this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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I feel like I barely know what pansexual is, I totally get that others may not have heard about it at all. I'm still amazed how much struggle bi people face when gay has been more or less accepted or at least tolerated for a little bit.
As someone also from the south, I am very familiar with that exchange! I also don't know how long it's been since I've heard it
Yeah, I have to confess that I don't fully understand the difference between bi and pan. I've had some people tell me that pan is simply a more inclusive way of saying the same thing, and others tell me that there are distinct differences in how the two approach their sexuality, so the whole thing just leaves me a bit confused.
The way I understand bi and pan is the following:
An important note is that the bisexual community has not historically been, and mostly is not currently, exclusionary of trans and nonbinary folks.
A lot of people (including me, as a trans-nonbinary demi-ish+sorta-bi/ace person, not gonna write a whole essay, I just say queer usually) dislike when people claim bisexuality is trans-exclusionary and/or nonbinary-exclusionary :/
These are of course personal labels, so some people use them differently and respecting people's self labelling is important.
Some people use bi to mean attraction to people of any two gender identities, or two-or-more gender identities.
Pan probably has similar things but afaik it's a less common label so I haven't seen as much discussion on the different meanings people use, or maybe it's less prone to that because the prefix "bi" means "two" which results in weird etymological nitpicking ;p