Bi/Pan Revolution

What does a bi/pan revolution look like? It starts as a bridge. It's a bridge first between gay and straight, men and women. Then it bridges all genders and identities. A bridge is not a series of stepping stones. It's a continuation from one side to another. We're all looking for a way of thinking, a model for sexual orientation that helps to describe who we are. The internet and blog sites like Tumblr have been great at bringing people together, but they've also aided in creating divisions between us. People looking for a rational way of describing the multitude of identities have created competing models of sexual orientation that often denigrate others' identities, deny others the freedom to ascribe meaning to their own terms. Bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, omnisexual, multisexual, queer, fluid, heteroflexible, homoflexible, fuck-it-all-sexual: it's easy to think that these are separate orientations with gaps between them, but when we realize there are no gaps, and we are all standing on the same bridge, that these terms do not describe us, but we identify with these terms because they mean something to us individually, the real revolution can begin. I'm not claiming to have all the answers. This blog is meant as a forum to explore the different ways of thinking about sexual orientation. I will discuss various perceptions on the issues facing the bi/pan communities, give my insight, respond to questions, and hopefully start a discussion that ultimately adds to the next great phase of the LGBT movement: the breaking down of barriers.

[bipanrevolution-blog]

I have a friend who did a project last semester on queer culture which included groups like non-monosexuals and asexuals. He one day came into the LGBT Resource Center looking for any books on pansexuality and commented that he couldn’t find any scholarship on the topic. Not online. Not anywhere….

[epic-ingrate-inactive-deactivat]

"Bisexual" organizations often include multiple kinds of multisexualities. Do we really need separate organizations?

There was an academic study on pansexuality, but you’re right that literature from pansexuals themselves would be better.

[bipanrevolution-blog]

Thank you for the link! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. It will be useful.

To address the other point, I don’t want it to seem like I’m encouraging pansexuals to split off into their own organizations, telling them to take a hike and segregate them from the bisexual movement, because despite their rejection of the term bisexual and the misconceptions many of them spread about bisexuals, the two groups have a lot in common as non-monosexual identities and face many of the same issues, health disparities and phobia from the LGBT and straight communities. I’m just surprised with their increasing presence online that one hasn’t started yet (or perhaps it has and I just don’t know about it). I agree that the larger bisexual movement has been trying harder to include other non-monosexual identities, but I feel they are still a far cry from addressing specific pansexual concerns or the concerns of all non-monosexual people who don’t identify as bisexual. But that’s a different discussion, one worth having at some point.  

Certainly having a more unified pansexual movement as opposed to scattered blogs, as it at least seems to be right now, would make it easier to collaborate and work with, even try to dispel many of the misconceptions pansexuals have about bisexuals and vice versa. It would give a single collective voice to many pansexuals who feel ignored by the LGBTQ movement and by many bisexuals, and would be a central focus for people trying to understand pansexuality. The decentralized nature of the pansexual identity has been frustrating from a research stand point.

So while I’m not telling pansexuals to go their own way, I think what would be awesome, and this is what I’m encouraging more than anything, is for pansexuals to develop a body of literature or a manifesto that can be seen and discussed, one which many pansexuals can get around and solidify their identity for themselves and to everyone else. 

[bipanrevolution-blog]

Pansexuality and A Need for a Manifesto

I have a friend who did a project last semester on queer culture which included groups like non-monosexuals and asexuals. He one day came into the LGBT Resource Center looking for any books on pansexuality and commented that he couldn't find any scholarship on the topic. Not online. Not anywhere. I agreed. I  have done few presentations/workshops on non-monosexuality and MGA  culture and the one thing that has frustrated me is how little intellectual material there is on pansexuality. Most things that I have run across by pansexuals were blogs dealing with pansexual invisibility and treated pansexuality as a different sexual orientation other than bisexuality (as opposed to an identity).

