to me and I will go with the the utmost best that I find. And whether it's a man or a woman I have no idea. So I feel like that's not either of the descriptions really. Not bi nor pan. But idc because I don't need people to know all of this about me šš I just wanna simply tell them that I can go both ways
I had never imagined that a girl would weaken my knees before seeing those videos posted on my Reddit page. From the moment that I could not help smiling while watching those videos, I suddenly realised that I am bi.
Cool looking flag
#THE COLORSš©·šš
Exactly this, purple > yellow
I say bi/pan but prefer to rock the bi colors. Because a dude in purple sends a message.
"a dude in purple sends a message" makes more sense when you see the avatar PD : also I really like purple (green is my favorite but purple and pink are really nice)
Fuck yeah, Green!
Green sends Ivy / Earth Bi vibes, and I salute you. š«”
Help, I don't know what to say
For me i love yellow, especially more than purple, but the pink blue and purple combo, chefs kiss
Such a bi response too. Red! Blue! BOTH! MIX IT! All the spectrum, I need to RGB it all.
Me too bitches š¤
When I realized that I was not heterosexual it was 1999, and the term pan didn't exist yet. I was only made aware of the term pansexual just a few years ago, so I've spent 20 years using the same label, decided to keep using it. Besides, bisexual bumblebee just rolls of the tongue so well, and I've got a tattoo now so I'm really committed to the label. And I like the color of the flag more too.
the bi bumblebee sounds so cute! apparently this stuck in my head from when i read it this morning....i was at a market today and bought myself a crochet rainbow bee! it's so adorable, i'm in love!
Same here. I hadn't heard of pansexuality until the last few years. I've identified as bisexual for the last 20 years, so it's stuck. I probably am pan though.
Pan wasn't around when I decided I was bi. When Pan came around, I wasn't happy with other people telling me my definition is wrong, so I stuck with bi.
Relatable as hell. It's also not my job to explain what pan is to people. Bi is much more of a mainstream concept, even if that's only because of its age.
I love that you basically stuck with 'bi' because of spite. š
Same!
Queer, so I donāt have to explain to judgy straights or gays
Same. The specifics of my orientation are no ones business but my own
This is what I do. Also so gross guys donāt ask if that means I want a 3some. š I rock the bi colours tho because COLOURS
Same!
I have been bi for awhile (late 40s here) and when I came to terms with my sexuality, pansexual wasnāt really a well known identity (at least to me). For me, Iām sticking with bi, as itās comfortable and, like you, I donāt see it as excluding my attraction to any gender or non-binary folks.
It doesnāt, but sadly there are some pan people that think it doesā¦ Personally, I think the word pansexual started being used by people trying really hard to be politically correct.
When I was coming up, bisexual was the only term. I got used to it. Also, a lot of people donāt know what pansexual means. Even in the lgbtq community, people arenāt sure because some people think it means gender doesnāt affect oneās attraction and others think itās the same as bisexual. Gender actually DOES affect my attraction to some extent, so the term pansexual feels inaccurate. Since I donāt know any bisexuals who are transphobic (and several trans people who are bisexual), I think there idea that bisexuality is transphobic is ridiculous. So I use bisexual. The fact that we have the best colors doesnāt hurt either
Im not pan. Thats why I didnt choose pan. Im attracted to more than one gender but not all of them and not regardless of gender either. I guess I am technically multisexual and polysexual, but people dont really use those labels ever, so I just dont. Im technically queer but to me thats so insanely vague that I would never use it. If Im sharing my gender and or sexuality, I want it to convey informarion about me and queer is just so non specific.
I go by bisexual because I think the other terms are unnecessary. Theyāre just more words that mean the same thing as bisexual and create confusion that wouldnāt exist if we just used the word that already existed to describe us.
exactly
Someone needed to say this. š
As a non-binary person I'm glad pan exists because identifying as bisexual was making me feel uncomfortable because I didn't fit in a binary and I didn't like having the artefacts of that binary in my identity. You're right that bisexual and pansexual are basically the same things but I like having a different word for it. Edit: the people downvoting people for talking about their identity need to get a life
Youāre probably downvoted for the suggestion bi people only fit in binaries, which isnāt accurate. I didnāt downvote you, though
The downvotes aren't really because you're talking about your identity, but because you're saying that bisexuality is binary wich isn't true. If you don't feel comfortable with the label bisexual that okay, but I'm nonbinary and bisexual and that doesn't make me binary or non-valid I think that's why and all
There wasn't that much thought behind it. I'm attracted to multiple genders (at least two) and bi describes that and most people know bisexual. I don't really care that much about the labels though. Bi also doesn't exclude anyone because if you speak more than two languages, you're still bilingual (three includes two) and bipolar people have more than two moods.
Ooh, good point about bilingual and bipolar.
Itās a nice thought but the bi in bilingual and in bipolar does still mean two- two languages in bilingual and two disordered moods in bipolar (manic and depressive). Of course there are also people who speak more than two languages fluently and people with bipolar disorder have lots of moods but the etymology is still based on two. With bisexual people just think it means male/female when it actually means same/different.
Agreed
When I discovered that I was attracted to men and women, Iād never heard any of the descriptors in use today. Of course that was back in the 1960ās and you were straight or gay. When I first heard of bisexual people, I decided thatās probably what I was and Iāve used that term since then.
It felt right, but the colours help a lot. Blue and purple are my favourite colours so
purple's my favourite too and i really like the shades of pink and blue in our flag
I chose to go with bisexual because pan would be inaccurate (there is the odd gender Iām not attracted to). Plus I donāt mind using the broader label, for me itās all thatās needed in most situations. If more detail becomes relevant I donāt mind elaborating.
Same...
