Most pansexuals who agree that “bi” = “pan” explain their identification via simply “liking the ‘pan’ label better.” However, it can be crucial to reflect on why this may be. This is not an attempt to tell you that you must identify as bisexual, but in my—and many others’—experience, discomfort with the “bisexual” label is often rooted in deeper issues that should be examined rather than ignored.
Internalized biphobia is “[t]he internalized belief that bisexuality is somehow lesser or something of which one should be ashamed.” It’s an incredibly common, damaging phenomenon that can take years to recognize, let alone work through. It can cause depression, anxiety, and even suicidality.
Some examples of internalized biphobia include: Being convinced you’re not bi enough, feeling like you’re not a full member of the LGBTQ community unless you’re in a same-gender relationship, thinking biphobia isn’t as serious of a problem as homophobia, feeling guilty for being polyamorous or sexual because you think you reinforce stereotypes, feeling deceitful if you don’t come out to your partners, being ashamed of your attraction to a certain gender, and many more.
The facet we’ll be focusing on here, though, is thinking that the word “bisexual” itself is shameful, dirty, or limiting; being scared of saying “bisexual” and using euphemisms to avoid it.
I don’t think wanting to identify as something other than bisexual is automatically a sign of internalized biphobia. I myself sometimes identify as “same-gender-loving” (an Afrocentric term for black non-heterosexuals) alongside “bisexual,” and some reasons may exist to have misgivings about the latter (which I’ll get to later). However, many who avoid the “bisexual” label do suffer from internalized biphobia.
To those who use other labels, I’m not necessarily telling you that you absolutely need to identify as bisexual (although I will encourage it). Rather, I think it’s valuable to question why you’re uncomfortable using “bisexual” to describe yourself.
We all grew up in a society telling us that bisexuals are gross, predatory freaks. Many young people who use alternative labels discover their attraction to men and women or regardless of gender— but they’re not hypersexual or attention-seeking like those dirty bisexuals they keep hearing about, so they can’t be bi, right?
Due to this skewed perspective, they continue believing the biphobic propaganda they’ve learned and try to find a new word that, while expressing the same concept of bisexuality, is free from biphobic stereotypes. Unfortunately, the effects of this don’t only happen on an individual level.
Some alternative labels come directly from misguided ideas such as “bisexuality is binary” or “bisexuals are sluts.” Since biphobia is so prevalent in our society, these ideas enter the mainstream, which is a great thing for bigots. Homo/biphobes love watching our own community say that non-heterosexuals are vapid perverts. Transphobes love to hear that you need a unique identity to date trans and nonbinary people.
Due to all of this, the “bisexual” label becomes even more undesirable as people with little knowledge of LGBTQ history or bisexuality take these messages as facts, then tell bisexuals that we’re wrongfully exclusive or transphobic — even when we’re trans ourselves — and if we disagree with the harmful definitions people shove on bisexuality, then we aren’t bi at all.
It’s heartbreaking and infuriating to know that while being bisexual is makes you a part of a beautiful culture, most don’t know it because of biphobic propaganda from both mainstream society and the LGBTQ community.
What I find incredibly concerning, though not surprising, is that the vast majority of alternative labels stem from “bisexual” specifically.
People of all sexualities can experience attraction in different ways, but we don’t see a push for gay men who prefer thin, relatively hairless men to call themselves “twinksexual.” We — well, people who aren’t transphobic — don’t tell straight men who date trans and nonbinary women that they’re no longer straight. Why is bisexuality the only monolithic identity?
When people insist that certain bisexuals—who don’t have preferences, who acknowledge their attraction to all genders, who don’t find gender too relevant in their attraction, who date trans and nonbinary people, who are trans or nonbinary—are another sexuality entirely, they imply that bisexuality is insufficient when it isn’t. They say that our identity can’t possibly describe something that it always has.
Unfortunately, many people use alternative labels as a disclaimer for — and, ironically, a way of restricting — bisexuality. That hurts all of us, regardless of the words we use to describe who we like.
“I just like this other term better” is a reasonable enough statement at face value, but this rationale can hurt us. Nobody ever thinks about why other terms may feel better than “bisexual,” and this lack of introspection can be damaging.
This phenomenon of dodging this label goes back decades, as revealed by Lucy Friedland in 1989:
Many people who lead bisexual lives would rather call themselves nothing at all before calling themselves bi… Other people aren’t anti-label per se, they just don’t like the “b” word. They say they can’t relate to it, that they don’t even know what it means. You even come across certain “extreme” types, who definitely aren’t squeamish about labels given that they adopt other stigmatized labels like sado-masochist, anarchist, pagan or punk, but even THEY wouldn’t call themselves bisexual.
I recently co-led a workshop on bisexuality at an anarchist conference in San Francisco. About 45 people showed up… what I heard was a long litany of reasons why people didn’t want to call themselves bisexual… many felt they had nothing in common with people they know who call themselves bisexual. I was pretty floored considering this was billed as a workshop on bisexuality.