This didn't make sense because pansexuals are gaining traction in the queer community. Pansexuals are still invisible in the community and when they are recognized they face a lot of animosity and rejection by the larger LGBTQ community including from many bisexuals, there seems to be more and more people identifying as pansexual. I refuse to believe that there aren't a few intellectual outspoken pansexual activists out there. So I wondered why pansexuality and other MGA identities didn't have an intellectual body of work, something in depth akin to Shiri Eisner's "Bi:Notes on a Bisexual Revolution" or even a publication like "Getting Bi", or even still an organization like the Bisexual Resource Center. Not one that I know of! And if anyone knows of any pansexual organizations and literature PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!

I want the discussion. The debate! I want a manifesto of pansexuality as an identity. I know it describes the attraction to people of cis and non-binary genders (which is something many bisexuals recognize in themselves as well), but what does it mean to identify as pansexual?  Even if a person believes in using prefixes to strictly recognize identities, something I ardently disagree with, I would love nothing more than for that debate to happen. 

HERE'S MY CHALLENGE TO YOU: If you cannot find an organization or an intellectual scholarship, literature, body of work concerning pansexuality, something other than a blog (unless it is intellectually or politically driven) create one on your own. Write your own pansexual manifesto and share it. If you don't want to share it on this blog, send me the link. I want to hear what you think. 

[bipanrevolution-blog]

This is great! She talks about how the boxes we put each other into are too narrow for many. There is too much variation in gender and sexuality for binaries to accurately describe everyone.

[bipanrevolution-blog]

Links Of Pride

I am pansexual because love knows no gender. Pansexuality is freedom. It is subversion from the outside.

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Links Of Pride

I am bisexual because love knows no gender. Bisexuality is struggle from between two walls.  It is subversion from the inside.

[bipanrevolution-blog]

For Bisexual/Pansexual/Fluid Pride Day last year at the University of North Florida we created a Links Of Pride. People wrote on one side of a colored slip of paper how they identify their sexual/romantic orientation, and on the other side they wrote what that term means to them. We then looped them into a long chain to symbolize how it doesn't matter how we identify, we are all united in the same cause. It now hangs in on the front desk of the UNF LGBT Resource Center. 

So anyone can create a Links Of Pride. But since we are becoming an increasingly paperless world, I thought it would be awesome to create a Links Of Pride online. Here's how:

Simply write how you identify your sexual/romantic orientation followed by what that identity means to you. Make sure to hashtag this "Links_Of_Pride" with underscores. There aren't many rules except two:

1) Don't write a definition! Actually think about why you chose that term to identify with, or how does that term express this part of your overall identity.

2) Don't define other people's terms. Don't compare other identities to yours. Write only about your identity and your term.

 All identities are welcome to do this, including straight/heterosexual people. Some people who have already participated have written about what it means to them to be a straight ally. One response I saw was "I am straight/ because I love my husband." (which this in the wrong tone can seem condescending, but I felt that's not how it was meant to be taken and that the emphasis on love was the most important aspect of this response.)

Be creative and open! 

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[feministveronica-deactivated201]

this is pretty good

[pansexualitypride]

Couldn’t have said it better. Thank you for this.

[bipanrevolution-blog]

Love this! People choose their identities for their own reasons. We define our terms, terms don't define us.

[bipanrevolution-blog]

Surfing here bc the concept makes me happy :) Just one concern... I read an excerpt from a Shiri Eisner essay here framed in a way that reversed the excerpt's meaning: (wouldn't want to put words in Shiri's mouth, but I'm almost sure) the bit "If bi is attraction to more than one gender, then pan is attraction is more than two genders" was not actually presented in the essay as a GOOD distinction, but as an example of the biphobic word games ppl play to distance pansexuality from bisexuality...

Thanks for the input. I always appreciate the comments and I’m definitely open to corrections when I make mistakes. I did make an error that should not have happened.