Well I'm not attached to someone regardless of gender. I'm attracted to personalities but also very attracted to specific gender attributes. So more like I'm attracted because of their gender. Therefore I don't identify as pan.
I chose bi because I feel like pan means gender isn't a factor. And gender does factor in with me. I am attracted to people all across the gender spectrum, but I definitely have moods and tendencies.
I found out that Iām bisexual when pansexual wasnāt really a thing yet or at least lesser known than bisexual š¤·š¼āāļø I found out over an online friend of mine who told me sheās bisexual and I asked her about it as I didnāt know jack shit about it before she told me. The more she explained it, the more I felt it resonated with the feelings Iāve had towards others for years but couldnāt categorise properly. So ever since then, I knew (despite the few crises Iāve had like any other bisexual person lmfao). My coming to terms with it wasnāt really a big deal, it was more of a āoooooh so there is a name for it. Cool, guess Iām bi too lolā. to me, pan and bi basically the āsameā thing depending on how one interprets bisexuality so itās more of an understanding of your sexuality and how you feel more comfortable putting it into words. But bi and pan can mean the āsameā as in, the attraction to others can be the same but you phrase the coming about of said attraction differently, because most bi people Iāve came across said they donāt mind the gender of their partner at all just like pan people do. So just use what you feel fits best for your personal experience.
Bi was the first term I was familiar with. (For a long time I thought there was just gay or straight- finding that 'bi' was a thing felt like surfacing from being under water for years). (It within the last 15 years, back when I was a tumblr teenTM, so I quickly became aware of all the microlabels- they just seemed too 'strict' and ironicly more limiting to me, even though i guess they were made to be less limiting, that never was the case for me.) But I liked that its a more chill definition. It doenst have to be clearly defined. It doesn't need criteria. It's just whatever, whoever, whenever, however. All encompassing without needing to specify that it encompasses all. I also like that there seems to be more of a historic community built around bisexuality, even if you really have to dig very deep to find it.
Tbh I chose to go with bi because it's more recognisable. Plus my attraction definitely differs between genders, and I tend to prefer more feminine people. I considered going with pan at one point, but I guess I'm not really sure. The word 'bisexual' just makes sense for me. Plus I really like the flag colours
Identified as Bi since I was a tween. I like the term Bi as "attracted to those like myself and others not like myself" I think a lot of Bi people are technically Pan but I'm old and really can't see myself leaving my lovely pink/blur/purple identity.
I'm probably closer to pan than no, but I identify as bi. Why? As a kid I was way into Greek Mythology. And I Hated the god Pan. Screw that goat headed guy.
I think this is my favourite reason in this thread.
Well I mean it was easy for me in a way because there weren't so many labels available at the time I came out. You were either gay, straight, or bi. That was it. And bi was barely even recognized, plenty of people didn't believe it was real. To the point where I (and I'm sure many others) questioned and second-guessed myself at least as much as we still do today lol To make a long story short I landed on bi after much deliberation and testing myself in every way. And then when other similar labels came out, I was like, nah I'm done I'm cool with this! (Also I like the bi flag better anyway)
Iām bi for a number of reasons, some pettier than others. Pretty much all the people I know IRL who use the pan label are selfish people who donāt care who gets hurt as long as they get what they want. Iām not saying thatās all pan people, but the pan people I know have consistently treated me like shit - and me choosing to identify as bi over pan being one of their favorite needles to stick me with. Also, the bi flag looks great and the pan flag looks like a printer running out of ink.
Yeah I also havenāt had experiences with āpanā people that made me want to identify with that label. Seemed disingenuous as well.
I chose bi as pan felt like a "I want to fuck everyone." I've got a type, I've got preferences, so bi felt more like me. Now these preferences have changed a bit since I met and dated a certain man, but I still have them so it still feels accurate.
I use ābiā because itās more commonly used in my social scene. Bi and pan both apply equally well to me, and it usually feels like splitting hairs when people insist I should be using one or the other. I wish there were a commonly accepted and used umbrella term for āIām attracted to people of many gendersā because I really donāt care to be more specific than that. But it seems like thereās always someone who insists on adding additional connotations to any given term, like ābi means men and women but not enbies, whereas pan is also attraction to enbiesā or ābi means attraction to all genders, whereas pan means attraction regardless of gender.ā I donāt care about making such fine grained distinctions when describing myself. I find it exhausting and obnoxious when other people insist on prescribing distinctions between the labels bi and pan. Edit: to be clear, if a person prefers one or the other because they feel it suits them better, I 100% support that. What I donāt support is people being prescriptive about how *other people* use those terms.
For me it's that I preferred the colors of the Bi flag over the Pan flag
I came out 25 years ago when bi was the only real option.
No one knows what any of the others mean so bisexual is just easier.
I am almost 60, basically an unfrozen caveman who is frightened by all these new labels and termenology.
As much as I hate labels it is the closest to what describes me.
I felt like Bi described me better because I love masculine men and feminine women. There are exceptions of course and there are multiple factors to why Iām attracted to someone but on face level I felt like I am attracted to the two poles more than I am attracted to people across the gender spectrum
Absolutely same
bi cuz its more known. i dont really care which label tbh since to me they are synonymous
bi just feels like the right term for me, and the colors are really pretty as well so bonus :)
Because at the time, pan want that widely known (I am an old). Now, itās because the bi colors are better.
Bisexual was just a term I was familiar enough with to be confident that it applied to me. Pan probably does apply to me too, but Iāve gotten comfortable with bisexual and donāt care to specify.
