Now there’s a centerpiece.
Almost as good of a conversation starter as having a dildo stuck into a fleshlight on the mantle.
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Someone who’s attracted to half man half goat gods
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Are we doing satyr now?
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is this accurate?
Every bi person I know, (including myself) just takes it to mean attracted to two or more genders or sexes.
I personally identify as bi, but I’d easily fall under the pan designation as well.
Generally I stick with bi because that’s at least an articulable thing (at least compared with pan).
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That’s the chair Edward used to make the Keppel run in less than twelve parsecs.
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I heard it was the Christmas Run in less than 12 Parsnips.
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Honestly, they mean the same thing in practice. If you are give a pansexual’s and a bisexual’s sexual fantasies, a sampling of their porn they watch, them describing the best sex they have ever had, and their complete sexual and dating history, you couldn’t the difference between a “pansexual” and a “bisexual”. It’s a difference without a distinction. People can call themselves whatever they want, but they are all getting lumped into the same category in my head I reserve for people that might bang anyone.
Personally, I just tell people, “I’m bi, pan, or whatever word you want to use to describe someone who might be into any other vaguely human shaped object.”.
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I get why people prefer “pan-” to “bi-” and recognize that any mental pathways to from “pan” to “goat” are my problem, not someone else’s. But it’s always nice to meet fellow travelers.
The best thing is to try to understand what the individual person means by it rather than to get caught up in the terms. But since pressing for details is rather personal, I tend to assume that what’s really going on is that many/most of us have this limiter* where our ability to be sexually attracted to a person is highly dependent on a particular set of secondary sex characteristics.
Like a male friend of mine who dates and is attracted to women. They dated a non-binary person for a year and a half and were definitely very attracted to that person. But they don’t think of themselves as bi- because they know (from experience) that they are only interested in sex if their partner trips whatever flags their visual-processing subconscious mind has to tell them it’s the kind of body they are interested in, that that’s the kind of body we associate with a body under the influence of what we think of as female hormones. They don’t discriminate against people based on their gender, but they can’t really change what physical attributes make them horny.
A person who calls themselves pan- or bi-sexual most likely means they are without that limiter.
* I couldn’t find a neutral-sounding word here because we have negative associations with having limits, but I mean no judgment. There’s nothing wrong with being attracted to a particular kind of body (or, if there is, so many of us find ourselves in that situation that we are going to have to accept one another).
I think bi- vs. pan- is about some people feeling bi- is exclusionary language not really anyone believing that bisexual people are extremely picky about the gender of their partners. The idea that a person who is less choosy (along a certain axis) about who they are attracted to is more likely to be choosy (along that same axis) seems… I don’t know, dumb?
I just refer to my mental notes:
- “Bi-” doesn’t mean two in this case
- “Pan-” has nothing to do with goats (see above)
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I also hear this line:
more from people self-identifying as pansexual than bisexual. I’m not sure if it’s a legitimate distinction, meaning that bisexuals are attracted to any gender and pansexuals are not attracted to gender at all, or if people are just trying to distance themselves from a label that is commonly interpreted to mean:
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I have come across enough bisexual transphobes (refusal to acknowledge a sexual partner’s gender identity) to know there is a problem. Yes, it is dumb, but it is real. Pansexuals are more likely to be trans-positive.
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The heart leads, the mind follows.
Definitely, and I’m sorry for suggesting otherwise.
What I meant was that my understanding of how people are attracted to other people would be challenged if it turned out that in reality people who identify as bisexual were less sexually attracted to people with non-binary genders than people who have a monosexual identification are.
ETA: That is, I think P(sexual_attraction(bi, non-binary)) > P(sexual_attraction(mono, non-binary)) where sexual_attraction’s arguments are (orientation of attractee, gender of attracter). I realized my sentence could be read as P(sexual_attraction(bi, non-binary) > P(sexual_attraction(bi, binary) which is something I have no reason at all to think.
There’s no end to the capacity of people to be bigoted, though, even when it seems to go against type (e.g. vast swath of misogynist women).
As for bi- vs. pan- I think there are a lot of reasons people might use one rather than the other, including local cultural issues so it’s probably bad to generalize since maybe “bi-” people are more likely to be one thing in London and more likely to be another thing in Toronto.
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I get nervous because I don’t want people to think calling myself bi means I’m anti trans or anti NB, but I don’t like pan because it feels too broad. I’ve just got my own very particular attraction zone.
Personally I’m more attracted to more femme people, I’m never attracted to very butch women although I’m not solely attracted to high femme or anything. I also generally like quirkiness. With guys it’s more about being turned off by behavior or bearing that just reads a too masculine to me personally. Guys I find overtly attractive are super femme but I’ve never actually dated that type. I end up actually dating nerds who just don’t read as very masculine to me.
I also feel like my relationships with men and women are different to me. And my one relationship with a person with gender dysphoria contained distinct elements from those two different sets of experience for me.
I don’t want to describe his personal situation too much but basically someone with a good bit of dysphoria who was very set against transitioning at least at that time, haven’t spoken in a while. But from my end the relationship just felt much more like dating a woman in several aspects. It’s a weird ephemeral thing.
It feels impossible to describe the differences in these sets of relationships but it feels like a real thing.
I don’t think bi actually better describes me, I guess it also just invites further inquiry, “what do you mean by bi.”
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Surely you mean the ‘Kegel’ run 
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Yeah. As a male who identifies as bi, it’s always fun to be told I don’t even exist. But people are less dismissive of bi than pan in my experience so I’d rather go with the thing people are more willing to at least believe is a thing.
Been chatting with a gay guy who point blank said “I don’t believe bi males exist. Why do you think you’re bi?”
It’s a hell of a question to ask someone.
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What is their issue? Is it that they don’t think it’s possible to be attracted to both men and women? Or is that they think that an attraction to the same sex is in itself enough to categorise someone as gay, regardless of whether that someone is also attracted to the opposite sex?
Or are they just being a dick, and it’s a waste of time trying to figure out why?
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As I understand it he thinks I’m a closeted gay guy who passes as straight.
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Perhaps people are getting it confused with “poly”.
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