The “need” to distance oneself from bisexuality has a lot of reasoning. After all, we’re sex-obsessed and disease-ridden. (Speaking of “disease-ridden,” the AIDs crisis did a serious number on the public perception of the word “bisexual.”) We’re flaky, indecisive cheaters incapable of monogamy. We’re always lying. We’re straight and looking for a way to invade the gay community, or we’re gay and too cowardly to admit it.
Hell, we’re not even real — we’re a sexual fantasy at most, rendered nonexistent as soon as the PornHub tab closes. “It’s no wonder that many young people who grew up hearing all of these violent beliefs are shying away from bisexuality and choosing to identify with a different term or none at all,” remarks Emma Seely.
On top of all that, as most of us know, people often deem bisexuality a phase. Bisexuals, especially younger ones (especially teenage girls), are dismissed or blamed for society not taking bisexuality seriously. One entry from the IAmPansexual LiveJournal community, as an example: “I sort of fit in with the pansexual stereotype, and since bisexual is being adopted by the ‘trendy’ [12-year-old] girls at the local middle school, I decided to drop that label.”
This sentiment is unfortunately commonplace. It never seems to occur to people that maybe, just maybe, more bisexuals exist than they assume and sexuality isn’t static.
An article in the Journal of Sex Research notes that “some multisexual individuals may adopt queer and pansexual labels to avoid stigma associated with a bisexual identity.” One pansexual interviewed for a paper in the Graduate Journal of Social Science had this to say:
[T]he other reason people tend to use [pansexuality] is because it is hard to be labeled bisexual. Straight people just hate on you and call you ‘Fag’ and the mainstream Lesbian and Gay community is nasty too, calls you ‘closeted’ and ‘half-gay’. Also people say [that] bisexual means slutty or that you are a ‘2-Beer-Queer’. So people don’t want to stand up because face it, it’s hard. So they say ‘oh that’s not me, I’m pansexual’.
I personally know a few bisexuals who suffered from so many biphobic remarks that they considered switching to other labels as a refuge. Being relatively new identities (in terms of mainstream recognition), labels like “fluid,” “heteroflexible,” and “pansexual” are free from most negative assumptions.
Few say that “sexually fluid” people will give you AIDS, and there aren’t any scientific “tests” trying to prove heteroflexible people don’t exist. Pansexuality has been marketed to the public for decades as a “more progessive” alternative to bisexuality (which I will discuss in the next carrd). Sometimes, the issue isn’t merely a benign lean towards another name.
“Bisexual” is an uneasy word for almost everyone, bisexual-identified or not. For our heterosexist society, it challenges the idea that being attracted to men and being attracted to women are mutually exclusive. For those misguided about bisexuality, they associate it with the enforcement of the gender binary. For bisexuals, it’s tied with a slew of horrible stereotypes that will make people view us differently if it escapes our lips. Sometimes it’s hard for me to be proud when biphobia is so busy making me stressed, angry, fraudulent, and ashamed.
I feel unsafe for my love for men. I feel predatory for my desire for women. I’m terrified of outing myself, even to gay people. I constantly question the validity of my experiences. The misinformation floating around about bisexuality sickens me to my stomach. Sometimes, I wish I wasn’t bisexual, and people constantly telling me that I’m wrong about my own identity and should call myself something else doesn’t help.
But here’s the thing: Despite all that, in-between the moments of unhappiness, I find bisexuality itself to be absolutely lovely. The world loathes me from all angles, sure, but I adore my community and I’m honored to be a member. It’s one of the safest places I’ve ever known. Surrounding myself with other bisexuals was a genuinely healing experience that unlocked not only friendships but a new way of understanding the world. Loving other bisexuals aids in me loving my own bisexuality. As I work on truly embracing it, I feel less afraid of myself.
When I read about bisexuals of the past talking about bisexuality and our community, it’s clear those discussions come from a place of sincere care and pride. I found a purpose in trying to amplify the bisexual voice in these silencing times. I recognize that almost every reason I feel iffy about my sexuality is due to society, not the experience itself, and none of them define me. Existing and standing your ground in the face of hatred is an incredibly brave thing to do.
Do I feel like “bisexual” fits me like a glove? Not necessarily, but neither do oversized sweaters, and I think we can all agree that they’re still cute and cozy. Labels aren’t supposed to be strait-jackets. They’re not meant to squish your complexity down, but simply to provide a canvas to paint your story on. They’re not a shirt in a closet, they’re a house. I’m turning mine into a home.
With the “just use the most comfortable word” mindset, though, I’d still call myself gay, possibly even a “gay man who likes girls sometimes.” I’d make no effort towards the daunting task of unlearning my internalized shame or unpacking my trauma—that I might’ve not even recognized if it weren’t for considering bisexual identity.