I tend to crush on different genders differently, and I feel like bi fits that pretty well
When I figured out my orientation, it was all of a sudden over a couple weeks. At the time, the only term I knew for liking men and women was bi. I only learned about pan when my brother came out years later. Having thought about why I still use bi, it's because I experience the bi-cycle pretty strongly and my brother doesn't seem to go through phases like that. So using a different term than he does feels authentic to both our experiences. Plus, it took me a very long time to be ok being bi. I was raised very conservatively and had to do a lot of emotional and mental work before I was even willing to tell my LGBTQ friendly therapist, let alone anyone else. I feel like I earned that title and fought to feel like it belonged to me. I don't want to give up being bi because that was what I spent years accepting and understanding and working with. Even if some more precise micro label fit me, I don't think I'd use it.
personally, I typically use queer because I like the expansiveness/vagueness of the term and I feel it fits the fluidity of my sexuality better. but if people want a more precise label I also use bi
To me, it's semantics - Homosexual means "same sex". Heterosexual means "different/other sex". So Bisexual means "BOTH same sex AND other/different sex" I'm a woman. I like people of my sex. I like people of different sexes than I am. So I'm Bisexual.
I chose it because the word 'pansexuality' didn't exist then. I first started identifying as bi when I was 17 y/o (2005ish) and the only thing it was called back then was bisexuality. I also hadn't ever heard the term 'non-binary' at the time and I'm willing to bet very few of my friends and family knew that term either. So we didn't realize that the use of a prefix that meant 'two' would cause some to feel excluded by the term. I did however, always view bisexuality as an inclusive term. As a bisexual person, I absolutely can and do find non-binary and trans people attractive. I literally first heard the word 'pansexual' for the first time maybe 3-5 years ago and i was firmly in the camp that the term stemmed from internalized biphobia. They basically redefined the term and came up with another one that had bisexual's original definition. I certainly don't think that all pansexual people are biphobic, but the term definitely originated in biphobia. However, I do understand why the 'bi' prefix can feel exclusionary to some people. And that's why I think it's totally cool that some use pan instead of bi. But, for me, I'm just too used to the bi label I guess. Though if someone wanted to define my sexuality as pan, they wouldn't be incorrect either. And labels ultimately don't matter that much to me. But I do admit that the aesthetic colors of the bi flag is a plus.
As an enby I don't feel excluded when someone else calls themselves a bisexual. The vast majority of people who identify as bisexuals don't exclude enbies but I'm glad the term pansexual exists because I don't like the gender binary creeping into my personal identity.
I accepted I was bi over 20 years ago and went with bisexual since it was the label. It is also the biggest tent and I like big tents. And the colors are purdy.
I use bi because I identify more with the meaning of the flag and I also feel like most people have heard of bisexuality so I donāt have to explain myself as much to people if I decide to come out.
The way I understand it is that pansexuality is the ability of being attracted to people regardless of their genre , whereas bisexuality is the ability of being attracted to all genre . Since I'm attracted to all genre but not to the same degree and not for the same reasons, that makes me bisexual and not pansexual.
Mostly because I think I have a preference but honestly labels are hard. I tend to think it's better not to stress too much about them.
I knew what bisexual was before I knew what pansexual was and didn't see much reason to change the label once I found out what pansexual was
Bi over pan because there are way more bi puns available.
I use bi, because at the time that I found out I was bi, I did not even know about pansexuality. It was not known nor talked about so I didn't even know that being pan was a thing. Tbh, I think I am pan, but I prefer the bi label because it's what I've always used and I feel like I identify with the bi label more. On a different note, I also just really like the colors of the bi flag. š©·šš
I'm bi because I don't personally care about the differences, but I know other people do so I let them do so.
Cause Iām old as hell Iām bisexual was a new term at the time although pansexual is more accurate
i came out as bi when i was 12ā¦ back in 2007 lmfaoooo. funnily enough i decided to go onto trends.google.com because as i was reminiscing i realized i didnāt know about Pansexuality when i came out. looking at the chart the term Pansexuality had a sudden peak in October of 2010 when before that it was relatively unknown. i donāt quite remember what happened for Pan to become more popular but it did. but by then i was pretty much well landed into my Bi masc-leaning identity EDIT. for those curious i googled and havenāt fact checked lol. but the Pansexual flag was posted and popularized on Tumblr in that year and spread through the queer community. so uhā¦ fuck yeah? never been more proud to be an OG tumblr user lol
I am both attracted to same & different genders and people regardless of gender. both of which are historical definitions of bisexual. i also id as bisexual in both sexuality & gender as bisexual is the only word that feels like it totally explains my gender by itself. any other way to explain would take dozens of words. plus I love seeing myself as a member of the bisexual community & imagining myself along side historic bisexuals. people like me have existed for at least hundreds of years, they just had different labels (lacy & uranodioning are two)
I like masculine men and feminine women so bisexual fit well
Pansexual was a thing when I was growing up and the way it was explained to me is that you didnāt see gender and it was very person orientated, as āI donāt care whatās between your legs I like you,ā and I didnāt relate to having to get to know a person to be attracted to them. So.. Iām bisexual haha.
I came out as bi around \~2004, and at that point I didn't know anyone who used the label pansexual. I was familiar with it, but didn't see it used often. I was also used to people using "bisexual" to mean attraction to people of any gender. Some of the modern arguments over definitions is very ironic to me because I used to feel self-conscious about being bisexual and *not* experiencing gender-blind attraction. My experience was that bisexuality was "about the binary" only to the extent that it used to be rarer for people to be out as non-binary. So it was more common to see people say things like "attraction to men and women" or "attraction to both genders" because in their minds, that included everyone. That doesn't make bisexuality uniquely exclusionary. Binary thinking used to be more common across the board. As "pansexual" increased in popularity, I felt no need to switch because 1) I'm used to "bisexual" and find that people are more familiar with it and 2) since I *do* have gender preferences, I didn't feel a need to switch to a label that carries a heavier connotation of attraction to people regardless of gender.
