• Stoneykins [any]@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    The “bi” part of bisexual implies a gender binary. Some people like that, some people don’t. Pansexual is just an alternative that is explicit in its attraction to non-binary people. Some people aren’t attracted to non-binary people, and use bisexual as a label to specifically mean only an attraction to men and women. Other people who might be described as pansexual describe themselves as bisexual simply because it is a more well known word. It all varies.

    “Non superficial bisexual” isn’t the worst definition of pansexual, but saying pansexual is shorter.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      I’ve always felt that bi = people of my sex or people of the other sex. Nothing about the word “bisexual” implies any gender to me, it just means I’m not explicitly gay or straight!

      • Stoneykins [any]@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Allow me to be more clear about why I said that.

        It is mostly because of the words themselves. The “bi” prefix means 2, or twice, etc. That would mean the word bisexual literally means “twice sexual”. Sexuality is inherently related to gender because it is a quality defined by relationships between people’s genders, and bisexual thus (literally, but often not functionally) means a person who is sexually attracted to two genders.

        The “pan” prefix on the other hand, means all, or including everything. Thus we can assume pansexual to (literally) mean a person who is sexually attracted to any and every gender that there is or could be.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      The “bi” part of bisexual implies a gender binary

      No. Historically it kind of did, but the definition has evolved since the existence of non-binary started to be widely accepted in LGBT+ circles. Now it just means attracted to more than one gender. Pansexual is a subcategory of bisexual.