So in this particular instance the distinctions she writes about are ones that I’ve quoted from her blog, biracial.wordpress.com, and requoted and so on, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen the actual blog posting. I went back and reread what she said. I didn’t pick up on the rhetorical structure she used in that section in my first reading, I see now where I was mistaken. The line that threw me was: “But: both bisexuality and pansexuality can – and have – been defined as any of these things.” I thought she was saying the DISTINCTIONS were all acceptable ways of defining the two, but rather what she was really saying was that the DISTINCT DEFINITIONS all could apply to both of them EQUALLY and that the real distinctions are political, not based on attraction. Later she does discourage the use of pansexuals using dependent definitions (which should have been a clue to me if not others) and encourages everyone to define their own terms, and no one else’s, which I felt was the more important take away of the blog. 

For that, I admit I made a mistake and I apologize for any misinformation. It wasn’t my intension to rewrite Shiri Eisner and I encourage everyone to read her actual blog:

  http://radicalbi.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/some-differences-and-similarities-between-bisexuality-and-pansexuality/

[bipanrevolution-blog]

In the vast majority of cases, it is not enough to simply say, "I'm offended" and expect the argument to be over. When we hear or see something transphobic, biphobic, homophobic, racist, sexist, etc. we should tell the person who said it why what they said was not okay, how it is wrong and destructive, and, if possible why they should care. Only when we are able to fully express the most fundamental aspects that make up our being with patience and assertiveness can we hope to influence change. To do otherwise, to rely on the apparent self-evidence of our case and to insert that our worldview is the last word in the argument convinces no one and polarizes everyone. 

[bipanrevolution-blog]

There's more to the LGBT Movement than the L and G

There's a difference between the LGBT movement and a gay rights movement. The gay rights movement is only concerned with gay and lesbian individuals. The LGBT movement was meant to include and celebrate the diversity of sexual and gender minorities, not because our own communities are small and we must tag along with gays and lesbians in order to get any recognition (in fact, the very opposite is true; people who identify as gay and lesbian are the minority in the LGBT community) but rather the LGBT movement seeks to recognize the diversity in the gay community that was there all along. THe LGBT movement is not just a gay movement. It is all of our movements.

[bipanrevolution-blog]

Non-Monosexuality as The Zero G Sexual Identities

There are two types of terms: absolute terms like gynephilic (attraction to women/femininity) and androphilic (the attractions to men/masculinity) where the only thing that matters is the attraction itself, and relative terms like homosexual (attraction to the other sex(es)/ gender(s)) and heterosexual (attraction to the same/similar sex(es)/gender(s)) where the gender of the person matters as much as their attraction. A homosexual man is not attracted to the same gender/sex as a homosexual woman and the same for heterosexual men and women. I think it is interesting that non-monosexual terms such as bisexual and pansexual are not so relative because it doesn't matter if the person is male, female, man, woman, masculine, feminine, intersex, gender neutral, whatever! When they identify as any of the non-monosexual/MGA terms, gender/sex doesn't seem to matter for either the person or their attraction. A man identifying as bisexual or pansexual could be attracted to the same people as a bisexual or pansexual woman or agender or trans* person. It's as if in the spaces between homosexual and heterosexual there exists  a zero G zone of sexuality where people can just float around freely, not having to worry about gender. We do not have to worry about being attracted to people based on our gender or theirs. There is no reason (at least) for an up or down, left or right. 

I know that is not how it actually is. Even many non-monosexuals/MGA people are concerned somewhat about gender in some fashion whether it is their own or who they are attracted to. But it's a nice fantasy. (Fuck the gender constraints of this world!)