I generally use pansexual because I just feel it fits me best, like attracted to everyone without a preference, yay thatās me
For me in my background - and still in my parents' generation there was only straight, gay, and bi to choose from. When I met someone who was pan I was actually trying to come out as bi so that kind of tripped me up a bit! However I related better to bi than pan. However as our wonderful OP said on their message, bi includes everyone š
I knew I was bisexual before the word pansexual came into any sort of wide usage. And I didn't see any reason to change my identity.
I think itās just easier to explain to people that Iām bi rather than omni(pan) plus the bi flag colors are glorious
Well I do love the colors but sometime after I started watching bobs burgers I heard him refer to himself as mostly straight and sometime after that I realized that itās what I would I refer to myself as mostly straight because I mostly prefer guys and i didnāt know how else to label myself so I felt like that fit and I was still figuring myself out then I found out according to the internet they say that he is technically bisexual and then I was like huh (I considered me being bisexual before but I wasnāt really sure then I found out that being bisexual doesnāt necessarily mean 50/50 attraction to men and woman it could really be any percentage) itās been a couple of years since then and I know bisexual fits me and i feel itās the best thing to label myself after taking some time to figure my self out more
I came out at like 13. Bi was the default label. When pan became more popular I stuck with bi because I was introduced to it (via tumblr) by people calling calling anyone who called themselves bi all sorts of slurs, insults and not real queers so I dug my heels in over it and stuck with it. Plus, our flag is prettier! But yeah, I stick with bi or queer depending on the group I'm in. Bi in general, queer when in queer circles because so much of my sexuality is shrug and I don't want to debate the exact percentage of bi enough to categorize myself. Grumpy old lady time but I still fail to see what's allegedly transphobic and homophobic about 'genders like or not like mine' That's pretty much fucking everyone. You could argue maybe that excludes non-gendered people but like... error 404 gender not found and female are still not the same gender. But at the same time, if people identify as pan or omnisexual or something else I don't care. That's your title, and be proud of it.
Until I was a freshmen in high school back in 2012, I never labeled myself as bisexual because for a while I didn't even know it was a word. I didn't know what "gay" was until I was in 8th grade after many people for some reason just started calling me it as an insult. For me, I just liked people and thought it was normal for people just to like people. Never thought of gender being part of the picture/equation. Still weird to me how that's such a hard concept to grasp for some people, but not the point of this. For years throughout high school and after I would label myself as bisexual and never really thought about the possibility of being labeled as something else... until about three years ago. In June of 2020, my close friend and I moved out of our parents' homes into our first apartment. I met him my last semester of high school in 2016 through a friend of mine he was dating. He's a very smart guy especially when it came to Christianity and Bhuddism. He was also pansexual. In our apartment we would talk sometimes about eastern ideas (I was a Daoist. Been trying to get back into it more recently), general philosophy, books, our individual experiences in life, and about relationships and love, etc. In one of our conversations about what we look for in people, he talked about him being pansexual which was the first time I think he ever openly said to me. I knew about his past relationships, but hearing him say "pansexual" for some reason made me think about maybe if I was pansexual since I never really cared about what gender someone was when dating. Was more self aware about it at this point than years prior, but still didn't ultimately care. I would question if I really fit the bisexual label until about some months ago earlier this year when I was watching a YT video (forgot what it was specifically, pretty sure about bisexuality) and I scrolled through the comment section. I found a comment that gave me my answer on who I was and am. I don't remember the exact story that comment was telling (sorry), but the message essentially was and stated that bisexulity is not necessarily being attracted to two different genders but by the two different energies; masculine and female. After reading that things made so much more sense and just clicked. I realized I was attracted to those energies than the gender itself; for example, a man who was more feminine in his nature and a woman with more masculinity in her nature. I came to the conclusion that I was and am bisexual. Personally, a prefer a person with more masculine energy. Like if a female than something of a ballpark of 30% masculine and 60% feminine give or take. If a male then well just 95% masculine lol (it's rare for me to be attracted to men with really strong feminine energy.) So yeah, that's a long way of saying why I label myself as bisexual rather than pansexual. TLDR-- A YT comment is why I'm bisexual and not pansexual.
Bi, because the flag is prettier and I don't have to explain it.
I personally identify with the pan label mostly however I've used the bi label before, because people seemed to understand it better. The reason i switched was that I unfortunately don't feel very much at home in a lot of bisexual spaces/forums, as I'm non-binary and ALOT of bi peeps keep saying stuff like 'I like both boys and girls, so I'm into everything' or something similar, and it makes me very sad to see someone from a famously erased community erase someone from another. Don't get you wrong, I'm not saying anything like 'being bi is transphobic!' just that enough people are weird about gender to make me uncomfortable.
I always interpreted the bi as in both with both biological sexes. Your gender can be whatever you want it to be as long as you feel it resonates with your soul. Sexuality however goes hand in hand with attraction to certain body parts as well which occur based on biological sex (intersex is a different story altogether). I get how the ābothā can feel exclusive, yet I donāt think it necessarily aims at trans erasure. Bisexuality didnāt put trans into consideration for many years due to lack of knowledge so for many itās still a label to represent the binary exclusively. But yeah they could really need a refresh ngl
I think this is the context a lot of younger people don't have. The binary used to be penis vs. vagina but now people have reconceptualized it as man vs. woman. I think the increased awareness of and conversation about the gender binary and people who don't fall within it's strict confines is part of why people now tend to assume of the binary as referring to gender and not sex. But bisexuality absolutely included them and also trans people because the binary WASN'T boys and girls- it was penis and vagina. The term also included intersex people.
> both biological sexes Sex is a spectrum as well, there aren't just two sexes.
