#all very interesting tho n makes me eager to dig into more bi history!

[genderoutlaws]

as a bi person, i feel like a lot of bi people on this site are hypersensitive to people making incorrect generalizations about what bisexuality means (or rather, what it can mean, since every bisexual is going to have a different relationship with their identity), so after they’ve encountering *some* definitions of pansexuality that imply bisexuality is transphobic/binary/less progressive, a lot of us have made pansexuals into a scapegoat to take out our frustrations on over the biphobia we encounter in online spaces (because, let’s be real, in real life most people don’t really know what pansexuality even is & after you explain it to them, most people go “okay, so kind of like bi, but maybe a little different” & personally i know people irl that use the two labels interchangeably since the reality is that both labels describe the same/similar experience of being attracted to all genders/experiencing attraction regardless of gender, depending on how people personally conceive of each identity, which is always going to vary based on personal experience). the fact of the matter is that a large chunk of modern-day biphobia harkens back to the AIDS Crisis, waaay before pansexuality was even a thing. harmful stereotypes about us & tensions between us & lesbians & gays were not caused by “pansexuality” entering the queer lexicon. there are self-identified battleaxe bisexuals on tumblr that do call out biphobia, promote bi resources, and share bi history in addition to provoking pansexuals, but there are a good amount of blogs i have seen that seem to reflect the idea that hating on pansexuals is bi activism praxis. bisexuals have every right to push back against those that reduce our identity & all that comes with it down to an ahistorically narrow definition or paint us as shallow or only caring about our partners appearance/body/sex, but telling pansexuals that they are inherently transphobic, that they’re wrong about their identity, that all bisexuals define themselves as experiencing attraction regardless of gender is just limiting how bi+ people are allowed to conceive of their own sexuality, including people that actually identify as bi. at this point, i feel like the two labels are pretty much interchangeable & the problem comes in when people try to force a clear distinction by trying to define bisexuality & pansexuality in opposition to each other. i wish more people that identify with one label more than the other or with one exclusively would say something along the lines of, “both identities describe attraction to multiple/all genders, but the label i chose is the one i’m personally comfortable with” & leave it at that. i am tired

im so tired too lol but Thank you, this was also really well said. (my only addendum if you don’t mind, is that pansexuality was emerging as an identity term pre and mid AIDS crisis! though at the time it was still mostly within BDSM/kink communities and San Francisco play parties used to describe like “i’ll top/bottom/dom/sub whoever”)

#and in the book Bi Any Other Name- lani mentions pansexuals being involved in the bi community as early as the 70s #all very interesting tho n makes me eager to dig into more bi history! #long post