What is the difference between bisexuality and pansexuality?

Bisexual: Attraction to more than one gender.

Pansexual: Attraction to all genders.

 

Correct!

I think I'm attracted to all genders, but I still use bisexual since most people have heard about that and the definition is still correct for me (all genders is more than one gender).

 

Pansexuality makes sense if you assume gender is more than a binary condition. Whether you subscribe to that notion or not is up to you.

 

Bisexuals can also assume gender is more than a binary condition. Although I admit it's less implied in the name.

Some people define bisexuality as 'only attracted to two genders'. This is fine, as long as they don't attach that label to other bisexuals who define their personal sexuality and 'bisexuality' as 'attracted to more than one gender'.

 

When I first heard of pansexuality I thought it meant people who were attracted to both men and women, and also transmen and transwomen. It was difficult to wrap my heard around "pansexuality" because I always assumed that gender was binary, so what else could be more encompassing than "bisexual." That said, as I now understand it, a pansexual could essentially be summed up as a person who can end up feeling attracted to a person, regardless of how said person self-identifies gender-wise (including all who don't identify within the gender binary).

 

I'm afraid in a purely semantical sense, you are wrong. The prefix "bi" literally means "two" which is why we pair it up with "-sexual" when we want to imply someone is or can be attracted to both male and female. It is certainly true that in reality a lot of people have been using it to simply express "I would fuck whoever" meaning potentially more than just people identifying as guy or gal, but I would argue continuing to use it this way is counterproductive if you want to validate pansexuality given that the distinction between both would be non-existent deeming the newest one ("pansexual") virtually irrelevant.

Personally I would prefer if pansexual stayed for the sake of specificity since I do not want people to think by "bisexual" I really mean "pansexual" because I certainly don't fit the pan definition, thus I use and will continue to use bisexual when referring to someone who is strictly attracted to people identifying as guy or gal. Clarity!

 

Bisexuals like both men and women. Pansexuals like pans.

 

Never gets old

 

Pretty much While Bisexuals can be attracted to all genders, that is not always the case, which is why I use Pansexual.
However it's perfectly fine to use whichever one you want to use.

In my case, Pansexual is the more exact term, so I call myself that. There's a lot of anger between Bisexuals and Pansexuals on some websites.... *coughs* Tumblr *coughs*
But overall, I think that if anyone should be sticking together, it should be Bisexuals and Pansexuals.

 

This is my understanding of it, and I could very well be wrong:

Bisexuality: "Bi" means "two", therefore it implies someone who is attracted to two sexes (Usually understood as male and female).

Pansexuality: Someone who is attracted to all shapes and forms of genders, including male, female, transmales, transfemales, agendered, non-binary, etc. It's not about the person's genitals, they fall in love with the PERSON, regardless of what gender they identify as.

That's how I understand it anyway. Like I said, I could be wrong

 

Words can mean different things then their constituent parts. See 'television', it's not a telescope but something which which you can only see previously recorded thing, which may be far away. Or homophobe, not literally someone who is afraid from things which are the same, but someone who hates LGBT people.

It does not matter how a word is made up, it matters what people think that the definition is.

And in this case a lot of bisexuals define it as 'one or more genders'. :icon_wink

Personally I think everyone should use the definition they want for their own sexuality, without using their own definitions to define other people.

 

Which is precisely what I mean by

This is what most people would instantly think when you identify as bisexual. You would have to go out of your way (like now) to explain that it's more than that to you, at which point I argue why not just use the already available word that fits your particular definition of bisexual (pansexual)? It's just less confusing for everyone.

 

To copy & paste:

 

oh wow, what is the anger about? Seems rather strange...

 

Thank you.

 

It's Tumblr. Where people proclaim themselves to be Deitykin (actual Gods and Goddesses), plants (and their preferred pronoun is "sprout"), and where you can also be somebody else, also known as a Factkin.

It's the Olympics, really, for asininity. Even though everybody is an idiot, competing in idiocy, they want to be the right kind of idiot with the winning idiocy.

Don't dive too far into Tumblr, you will not like what you find. But if you must, then hope and logic must be abandoned, LOL.

 

Hmm... Personal question. I identify as ambisexual (bi) atm. But I have no problem whatsoever if said person is non-gender binary. On the contrary, I find it attractive.
Would I perhaps be more of a pan then?
Although, one thing I might have gotten wrong about pans is the idea that they often really don't care at all about if you're male or female or whatever... But I guess it's fully possible to be a girl-leaning pan? :3 but then, since I DO lean toward one sex, albeit not gender, I guess ambi is still better maybe...

 

Haha, brilliant description I was wondering what could be the possible reason for animosity- I cannot think of one that makes sense, but then tumblr does not make sense.
I wonder how people find all this stuff on there: whenever I go I only seem to see polite blogs about digital art.( apparently I am doing tumblr wrong.)