As far as I can remember, there’s a long history of bi people being attracted to people with both the same gender and different genders (homo/hetero) and supporting the trans movement historically. But then there was a period where pan became a popular term, and so people tried to make bisexual into something much more restricted than it had been, depite the fact that lots of bisexual people were saying “that’s not what it means for me”.
In modern times, just use whatever feels right to you! Everyone has their own associations and connotations for words. Some people hate queer as a slur, some people prefer it to more traditional terms like ‘gay’ (which actually feels a lot more like a slur to a certain generation). A small amount of folks complain about ‘bi’ being exclusionary but they’re the minority, and defintely not representative of bi culture, or the wider world. Equally, I’ve heard people say nonsense like “pansexuals are even attracted to animals or objects!” which is not accurate, but the main drawback for pan is that most people are more familiar with the ‘bi’ label than ‘pan’.
I personally prefer “bi” but I don’t care much either way, and might use “pan” if I was speaking to certain folks, or even just “I’m attracted to attractive people” if it’s someone who would be weired out by a label ending in “SEXual”.
Don’t know if you’ll find it interesting, but I really enjoyed verilybitchie’s video on the subject https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XiuHsugRgNQ
As far as I can remember, there’s a long history of bi people being attracted to people with both the same gender and different genders (homo/hetero) and supporting the trans movement historically. But then there was a period where pan became a popular term, and so people tried to make bisexual into something much more restricted than it had been, depite the fact that lots of bisexual people were saying “that’s not what it means for me”.
In modern times, just use whatever feels right to you! Everyone has their own associations and connotations for words. Some people hate queer as a slur, some people prefer it to more traditional terms like ‘gay’ (which actually feels a lot more like a slur to a certain generation). A small amount of folks complain about ‘bi’ being exclusionary but they’re the minority, and defintely not representative of bi culture, or the wider world. Equally, I’ve heard people say nonsense like “pansexuals are even attracted to animals or objects!” which is not accurate, but the main drawback for pan is that most people are more familiar with the ‘bi’ label than ‘pan’.
I personally prefer “bi” but I don’t care much either way, and might use “pan” if I was speaking to certain folks, or even just “I’m attracted to attractive people” if it’s someone who would be weired out by a label ending in “SEXual”.