As a biromantic asexual woman, I refer to myself as bi or pan interchangeably.
When I looked at the definitions and using my background knowledge, it appears that both sexualities love regardless of gender.
While bisexual people like men and women, I also heard that very few of them won’t date other genders. Some bi people will only date cis men and women, others only men and women in general, and some will date nonbinary people and not care.
So anyway, don’t both sexualities love regardless of gender and find everyone attractive?
I refer to myself as pan for two reasons. First, I believe that gender is a spectrum and there’s more than two of them. Two, to me bisexual implies equal attraction to both the masculine and feminine, and I’m less attracted to the masculine than I am to the feminine end of the scale.
Really, pansexual is being attracted to the the person, regardless of their gender identity.
Why would bisexuality imply equal attraction? Never heard that. It’s common for bi people to only be attracted to certain genders at certain times (look up the “bi-cycle”).
I’m bi and I like guys more right now. In high school, I liked girls more. It’s never been equal in my whole life.
It doesn’t, but I have had that argument thrown at me almost verbatim by someone who identified as bisexual after I mentioned that I’m less attracted to masculine than feminine.
Well, we’re all different, I guess. I’ve never heard that argument before, it doesn’t even make sense. Nothing against you for thinking it was legit though.
This is gonna bother me all day hahaha.
Many bisexuals read “bi” as “homosexual + heterosexual”, where heterosexual includes all genders other than your own.
Do you mean that would include trans, where in bi might not include that?
Not necessarily, because I don’t separate trans from cis, though some people do. It’s really a personal preference. Pan feels like a more inclusive term to me than what bi does.
Fair 😊
Does the word “bilingual” imply there are only two languages?
That’s also what bisexuality is about.
Ok. I didn’t argue against any of what you said, just gave my reasons for using the label that I do. I have met trans/NB exclusionary bisexuals, and that turned me off to using that label for myself. If other people use bisexual to describe themselves and mean it to encompass attraction all possible gender identities then that’s great!
There are also transphobic heterosexuals, asexuals, and gay people. Bigots sharing our orientation isn’t a reason to cede it to them.