I currently identify as bi but what is the difference
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Pretty simple:
Bi: Attracted to more than one gender.
Pan: Gender is not a factor in attraction (aka nominally attracted to all people of all genders).
So as an example, you can be bi but have a preference towards men or women, that would be not be congruent with being pan.
At very very very nitpicky technical linguistics (and daft) interpretation bi would mean two genders but in common tongue it has the meaning you say. However some would rather not have even the slightest linguistic link to the binary (two).
Edit I could actually be wrong it could also mean sexualities hetro and homo which covers all
Pan seems to be gender blind, i.e. attracted to people with no regard to gender or attracted to all genders.
Bi has one definition in being attracted to both men and women, both sides of a binary.
Bi also has a less common usage to mean attracted to more than one gender which may or may not include both halves of the binary or the entire spectrum.
So if I like the whole spectrum I’m pan? For fucks sake, what am I gonna do with all the bi stuff I made
Keep it? I think Bi is the big umbrella which contains pan, omni and poly/multi.
Bi can also mean attracted to the whole spectrum. Really, what it’s come to mean is attracted to more than one sex/gender.
I agree with Fleur more that Bi means that you’re attracted to multiple sexes/genders similar to pan, but pan is effectively genderblind whereas sex/gender is still a factor for bi folks, it’s just not a factor that excludes most people.
But these definitions aren’t entirely agreed on. If you feel more comfortable identifying as bi, that’s fine. If you feel more comfortable identifying as pan, that’s also fine. We’re very, very similar to the point that it’s common for people to not know the difference. The distinction appears to be more personal.
Even the Bisexual Manifesto, from the 90s, didn’t limit bisexuality to two genders. It hasn’t “come to mean” that recently. It pretty much always did.
This is a pretty common question, and personally I use them interchangeably, but bi is not really distinct from pan under most definitions that are internally consistent.
Even linguistically the roots of homo/heterosexuality are same/other. As such if you are bisexual you are both homo (same) and hetero (other). Whilst linguistics is not prescriptive, it still gives us insight into the historical understandings that have birth to an idea.
In the end, be bi, be pan, identify however you choose and never listen to someone telling you that your identity is not what you choose or feel. :)
Thank you, I don’t want to make this about my problems but I’m just tired of people hating us because of our sexuality. I appreciate the kind words
Like others have said, bi = m+f attraction whereas pan = attraction regardless of gender or sex
In practice theyre often interchangable; most bi folk are open to attraction to NB and trans people etc. Pan is just a way to include that in the identity specifically
Don’t know if you’ll find it interesting, but I really enjoyed verilybitchie’s video on the subject https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XiuHsugRgNQ
As far as I can remember, there’s a long history of bi people being attracted to people with both the same gender and different genders (homo/hetero) and supporting the trans movement historically. But then there was a period where pan became a popular term, and so people tried to make bisexual into something much more restricted than it had been, depite the fact that lots of bisexual people were saying “that’s not what it means for me”.
In modern times, just use whatever feels right to you! Everyone has their own associations and connotations for words. Some people hate queer as a slur, some people prefer it to more traditional terms like ‘gay’ (which actually feels a lot more like a slur to a certain generation). A small amount of folks complain about ‘bi’ being exclusionary but they’re the minority, and defintely not representative of bi culture, or the wider world. Equally, I’ve heard people say nonsense like “pansexuals are even attracted to animals or objects!” which is not accurate, but the main drawback for pan is that most people are more familiar with the ‘bi’ label than ‘pan’.
I personally prefer “bi” but I don’t care much either way, and might use “pan” if I was speaking to certain folks, or even just “I’m attracted to attractive people” if it’s someone who would be weired out by a label ending in “SEXual”.
As far as i know, bi means liking male and female gender, while pan means every gender. Don’t know how correct i am tho…
Bisexuality is not restricted to male and female gender. Bi means homosexual and heterosexual attraction. So attracted to genders same as mine. And attracted to genders different from mine. It means basically attracted to at least 2 genders, but not necessarily all genders.
Scientifically speaking, pansexuals are cooler. It’s just science.