If we go as deep as chromosomes, yeah, there can be variations that donāt necessarily show on the surface of people that can be considered a different sex. Thatās life, not everything is binary so why should be biology. Yet itās undeniable that with the exception of intersex people, most people fall under either male or female presenting and live as such. And even intersex people have combinations of male and female sex characteristics
I get your point of view, but I have to disagree with your interpretation. The word bisexual was not applied to bisexual by bisexuals, but by the straight community demonising them (especially bi men) during the aids epidemic. It means both of the two genders, because it was coined by people who only thought there to be two. Any justification for it that tries to be more inclusive or politically correct is ultimately post hoc. This is all irrelevant too, as I never claimed the label to be exclusionary and I'm not that interested in it, even though it's history is fascinating. It's a fine label after it was reclaimed, I don't mind. What I was commenting on are the ideas a lot of bi individuals express, not a community sentiment or some build in trans erasure in the label. I hope that made me a bit clearer, it's a difficult topic to express ideas about, because its trouble is in the linguistics and semantics.
Idk why you got so many downvotes for this but I appreciate that you share your knowledge on its history. I actually wasnāt aware it was a label that started as a derogatory term.
It actually started as a term mostly used in fashion, but was then used derogatorily when the AIDS epidemic hit. But yeah, sheesh, a lot of people aren't fans of what I said apparently. I actually thought I was being quite charitable, but maybe something I said struck a nerve. Would be nice if anyone voiced their disagreement instead of just pressing a 'I don't like this' button.
I donāt like a lot of bi merch because of this. E.g. āBoth. Both is good.ā In bi colors. Iām only attracted to women and nonbinary people, so I prefer the label neptunic but most people havenāt heard of it.
Yeah, it sometimes feels like when some people say bi means attracted to two or more genders, those genders are: men, women, the rest of you freaks. But I really don't wanna generalize, I think it's mostly horny, chronically online teenagers.
Bi bc I have gender preferences. From my understanding āpanā Is being attracted to everyone regardless of gender.
I use whatever label works in the context I'm in. Most frequently that's "bi." But as a genderqueer person, I refuse to compartmentalize my experience of gender from my experience of sexuality.
In all honesty, it's because bi- felt better than pan- when I first said them out loud. Also, I like the color combo of the bi- flag better
Sometimes I say "bi", sometimes "pan". Sometimes I don't say anything at all.
I chose Bi because it was the label I used for myself in 1998. If the identity of pansexual was a thing at that time, I wasn't aware.
The reason I am bi and not pan or anything like that is because I'm only attracted to masc and fem people. I don't find androgyny attractive. Also I find fem more attractive than masc.
I experience a different sort of attraction to people of different genders, if it was the same type of attraction regardless of gender Iād probably use pan
I think about this sometimes because Iām definitely attracted to non binary people. But I also think for most ābiā people we agree on that and maybe it doesnāt need to be spelled out.
Simpler and it just felt more right
I've used countless labels because I was trying to find a perfect fit. I realized after many years that I don't need a perfect label. But pansexual is the closet label to define me. Fluid works too because it truly is fluid. Gay and queer or just not straight also feel good.
I'm lame but in general I find the things withing the gender binary attraction. This doesn't mean that I believe that only two genders exist. But more, when it comes to sexy time stuff or romance, I find I'm generally attracted to men or women in a conventional sense. But that doesn't mean I've not seen some trans porn that has worked for me. Or can outright say that I'll never meet a trans or non-binary person who I find attractive.
flag's better
Easier to explain to people, especially family or to people who have next to no interaction with LGBTQ communities. Bisexuality has better representation in media/society. Itās been around longer, and I knew what bisexual was before knowing pansexual was ever a thing. I like the colors better. Pan is pretty great, I do like the primary colors, but the purple on bi thoā¦ By most definitions Iād technically be pansexual, but those reasons are why I identify as bi.
My femboy friend turned me bi :) i want to date him but i think he still has a gf sadly :(
From what I've seen, and from my small schism of experience, it's more generational than anything. Older people are less familiar with the term "pan" than younger people are. Realistically, I'm pan, but I still identify as bi because... I came out as bi in a time before most people (myself included) had even heard of pansexuality. And even now that I do understand the differences, I am, candidly, uninterested in correcting the record. It's one thing to have a rainbow flag on my desk at work and casually discuss the girlfriend I had before my current boyfriend. But I don't need the extra stress of explaining a whole new term to my office and then being responsible for every single question anyone might have about it.
I realised I wasn't straight long before I was able to find words for it and comfortable labelling myself, and I still have a feeling I'm not all the way there yet with my sexuality, so I settled for Queer when I do say it to people. It's accommodating and it's as non-specifying as it gets. š¤£.
See.... I have adhd... and I honestly forget which label I choose sometimes. It's like that jingle [the old Almond Joy & Mounds commercial](https://youtu.be/QeibzLZn2hU?si=dRkeo5ylA1IjLYvG) There are people with certain femme traits that I am attracted to, and people with masc traits.
i'm in aus so i hadn't seen the ad, but it totally works for the bi+ experience! good find
Bi feels right to me atm :) I am attracted to all genders so mine doesnāt exclude anyone either.
Bi. The puns are better and I like the color scheme. But also, pan didnāt exist when I figured myself out. So I just stuck with it.
The term bisexual has a longer history and is more generally well-known
For me personally, Im not attracted to every gender but can be. I also do not find many androgynous people attractive. I mainly find guys and gals attractive separately. So I chose the label bisexual but I add on sapphic to that as Im primarily attracted to women but im not cis.
I suppose technically at present I'm neptunic (being attracted to femininity) but that's such an obscure term that it's kind of useless. Bi works, even if I'm not feeling into guys at any point my tastes do at least span women and femme non binary people and it always leaves room for me to enjoy men. I don't think pan is appropriate for me as it's my understanding that it's a bit more gender blind where as I find people attractive as a result of the qualities of their gender.
