mangoesandbunnies:
has anyone else ever wondered “what the fuck is pansexuality?!”
i have quite often. maybe i’m the only one. i dunno.
So this link is a rehash of all the same stupid shit we see on a regular basis about pansexuality as a word or identity being automatically more trans friendly, more “open minded”, etc.
But here’s a segment I wanted to isolate for a close reading:
The differences between the two sexual identities are undermined by the fact that some people who consider themselves pansexual identify themselves as bisexual out of convenience, as it’s a more widely known sexual identity. In addition, some people who consider themselves bisexual may be open to dating someone who falls outside the gender binary.
Let’s begin with the first segment, “the differences between the two sexual identities are undermined…”
In a moment, we get the sense that there is something political about maintaining divisions between bisexuality and pansexuality. “Undermined” gives us the sense that there is an effort to make definitions of bisexuality and pansexuality mutually exclusive and to question that is betrayal, overtly negative, etc.
When pansexuals of this mindset control the narrative about bisexuality, this is what we get. Manufactured and needless hostility and just general-making-shit-up.
And for this next segment, “some people who consider themselves pansexual identify themselves as bisexual out of convenience.”
A generous reading would acknowledge that bisexual, as misunderstood and misrepresented as it is, is at least more familiar than pansexual as far as general use goes. But the fact that bisexual is again here cast as inadequate, as a term to use when you’re out and about with the lowly stupid commoners, as an uncomplicated and uncontroversial identity in terms of its position in cisheteropatriarchy, etc. is not missed on me. The elitism and desire to create distance between queer people who describe their desire and identities in very similar ways and experience much of the same crap is just gross.
Because can’t you see how heterosexism is at work here? Requiring some sort of substantial difference between bisexual and pansexual in order for pansexual to be valid is inherently fucked up. Heterosexism already says that queer identities and the way we describe them don’t make sense and aren’t good enough, so for some reason people respond to that by creating hierarchies and straight up lying in an act of horizontal hostility so that pansexual as a label will be taken seriously and be considered worthy of note. But it always already was worthy, and you don’t have to throw bisexuals under the bus in some sort of effort to prove yourself to the fuckers who oppress us in the first place.
And finally, “some people who are bisexual may be open to dating someone who falls outside the gender binary”. In a sentence, the author has erased nonbinary identified bisexual people and conflated gender and sexual identity. It’s also this sort of gross “I’ll date people in spite of their weirdo gender identity” bullshit that sees non-cisgender experiences as deficits that must be overlooked; after all, if we define sexual and romantic attraction based on cisgender standards, then engaging someone outside of that is considered “open-minded” and you can almost hear the loud thumps on the back of people who see nothing wrong with this self-congratulatory perspective.
The more I read and write about these topics, the more sure I am that division making between bisexuality and pansexuality is political and serves heterosexism. How that works exactly is something I still feel very much on the edges of. But when we analyze language closely like this, it seems fairly clear to me that it’s happening, and almost always seems to happen when pansexual people and/or people really wrapped up in an ally identity (specifically toward trans folks) control the messages on these distinctions.
*edited for clarity because I’m tired and it’s raining and I’ve got brain fog
I love it when I’m too tired to argue and then someone else says everything so perfectly. I’m bookmarking this forever.
