This feels entirely manufactured by people who are neither bi nor pan.
Such a nostalgic read, I haven't heard about this debate in like a decade 🥲
I use bi because to me attraction to different genders feels distinctly different, but like, there's no divide. Use whatever feels right and don't assume things about others
I'm pan, but tell most people I'm bi so I don't have to have an argument about the distinction between a term they likely know and is close enough and something they haven't heard of.
Weird, maybe it's just my friend circles. I have a couple of pan pals and it didn't come up even once
Yeah, I worded that oddly. I don't really bring it up, but I'm not putting myself in a position where I need to explain that to my evangelical grandparents or parents.
While I agree it we shouldn't really argue over this, I disagree with their Misconception #1 that "bi" can mean more than 1.
I acknowledge that bisexual may have a different meaning to some people, and also that language evolves over time but the prefix bi literally means "two". For example bicycle, biceps, biped, bifocals.
Sure, if you zone in on the prefix, it definitely means two, but the word bisexual itself has been used to denote "attraction to more than one gender" for ages.
Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or duogamous in nature: that we have "two" sides or that we must be involved simultaneously with both genders to be fulfilled human beings. In fact, don't assume that there are only two genders.
–Excerpt from the first edition of Anything That Moves, a bisexual magazine, initially published in 1991