I mean, practically, if someone tells me they’re bi or pan, it doesn’t really change my view of them. Like there’s not really any practical difference insofar as something I would need to know to treat them somehow. Like if I’m trying to flirt with someone, and if I was a man, and that person I find out is a a lesbian, then I wouldn’t. But if they’re bi or if they’re pan, it doesn’t change that.
There is a difference, I’m not saying there isn’t, and I’m not saying we should only use one if the two. I’m just saying the need for clarifying is overblown. If I’m curious why they picked one over the other, I might ask, but again, it’s not super critical for anything.
But is there really a difference, then? Both words communicate the same thing, i.e. being attracted to multiple genders. Anything beyond that is so subjective as to not really be meaningful beyond prescriptive queer discourse.
What’s the alternative you’re suggesting? That they don’t use the label that best suits them? That they don’t use the definition they prefer when asked why they identify as they do? This feels sort of half baked. I get where you’re going, but to what end? Suggesting they use a different definition or a different label just for convenience is pretty problematic.
To be clear, that wasn’t my point at all… I think it’s perfectly fine for people to use whatever words they want for themselves, and to describe their sexuality with those words however they please.
My point is moreso that attempting to separate pansexual and bisexual beyond the individual level is useless because they aren’t meaningfully distinct concepts. People can pick one or the other or neither and use it in whatever sense they want, but the problem arises when they try to generalize their pet definition to others. You see people in this thread arguing about the definition, saying “I think this is what it means” and then someone else comes in and says “no you’re wrong it doesn’t mean that”. Some of the people saying that are because the definition was transphobic or something, but some of them are just disagreeing about the definition.
I think this is all a nonsense prescriptivist debate with no relation to reality (which is part of the appeal of course, but still). People just argue what they think the word should mean rather than thinking about how it’s actually used. And if you think about how it’s used, I don’t think it’s possible to separate the two. One person’s pansexual is another person’s bisexual.
You’re saying it doesn’t matter except on the individual level, but if you don’t want people sharing their actual, individual usage of the word, how could we ever be descriptivist?
I mean, practically, if someone tells me they’re bi or pan, it doesn’t really change my view of them. Like there’s not really any practical difference insofar as something I would need to know to treat them somehow. Like if I’m trying to flirt with someone, and if I was a man, and that person I find out is a a lesbian, then I wouldn’t. But if they’re bi or if they’re pan, it doesn’t change that.
There is a difference, I’m not saying there isn’t, and I’m not saying we should only use one if the two. I’m just saying the need for clarifying is overblown. If I’m curious why they picked one over the other, I might ask, but again, it’s not super critical for anything.
But is there really a difference, then? Both words communicate the same thing, i.e. being attracted to multiple genders. Anything beyond that is so subjective as to not really be meaningful beyond prescriptive queer discourse.
What’s the alternative you’re suggesting? That they don’t use the label that best suits them? That they don’t use the definition they prefer when asked why they identify as they do? This feels sort of half baked. I get where you’re going, but to what end? Suggesting they use a different definition or a different label just for convenience is pretty problematic.
To be clear, that wasn’t my point at all… I think it’s perfectly fine for people to use whatever words they want for themselves, and to describe their sexuality with those words however they please.
My point is moreso that attempting to separate pansexual and bisexual beyond the individual level is useless because they aren’t meaningfully distinct concepts. People can pick one or the other or neither and use it in whatever sense they want, but the problem arises when they try to generalize their pet definition to others. You see people in this thread arguing about the definition, saying “I think this is what it means” and then someone else comes in and says “no you’re wrong it doesn’t mean that”. Some of the people saying that are because the definition was transphobic or something, but some of them are just disagreeing about the definition.
I think this is all a nonsense prescriptivist debate with no relation to reality (which is part of the appeal of course, but still). People just argue what they think the word should mean rather than thinking about how it’s actually used. And if you think about how it’s used, I don’t think it’s possible to separate the two. One person’s pansexual is another person’s bisexual.
You’re saying it doesn’t matter except on the individual level, but if you don’t want people sharing their actual, individual usage of the word, how could we ever be descriptivist?