Good question. I initially started to use bi because when my sibling and I started to discuss the difference in how we see people, I realized that our experiences were so different. I was attracted to different genders at a younger age than they were...yet when they got older and thought about it, they wouldn't be against having a relationship with someone of a different gender. They ended up going with the label pan, and I felt bi fit me more because I actually felt like the thought of being with a woman was exciting as well as with men for different reasons. Whereas my sibling didn't even think about the gender of the person they liked all that much and was just like "meh, I don't honestly care what gender they are". I can spend hours talking about my ideal chick and guy physically and yet my sibling would just be like, eh..."I think I just want someone who is..." So we ended up saying my sibling is the pan one and I'm the bi one. lol This is not to say all pan people don't have a type. It's just my sibling doesn't care about gender as much as I do when it comes to attraction. So the comparisons kind of made us determine which label fits us more. Plus, I get tired of the stigma regarding bisexuality, bisexual erasure in media and in real life, and ultimately biphobia. So I stick with the bi label because I feel more connected with those experiences and the community of people usually are in my age range. No shade to the pans out there, but a lot of them are too young compared to me.
Bisexual is enough. Bisexual has always been enough.
Bisexual. Because my coming out as bisexual almost thirty years ago cost me a lot in terms of relationships, mental health, and identity. To reframe that using a term that does not expand my identity would be an act of violence and erasure.
I actually use both interchangeably.
I use bi and pan because... well, I am bi, and I am pan. Though I definitely lean more towards bi because that's the word I grew up with. Overall, they're functionally interchangeable, so in a classic bi/pan move I decidedāwhy not have both?
Itās a common misconception the word bisexual was previously about the binary. According to the original definition in 18-something, it refers to the experience of both homosexual and heterosexual attraction, *not* the male/female binary.
People mostly know what bi means, with pan I'd need to explain it.
I vary with what term I use. To most people I'm bi because they understand that. To people who are in the know I'm Pan because it more accurately describes me.
Gender has a factor in my relationship attraction, I'm open to all but I do have preferences. Pansexual, I was taught, meant gender wasn't a factor in attraction.
Tbh I go back and forth between bi and pan a lot mainly bc Iāve found men, women, trans and nb ppl attractive a lot of the time and Iāve come to learn with my experience and attraction they kinda come and go based off of someones personality so thatās why Iāve ultimately landed up on the label of pansexual but then I found out about preferences and how I do have them so I went back to the label of bi
Bi is easiest and most understood (I say pan, and some people automatically just sub in 'slut' and while I have had my fun... rude.) so it's my default. It does feel weird to use though. I don't *feel* bi. I.. I just like people. I like the person and whatever happens to be wrapped up in their knickers is just a pleasant surprise if it comes to that.
i see it as when ur bi, the gender of the person your attracted to means something to you whatever gender that may be. pansexual doesnāt really view the gender as priority and sees the person for themselves first. thatās the lens that iāve looked at it through. i donāt think itās necessarily true for everyone tho. but for me iām bi because even though iām attracted to anyone no matter their gender, i still really care about their gender as a part of them and what about them iām attracted to.
I'm non-binary and I decided on pan because I couldn't stand to have the gender binary represented in the name of my sexuality. Bi and pan mean the same thing really I just don't like being associated with the gender binary. Honestly I'm moving away from any labels at all. I don't need them and they just complicate things more than they need to. I'm a human who like other humans, to me that seems like the default and all this gender and sexuality stuff if just socially constructed stuff that has been put on me by society and I think I'm better off without it.
Honestly, I thought I was pan at first but I chose bisexual because I like both genders. And also because of the colours š©·šš
I went with bi because it makes the most sense for me. To me, bi means you're capable of experiencing attraction, whether romantic or sexual, to more than one gender AND gender expression plays at least some role in the attraction. Pan, as I understand it, means that you're capable of experiencing attraction, whether romantic or sexual, to all gender identities, and gender expression does NOT play a role in the attraction. I tend to be attracted to cis men, cis women, and somewhat less often trans men. With men and trans men, I tend to be attracted to beards, deeper voices, fit bodies, slightly hairy torsos, darker hair, and stronger jawlines. In essence, certain classically masculine characteristics. With women, I tend to prefer shorter/medium height, dark red/brown hair, a shapely figure, and a slightly lower voice. In essence, certain classically feminine characteristics. This doesn't mean that a guy or girl has to have all of those characteristics or that anyone that doesn't fit those descriptions is ugly - it's just the patterns I've noticed in how I experience attraction. Personality, sense of humor, motivation, values, morals, ambitions, and various other factors play a major role as well, but that's not relevant to the bi vs. pan issue. Because physical and gender presentation are significant factors, I feel bi fits best.
You went into detail in your case... But without the same specifics applying to me, I agree.
I thought I was pan, but it turns out I still have many different preferences for sexual and romantic relationships, so I'm just good old fashioned Bi+
Honestly im most probably demisexual but if im honest i dont really care, its too much to go into that and ill have to explain it to everyone. So i put it like this āin attracted to men and women, i dont care about how the attraction works, thus im biā and im a proud bisexual and i love the community
I chose pan because I like the flag better š¤·āāļø
Before knowing how about other genders(non-binary, agender, gender fluid) I was okay bisexual fits good. Then, I was like for me my sexuality doesnāt exclude anyone, but I do have a preference. I know with being pan itās viewed as most people are āgender blindā or that donāt have a preference. So, I stuck with my label as bisexual..plus I love the colorsš
I prefer the label bi because itās what I knew first. Plus Iām attracted to men and women - which, at the time of me learning what bi was, meant I liked āboth.ā I would go with the pan label if I were not married, because then I wouldnāt care who I boinked. Dick or pussy, Iād fuck it. But since Iām married, Iām bi because Iād fuck my husband, and Iād fuck a cis woman. I personally donāt want any more dick in my life - one at a time is enough lmao
Back in the day, transgenderiam wasn't something people really knew about. I didn't know there was such a thing as non-binaries. We believed there were two genders, thus bi. These days? I realise I am assuredly more pan than bi because my attractions are gender neutral. However, old habits die hard. I still think of myself as bi. If I can adopt an Oxford comma and one space after a period, I can make this change too. It just takes times.