Does that seem like a good thing? Would you tell a lesbian suffering from similar stress that it’s okay for her to be ashamed of calling herself a lesbian? That she should just use a new word rather than address the reason she’s stressed?
Of course, using other words might give some relief, and it’s natural to want an escape from the stigmatization one faces for their attraction. Still, simply rebranding bisexuality ignores the root problem that causes society to routinely minimize it, forcibly interpret our attraction to people as fractions, and act as though we’re incapable of loving people fully, our single-gendered partners merely being halves of what we supposedly “need” to be satisfied.
This phenomenon harms every multi-gender-attracted person, no matter the label we use. It should be understandable why some of us hold concerns about things that seem to legitimize this fragmentation of bisexuality.
If the word “bisexual” fits your attraction and you don’t like the way it sounds coming out of your mouth, it’s much more valuable to understand and work through those feelings than smother them. Jennifer Baumgardner tells us:
The word bisexual makes me cringe at times, but saying I’m heterosexual or a lesbian feels inaccurate — regardless of who I am in a relationship with. So, cringing all the while, I use the label. Because of my relationship to the term feminist, I have learned that cringing is often a sign of unfinished political business: the label bi sounds bad because, at least in some ways, bisexuals are an unliberated, invisible, and disparaged social group.
It’s natural to start believing the harmful things taught to you when they’re shoved in your face enough times. It’s common to feel iffy about certain identity labels. But the solution is not necessarily to give up and flock to new ones, but to face your unease head-on.
Consider what about the word “bisexual” that unsettles you when applied to yourself. Could it be due to society demonizing bisexuality and painting it as shallow, debaucherous, fake, hypersexual, unfaithful, and taboo? Have you internalized the beliefs that it’s regressive, apolitical, exclusive, or outdated? Could your aversion come from a wish to escape these judgments? Do you still think the term is somehow limiting (and did people who don’t identify as bisexual teach you this)?
Now, I mentioned earlier that valid criticisms do exist for the word. I don’t think it’s perfect. Like other sexuality terms, it was created under our Western gender system (but we could say the same for “nonbinary” and “gay” and “woman”) and exists within the constructed dichotomy that makes bisexuality itself look impossible (but I find the perceived incongruence of “bisexual” to be all the more reason to embrace its ambiguity). Still, negative associations and stereotypes attached to the term seem to be the main preventive factors for identifying with it, which is a much bigger issue.
I understand wanting to avoid the callous remarks and treatment associated with who you are — everyone does. I also understand why an increasing number of people would rather not associate with the word “bisexual.” It’s much easier to distance yourself from something than to self-reflect on it. Still, it can hurt more than it helps. The discourses, politics, and stereotypes surrounding “bisexuality” are relevant to all bisexuals, regardless of whether they use that label. Adopting alternate terminology won’t dismantle the social systems that make “bisexual” a problem.
People say that reality shouldn’t be uncomfortable. They’re absolutely right — I truly loathe the idea that “the world will always be cruel and you just need to deal with it.” But this isn’t about whether it should or shouldn’t be uncomfortable. Right now, it just is. We can’t avoid this, and we only cause more damage by pretending we can solve problems solely by catering to emotion. We must identify their source.
Unlearning harmful ideas you’ve internalized will always be intimidating and unpleasant. However, “unpleasant” doesn’t mean “wrong” or “not worth it.” Taking risks, apologizing, telling someone how you feel, and standing up for yourself are all awkward, scary things we all need to do sometimes. Progress seldom comes from the path of least resistance. The truth is, we can sometimes turn discomfort into a good thing.
As Naomi S. Tucker says:
Language is powerful, and even those of us who don’t choose the bisexual label have a responsibility to ensure that the world is safe for those who do. One way to accomplish this goal is to practice the word ‘bisexual’. Say it again, ‘bisexual’. Paint it on the walls; wear it on a t-shirt. Write it in toothpaste on your bathroom mirror; notice it as you stare at your beautiful self. Bisexual. Say it louder; say it in public; say it to someone who might not be comfortable hearing it. Let them begin to get over their discomfort. Begin to get over your own. Ask yourself: what is it about that word that is so frightening to people? How can we lower the fear content, undo the negative associations, create new meaning, open possibilities?
The stereotypes and violence that force us away from the “bisexual” label do not define us, nor do they define bisexuality. We can all revel in our diversity and love while being bisexual.
If gender doesn’t prevent you from being attracted to someone, try on the B-word! Maybe even take a step forward and read up on bisexual history and politics (it’s genuinely fascinating), because the bisexual community is your community. There’s enough room for all of you and then some. If you can, surround yourself with bisexuals through meet-up groups, LGBTQ centers, or just online. I find this is the most fool-proof way to normalize bisexuality for yourself.
“When you choose to claim bisexuality as a part of yourself,” Seely says, “you become part of a community with a long, rich history of shared struggle and shared joy. It is worth it.”
The last carrd examines the history and cultural impact of pansexual identity as well as the importance and dangers of certain labels.