Happy pan visibility day! 🩷💛🩵
Due to some queer accounts on Instagram posting about celebrations of today, I had to get reminded that there are still some awful queer people focusing on discourse about that “bi vs. pan” shit.
There is a tendency for battle-axe bisexuals to state that “bisexual and pansexual mean the exact same thing” with the intent of equating the two because they want to invalidate anyone who identifies as pansexual instead of just identifying as bisexual, but I realized something… this is actually biphobic as hell, not bi-affirming like they think!
Of course, sexual orientation labels are neologisms for a person’s own comfort, so being linguistically prescriptivist about them at all is absolute nonsense that anyone who perpetuates this “bi vs. pan” shit doesn’t understand.
However, to illustrate my point coherently, a common definition of “pansexual” is a sexual orientation which entails not regarding gender in your attraction. If a battle-axe bisexual asserts something like “Well, bisexuality means not regarding gender too!”, then they are literally invalidating every fucking bisexual person that regards gender in their attraction (and there are tons of those). There are many bisexual people who will explicitly say that they regard gender.
To grasp at straws so hard to invalidate people who identify as pansexual that you’ll shit out a misconceived biphobic myth that invalidates numerous bisexual people is basically saying “being indirectly biphobic to own the goofy MOGAI pans.”
I identify as both bisexual and pansexual simultaneously, so every time this kind of discourse comes up, especially when people have the intent to put bisexuality and pansexuality as “at war” with each other makes me double facepalm.
No one should invalidate anyone’s identity. No one should invalidate their own personal interpretation of it. Pansexual people should respect how bisexual people identify themselves. Bisexual people should respect how pansexual people identify themselves. Everyone should just respect other people’s labels PERIOD!
Bottom line is that the LGBTQ+ community needs to get over label discourse and policing entirely. You’d think “respect people in how they personally identify” wouldn’t be a controversial take for queer people BUT… here we are.
Love all of my m-spec buddies, BTW!
In all honesty, there have been times when I’ve been confused what to call myself because I might find a person who identifies as with neither gender. All these years I’ve just called myself bisexual and put that thought away. It makes me still new to this, in the sense that I’ve never compared notes with others until quite recently. For example, I didn’t know some folks identify as both bi and pan until you just explained it just now.
This is so awkward for me because a lot of panphobes will think that every pansexual person identifies as pansexual as a mutually exclusive label that’s entirely distinct from bisexuality, so when they try to invalidate my pansexuality by saying stuff like “LMAO, you’re bisexual!”, I can only respond with:
There isn’t a reason why people can’t identify as both bisexual and pansexual. The fact that this divide exists to begin with, in which we have to have debate over whether or not it’s okay for both labels to even exist (deeply unserious discourse), is the reason why some people do it. They want to signal that they don’t have to be at odds with each other which is, in a sense, why I identify with both, but it’s a tad bit more complicated than that.
I find that the ways I interpret either label are both applicable to my sense of sexual orientation. If you define bisexuality as “attraction to more than one gender” (which many people do) and you define pansexuality as “attraction without regard to gender” (which many people do), then by definition, I am both, and I’m okay with saying that I’m both. Furthermore, people often interpret bisexuality as a “umbrella” term that encompasses pansexuality. Sexual orientation labels are all made up arbitrarily and they’re neologisms that aren’t as tangibly and commonly understood as words like “dog,” “cat,” and “table,” so I make sure to reject the absurd standards that linguistic prescriptivists put out.
In other words, fuck it all, identify whatever way makes you comfy! Just respect other people’s identities in the process.
I agree, this was a good explanation.