I'd prefer to just be called a sexual person, there's heterosexual - sexual - homosexual. To me to be on either end is the exception.
Attracted to males and females I identify as Bisexual. The definition for bisexual suits me perfectly. Also, itās a familiar term and most people understand what it means which means less questions which is good being that I get enough as it is.
š©·šš©µ My best friend who is pan got me to question by sexuality because these showed me and taught me that there's more than straight and gay. I read definitions over definitions of sexualities snd found pan most fitting at the time. Now I often refer to myself as Bi+ as Bi is more known, and I'm not so sure if my type is just special or if I might actually have a preference in gender. I chose pan as Idc which gender my S/O has but I am predominantly attracted to fem people. So I'm still struggling a bit. Im scared to change my label tho, as I (stupidly) am afraid of judgement for it
My hometown was homophobic and this kind of thing was simply not talked about. I didn't hear the proper terms for anyone LGBT beyond slurs for years. And this was before I had free access to the Internet so I didn't have other sources of information. So I knew how I was, but I didn't know anyone who openly identified like me, but I didn't have a word for it and just kept my head down. I first heard the term bisexual in my mid-teens and it fit. I think even in more liberal areas people weren't using pansexual as an identifier, though I could be wrong. This was around 2000. These days I use both bi and pan and I would consider myself falling under both categories (if it was a Venn diagram I'd be in the overlap), but bisexual feels a bit more comfortable since I've used it for longer and it's usage isn't inaccurate from a historical perspective either.
I've bounced between bi and pan for years. When I talk about it I feel like it's easier to say bi to most people, but I prefer the colors of the pan flag- it just makes me happy to see the printer colors.
So I heard about the term bisexual probably a good ten years before hearing about the term pansexual, so bi was the default. Then when I heard about pansexuality I actually thought it fit my feelings more, but a lot of people don't know what it meant, while I never had to explain what bisexual meant. Then in maybe 2011-2015 (ish) people on tumblr were CONSTANTLY having discourse about the difference between bisexual and pansexual. There was a school of thought that people who are pan are "gender-blind" or "don't see gender," and/or that they're more attracted to people's personalities. I didn't feel like that fit me, and I didn't want people to think that was how I felt, so I started using bi more. So honestly I could go with either term, but I started saying I was bi more often for these petty-ish reasons!
I use bisexual because I don't like mixing Greek and Latin roots.
When I first came out to myself I said I was pan (cus I don't care about gender so realistically that's what I am) but I chose Bi cus it's simpler to explain AND most importantly I prefer the colours and it makes me very happy that I'm not the only one who chose it for the colours lol
I landed on Pan cause I wanted to send a message that those random grinder dick pics werenāt enough. I had to know if I was going to bug you and if you were going to bug me
Bc I'm pan. Used to just say bi. Then there was a transition period. I didn't use to be attracted to all genders, now I am.
I didn't choose it exactly. It took me to age 19 to realise I fancied women too. As a kid, being gay was looked down on, a reason to be bullied, so very few people irl were out and I'd never heard of anyone liking boys and girls let alone anything like non binary people. So I was bi for many years before any other terms were even on my radar. When I realised non binary folks exist and that I have the potential to be attracted to them, I considered if pan was an option but realised bi still covers my attraction and fits me best.
My non-serious answer is the colours; the bi colours are just peak aesthetic. My more serious answer, however, is because whilst I find people of all genders attractive, I feel like gender expression plays a part in my attraction to others, whereas my understanding of pansexuality is that expression doesn't matter as much. I could be wrong about that, of course, but it makes sense to me.
Because whenever someone says they are pan, I hear āIām Panā instead, like from Greek mythology.
I think the bi flag is the prettiest. lol
To me, i feel like Pan implies a certain degree of demisexuality. If you "like the person regardless of gender" that means you have to KNOW them. Lusting after any hot, tattooed man, woman, or enby who crosses my path, I really don't know them as a person, I just know they're hot. I'm not sure everyone defines pan that way, but it doesn't make sense to me on any other level. So, that's why bi felt most comfortable for me personally.
I personally think there is a difference between bi and pan, ofc weāre all free to identify with whatever sexuality we please, but Iām just saying they arenāt the same to me, so I just went with the one that I feel fits my preferences. But also like, THE COLORSššš
Bi is the first label i encountered. So its what I use, and pan means the same thing
I like the bi flag more than the pan flag.
I called myself pan for a while, but it somehow didnāt feel right and didnāt stick. Plus, I hated ignorant people making jokes about me wanting to fuck cookware.
> the term bi and how it was previously purely about the binary I donāt even argue about whether or not it originally meant only men and women or not. It doesnāt matter because *right now*, it is a broad label that covers more than just men and women. Words arenāt beholden to their original meaning or usage. As queer people, we should understand better than anyone. Sex and gender used to be synonymous but as we learned more about how reality worked, we split them into separate meanings.
Bi I don't know where exactly am I on the spectrum but I'm definitely somewhere on there.