[bipanrevolution-blog]

So this is a pretty intricate and educational diagram. It uses more absolute terms like androphilic (attraction to males/masculinity) and gynephilic (attraction to females/femininity) placed over biological sex which attempts to get at a better representation of human sexuality. This diagram is obviously concerned with biological sex only, using terms like male, female, intersex, but a gender version could easily be made as well, using men/masculine, women/feminine, transgender/gender neutral/gender fluid/third gender, etc. While this is a good start, the focus on biological sex only is the weakness of the this diagram because people aren't just attracted to biological sex. They can be attracted to gender expression or a combination of gender expression and biological sex. I think the problem with many of these terminological models to explain sexual orientation is that they do not express the true complexity of gender therefore they fail to represent the complexity of sexual attraction. It is possible that the term "gay" doesn't refer to just one orientation, but could be used to describe many different orientations revolving around an aspect of the person identifying with the term (i.e. biological sex or gender expression). So a lesbian can be attracted to biological females, femininity (which could include male-to-female transgender people), feminine female persons only, or masculine female persons only. 

Should there be more effort to create models of sexual attraction that are more accurately aligned with gender theory, or perhaps is it overkill to do so? What would such a model look like? WHat would many of those terms look like? (such as having different terms for a gay man attracted to masculinity [with the possibility of being attracted to masculine, biologically female persons] versus a gay man attracted to males [despite gender expression, so that they can be attracted to masculine and feminine male persons] or some combination of both [such as masculine males only or feminine males only]). Are relative terms which take into consideration both the person gender/sex and their attraction together such as homosexual and heterosexual necessary?

[bipanrevolution-blog]

What is wrong with using bisexual as the umbrella term? For starters it complete ignores the feelings of pansexuals, omnisexuals, polysexuals, et al. who have developed their own identities to get away from being called bisexual. Sometimes this rejection can be somewhat biphobic because many define bisexuality as the sexual or romantic attraction to only binary genders, and many others feel that bisexuality is too broadly used, too unspecific, too known therefore ridden with stereotypes. It is generally offensive to many pansexuals to be called bisexual, why would anyone think it would be a good idea to use bisexual as an umbrella term for all of these terms listed here.  While bisexuality is defined by many bisexuals as the sexual or romantic attraction to more than one gender, not necessarily only two, and many people with multi-/non-binary gender attraction chose to identify as bisexual, that doesn't mean the term should broadly be used for everyone.

Other more acceptable (but not perfect) umbrella terms include non-monosexuality, MGA (multi-gender attraction), multi-gender attraction spectrum, plurisexual (which has its flaws).

If there are other umbrella terms you've heard or would like to propose that is not listed here, or perhaps you would like to throw your hat in for one of these terms, please leave a comment and join the discussion.

[bipanrevolution-blog]

The Best Distinction Between Bisexuality and Pansexuality that I've Seen So Far

"Talk to a bi person about bisexuality, they’ll often talk about sexuality and desire, and focus on biphobia; talk to a pan person about pansexuality, they’ll often talk about transgender and genderqueer identities, and focus on transphobia." 

-Shiri Eisner, "Some differences and similarities between bisexuality and pansexuality", radicalbi.wordpress.com

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What is a Bisexual/Pansexual Revolution?

The B in LGBT is most thought of as meaning Bisexual. But it is more than that. Bisexuals think of our sexual orientation as a Bridge between homosexuality and heterosexuality, a bridge much often ignored or denied by monosexism and bi erasure. Pansexuality, polysexuality, fluid, et al. brings to the table the discussion of the complexity of gender to the issue of sexual attraction. It is not just that we can be only attracted to "men" and "women" but that our attraction can be as multitudinous and infinite as gender itself. Pansexuality is the Bridge between the LG and the transgender movement. The LGBT movement began as a movement to unite all queer communities so that we address each others issues together, but this movement has failed connect everyone it claims to represent. It still represents each community as separate from each other each with their separate problems, the these issues are not a part of separate communites. Rather these communities raise awareness of the different facets of the same human experience that, until each group stands up to speak, largely goes unnoticed by the majority of us, wether that be who we are attracted to or the underlying problem of gender itself. To me, a bisexual/pansexual revolution looks to go Beyond the walls that separate us and find the Bridge that unites all of our communities and the issues we face. 

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