What is the difference between bisexuality and pansexuality?
In: Culture
There are none. People like to invent different sexualities and words to describe them to make themselves seem more interesting and unique.
Stuff like this is big in internet culture. In the real world, if someone says they’re pansexual, everyone else just rolls their eyes or yawns with boredom.
They basically mean the same thing.
Some people have used bisexual to explicitly exclude people who are nonbinary, but this isn’t very common. Some people use pansexual instead so that it’s clear that they aren’t explicitly excluding anyone.
Ultimately the meaning of both will vary from person to person, and people will just use whichever term they feel subjectively best represents them.
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Unless you’re on the seedier side of the net and then pansexual means attracted to all types of genders and species
Bisexuality is liking only male and female genders; pan sexuality means there are more than 2 genders and liking them all.
At an individual level…if you like somebody who is trans…they likely won’t like you calling yourself bi.
At a collective level ‘bi’ reinforces heternormativity. The idea that gender is a binary…not a multidimensional spectrum. Heteronormativity is recognized by most folks who have any concern with social injustice as a pervasive bad thing. So…using ‘pan’ is pretty important on the model of the grain of sand carried by one termite building the mound.
This hasn’t always been this way, but in 2020, most of the folks I know who identify as “bisexual” define it as “I am sexually attracted to people of my own gender and to people who are not.”
For someone who identifies as a bisexual man, for example, this could mean “I am attracted to men & to non-men” which might include women & non-binary folks.
For a while, “pansexual” was used by some people to mean “I don’t see gender” (problematic in its own right; gender can be really important to a lot of us & has pervasive cultural significance), and for a while similarly, “pansexual” was used to signal “hey, i’m also into trans/nonbinary folks” – which is problematic too, insofar as it might imply that it’s ok to be a trans-exclusionary bisexual.
Anyway. Long story short, the terms are somewhat interchangeable, but as we move towards a more diverse understanding of gender, “bisexual” makes a lot more sense and “pansexual” is a bit redundant & due to be phased out; any given person is either your gender or not. You only like people of another gender (heterosexual)? You only like people of the same gender (homosexual)? Vs you might like someone of either: bisexual!
In practice, not much. While some people prefer the term pansexual, as it’s more inviting and doesn’t imply only an interest in men and women, the overwhelming majority of people who identify as bisexual don’t reject non-binary people. It’s more that the term “bisexual” was invented in an age before we had a good understanding of non-binary genders. Many bisexual people today define it as “Attracted to both my gender and not-my-gender” instead.
The difference is more or less irrelevant, but it does matter to some people.
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The labels we wear are complicated things. They’re (or least they can be!) deeply personal; they are part of how we view ourselves and also how we define ourselves to others.
And because labels are such personal things, one individual’s definition of a word might not be same as another person’s.
Here’s an example:
Adam is a man who is bisexual. To him, this means he is attracted to other men and to women. He sees bisexual as meaning “attraction to people who are the same gender as me and the opposite”.
Stacy is a woman and she’s bisexual too. To her, it means that she is attracted to 2 -or more- genders. She likes women, men, and a lot of other folks who might fall inbetween or outside of the binary (such as non-binary or agender people).
Adam and Stacy are both bisexual, but their views on what the word means are different. Those definitions are both accepted these days though.
Here’s another example:
Avery is a non-binary person who is pansexual. They state their sexual orientation as being “attraction to all kinds of people, with gender being of aboslutely no importance.”
Emma is a woman who is pansexual. She defines her orientation as being “attraction to people regardless of their gender”.
Avery and Emma are both pansexual, but they don’t see eye-to-eye on the meaning of the word. The way they identify is personal and it fits them in their own ways. That’s totally valid.
My point is these words have different definitions so it’s hard to give you a black and white answer. And in some cases a bisexual person and pansexual person – might – have very similiar definitions.
If I was going to simplify to the most basic of terms and not give thought to the nuisance of it? Bisexual is potential attraction to – 2 or more – and pansexual is potential attraction to – all -.
But what it really comes down to is what someone is comfortable identifying as. I am a bisexual man and my fiancé is a pansexual man. While our definitions are almost identical, we wear the labels we think fit us best.
I don’t know if I did a good job at ELI5, but I hope I’m able to help at least a little.
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