Our ways of understanding sexuality and love have evolved and changed over time and what was believed to be correct and seen as the only possible reality has been continually dismantled and reassembled.
If we review the evolution of the concept of love over time, we can clearly see what we understand by love, by being a couple, the type of love we aspire to, the sexual orientations we know, the forms of sexuality and the different forms of being a couple are very different at some times and at others.
Furthermore, this is something that evolves very quickly and that is why generational clashes are generated, where people who “resist” these new paradigms coexist, because they come from a previous paradigm and it is very difficult for them to get used to this “new”, and other people They were born when this change was happening and it is extremely natural for them to become familiar with these new ways of understanding love and sexuality.
It is for this reason that it is extremely important and necessary to dedicate a space to speak openly and demystify love in current times, so that both paradigms can coexist in harmony and we can understand, regardless of the age or paradigm in which we grew up, what is What is understood today by love and sexuality and what is the paradigm that coexists among us.
That is why we will dedicate this Psychology-Online article to explaining the differences between bisexuality and pansexuality”
What is bisexuality
In general, the concept of has been misunderstood over time and is often thought to refer to attraction to two genders; men and women, by its acronym Bi, but today this is considered exclusive and wrong. Furthermore, the fact of understanding it in this way has unleashed prejudices and false myths, such as that it is a “stage of identity confusion” which lies between homosexuality and heterosexuality.
The truth is that none of this is true and that is why the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Trans and Bisexuals, in its Decalogue for bisexual visibility, cleared up doubts and defined bisexuality as:
“An orientation of those who feel sexual, emotional and/or romantic attraction towards people of more than one gender and/or sex, not necessarily at the same time, in the same way, or with the same intensity”
So, bisexuality would be the attraction to more than one gender. It is also important to clarify that bisexual people can also be attracted to , and that is why the attraction is not to two genders, but to more than one gender.
What is pansexuality
It wants to avoid the bias that bisexuality had and that is why it is defined as a sexual orientation in which the person is not attracted to a sexual gender, as understood in a binary way, but rather She is open to any type of romantic relationship with anyone she feels attracted to.. In Greek, “pan” translates to “all” and therefore the term “pansexual” can be understood as a sexual identity used to describe attraction to people of all genders.
GLAAD broadly defines being pansexual as:
“Feeling attracted to all gender identities or attracted to people regardless of gender. Being pansexual is feel aesthetic, loving or sexual attraction to different forms of gender, whether those in which there is agreement between biological sex and gender (cis-gender) or in which there is disagreement (trans-gender). Pansexual people have changing orientations, but this does not mean that they are unstable in their relationships. The term only states that their choices cover a wide range of possibilities and they give themselves the freedom to follow their desires.” (Ghedin, W).
More than a sexual condition in itself, it would be a way of understanding sexuality as a continuum rather than as a simple dichotomy and the emphasis is on falling in love with the person and not their sexual condition.
Differences between bisexuality and pansexuality
The differences between bisexuality and pansexuality are the following:
- The terminology: bi meaning “two” and pan meaning “all,” suggests a clear difference between people who are attracted to two genders and those who are attracted to people of all gender identities. It is important to clarify that neither bisexuality nor pansexuality are trans-exclusive. One of the most internalized misconceptions about bisexuality is that bisexual people are not attracted to trans people, or that somehow their orientation implies the exclusion of them. When we talk about bisexuality we are not talking about attraction exclusively towards cis-gender people (those whose gender is the same as the one assigned to them at birth).
- Bisexuality is sexual attraction towards two genders, but they are not necessarily binary genders, but can be: towards more than one gender, towards all genders or towards the same gender and different ones.
Pansexuality recognizes that there are more than two genders and that . It understands sexuality as a continuum, rather than through sexual divisions and this is what makes the real difference with bisexuality, the strong ideology behind it and how they defend and argue it. Pansexuality also emphasizes that they fall in love with the person, regardless of their sexual condition. They are not that different from each other and that is why GLAAD places the term pansexual under the “umbrella” of bisexual. - The biggest difference between the two is that pansexuals imply an active rejection of the conception of sex as binary and they put strong emphasis on that. More than a sexual condition in itself, pansexuality appears as a new and reformulated way of understanding sexuality, which aims to clearly highlight its base pillars.
In this article you will find them all.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- FELGTB (2021). Decalogue of the year of visibility. Extracted from FELGTB – Decalogue of the Year of Bisexual Visibility in Diversity – Gehitu.org
- FELGTB (2021). Decalogue of the year of visibility. Differences and similarities between bisexuality, polysexuality and transsexuality
- Montero, O. (2006). Approaches to bisexuality FEPAL-XXVI Latin American Congress of Psychoanalysis: Peru