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Bi or pan?

Discussion in 'Sexual Orientation' started by defatigable, May 3, 2014.

  1. defatigable

    Regular Member

    Joined:
    May 3, 2014
    Messages:
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    Location:
    Tasmania, Australia
    Gender:
    Female
    Out Status:
    Not out at all
    So I've only recently recognised or 'accepted' my non-heterosexuality. I'd been aware of it peripherally for a long time but had always dismissed my feelings for women, arguing as a child that "I couldn't like women/girls as I'm not a lesbian." The not-being-a-lesbian bit was and still is true, but when I got older and learned more about different sexualities and how there's more than just gay and straight I still didn't think myself not-straight, I more defined myself as hypothetically attracted to people who aren't men but thought that in reality I'd probably only ever like/love/date men.

    Anyway, it was only about four months ago that I admitted that I wasn't straight (heteroflexible was pretty much how I'd been identifying for the past year or so) when I realised I was/am in love with one of my friends from highschool. When defining my sexuality with myself, I'd primarily been using 'bi' but as I read more into it and looked at other labels I thought 'pan' was also good because of its intentional inclusion of non-gender binary people. That being said, in researching I found that a lot of bisexuals, if not most or all, choose to identify their bisexuality as attracted to their own gender and other genders and I'm not saying that the term bi is binary and therefore transphobic.

    Ugh sorry this got a little longer than I meant it to but basically the gist of this is that I have been identifying as both bi and pan lately as I like both equally and think both describe me. Is that okay? Is identifying as both a thing? I guess if I had to make the decision I would prefer to choose pan, but when I think about it I would probably use bi when coming out to friends just so they get the main idea and I don't have to define it for them, so should I use bi?

    Really I'd just like some other opinions and if anyone has or has had any similar experiences please let me know. I know that labels aren't everything and that I should just be me but I'm also kind of worried that I'm contributing bi and/or pan erasure by saying that I'm both, therefore saying they're the same thing, therefore implying that one of them doesn't really exist.

    Okay I'm going to stop writing now.