So I've got base knowledge of what the difference between "bi" and "pan" is. But I wanted to know how you, personally, describe it or what you think the best explanation is. Because it seems to me that the two terms are quite interchangeable in most cases. So why bother with the extra distinction? Thanks.
I see pan as a subbranch of bi. Bi means you like two genders, usually males and females. It does not specify T-inclusiveness. It's not in the name, and a lot of bi people don't date and/or sleep with FtM's, MtF's and/or enbys. I ID as pansexual becomes I'm open to sex regardless of parts and GI. I don't ID as panromantic though, because I'm not sure I could date women or enbys. Still figuring that one out.
Bi = attracted to two genders, male and female. Doesn't explicitly include trans/agender/nonbinary etc Pan = attracted to any and all genders, aka gender doesn't matter as long as I'm truly in love with the person
This confused me a lot for a while too. For a while, I was defining it like this: Pansexual - attracted to binary + non-binary genders Bisexual - attracted to binary genders I thought it bisexuals were attracted to binary + non-binary genders, then there would be no distinction between bi and pan, and we would be leaving out a huge group - those attracted to just binary genders, as well as those attracted to binary and some, but not all, non-binary genders. But a few threads on this forum helped me understand the difference. So essentially, this is the way I break it down: Pansexual - attracted to all genders (binary + non-binary) Bisexual - attracted to 2+ genders (binary + none/some, but not all non-binary) So both pansexuals and bisexuals are attracted to binary + non-binary genders. The difference is that bisexuals don't have to be attracted to non-binary genders, and if they are, they aren't attracted to ALL non-binary genders.