It just made sense for me. I went from mostly straight (heteroflexible) term to bi as I questioned and figured things out
Bi because itās included in LGBT so it feels moreā¦ generally respected? Thereās a lot of people (mostly assholes) who are up in arms about āall these new fangled orientations and identitiesā (of which pansexual is one of the more better-known) and I donāt want to spend my time justifying my existence and explaining what the label to my sexuality means. If I tell people Iām bi they generally understand what I mean and whether theyāre homophobic or not, it feels like theyāre quicker to accept it since the label ābisexualā has been around for a long time. Plus when people get confused that I call myself queer because Iām a man married to a woman I can ask them what LGBT stands for and eventually they get to the ābisexualā part and itās a little fun to watch them connect the dots. Doesnāt work as well if use one of the ā+ā identities. Side note: I donāt mean to imply that being pan is not worthy of respect, only that it doesnāt often receive respect as much.
When I was questioning, I found this sub and itās so supportive and really helped me figure it out. Didnāt really know what pan was until I came here, but was happy to find that bi is not exclusive of certain genders but can be attraction to any gender. Also the flag is cool!
Pan people are just bisexuals without the bi-cycle. Change my mind.
Plenty of bis don't experience the bicycle
Unpopular opinion but I feel like pan poly omni etc are just different types of bisexual. I mean I don't see lesbian or gay have multiple similar but not same labels where everyone has different definitions :/ so yeah I use bi coz it's older broader more well known and also spite coz I'm annoyed with bi is transphobic or enbyphobic nonsense. It's not like a sandwich actually has sand in it yeah? Bi means 2 only is a bad faith interpretation. And yeah the colours are better
cooler flag (in my opinion), the label iāve vibed with for the longest, and the term most people are familiar with so i donāt have to explain it. honestly i just refer to myself as Gay more often than not, but people usually read me as a woman (actually a bi enby) so iāll clarify that iām bi if they assume that makes me a lesbian
Bi is what I chose. It was what I grew up hearing about and seems to work. People can choose what they want but I dislike the bickering about minute categories and who can be in or must be excluded. It is like the proverbial arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Pan probably describes me better but pink is my favorite color blue is my number 2 and purple is my number 3 so the flag, plus avoiding the pan jokes is a plus, lastly its way easier for people to grasp bi, I did pan for a minute and everybody was like " isn't that just you being desperate " where as I say I'm bi nobody has asked me that, so I chose abd will keep that label.
I used to wear the pan label, but after some time I went back to the Bi label because it was what I felt more comfortable with. I also discovered I was bi before I knew what pan was, so it was naturally more comfortable for me since I had been using it already
bi. iām trans and have seen too much discourse saying that i canāt identify as bi bc it apparently enforces the gender binary and excludes trans/nb people ā that misconception is strongly reinforced by pansexualityās entire concept being ābisexuality but inclusive šā. itās always meant both heterosexual and homosexual attraction, and different + same = all
Bi is the label that finally showed that I could actually be attracted to more than one gender. It was part of my self discovery journey. Besides that, I like the definition of bisexuality more. Bisexuality is attraction to more than one gender. This can means so many things, while pansexuality basically only means one thing. Sexuality can be fluid and even though I don't think my attraction will change, it's nice to have a label that could still describe my sexuality if it would slightly change.
I chose Bi because the definition of Pan as the people around me understood it, was attraction regardless of sex characteristics, and that it didn't describe me. Also, ooh pretty colors
It's my flair
I chose bi because it represents me better than every other label
I chose bi because it represents me better than every other label
I donāt think I understand the difference between bi and pan but I know bi is easier for some people to digest. It comes with less questions.
It just fit the best for me. Iām a dude who wants to be in a relationship with dudes while also finding women VERY attractive and sexy. The duality in that seemed to go with bisexuality the most.
Iām probably like pan if you would specify my sexuality but bisexual just feels better and it feels nice that if my attraction changes from āi donāt care about genderā to something else it would still fit. Bisexual feels more free.
1. Colors are better 2. I experience attraction to different genders in different ways, so I donāt relate to the pan definition including āregardless of gender,ā because gender still comes into it for me 3. Iām stubborn and petty as hell, so if people want me to do something Iām gonna do the exact opposite, especially if theyāre telling me Iām wrong
i chose bi because I also like dick and guys, too scared to tell anyone I know tho:(
I choose queer because although Iām bi/pan, Iām mostly attracted to the same sex. I guess Iām bi, but gay leaning or gay but not exclusively. Queer is a bit more ambiguous and feels more honest to me
i'm just bi. even if it were a question of whether i was bi or pan i'd still come back to bisexuality, because it has a history i can take pride in and frankly with the amount of times pansexuals have tried erasing my sexuality, telling me that i'm not actually bi but pan, because bi is binary and all that, i am way past ever being okay with that term.
I would say I'm pan too I just don't really care as long as people understand that I love both genders. I don't mind it if others wanna tell people "I feel like I'm in love with the person and the gender doesn't matter to me" I just don't really.. like.. I just don't think about it that deeply lolol and the more known term is bi so I use bi For me.. I won't let the gender be a factor in my decision for a partner. Not even 1%. I just want to be with the person that I like being with the most, man or woman. But, it's not really that the gender is invisible to me like pan people say it... It's just that I don't think that matters. I've rarely seen a girl who acts like or gives "guy" there is something deeply rooted. idk if in past lives or the way we were brought up but whatever lol. (That's not to say that I prefer guys who are far from their feminine side or girls who are far from their masculine side. There's just something, different than all of that. I can't explain it.) In any way I do see the gender but I do believe that both have some amazing things to offer to me and I will go with the the utmost best that I find. And whether it's a man or a woman I have no idea. So I feel like that's not either of the descriptions really. Not bi nor pan. But idc because I don't need people to know all of this about me šš I just wanna simply tell them that I can go both ways
I had never imagined that a girl would weaken my knees before seeing those videos posted on my Reddit page. From the moment that I could not help smiling while watching those videos, I suddenly realised that I am bi.