I’ve been pondering, lately, about the ideas of pansexuality and bisexuality. This is basically a thought dump, and I have to warn you that I’m not as familiar with current theories and terminology surrounding sexuality as I’d like to be. It’s possible that this entire post deserves a Slowpoke meme response. In any case, if you take issue with something I’ve said here, I’d be open to (civil) corrections or discussion and whatnot.
But more to the point: what I’ve been thinking about recently is the idea that:
“Oh, you’re pansexual/bisexual? Right, so you mean you’re from the Internet.”
Alternatively:
“Wow, everyone is pansexual/bisexual these days. How fucking annoying. Don’t people know how rare those are in reality?”
Being pansexual myself, I hear both statements a lot, and some of my friends and acquaintances whom identify as bisexual have told me about hearing similar things. If any other non-monosexualities existed (I’m not aware of them), then I’d imagine that they’d get similar treatment. I also know that asexual erasure is an issue. Really, what this boils down to are the ideas that the apparent increasing frequency of non-monosexuality is simply a fad, not a genuine trend, and that anything orientation besides homosexuality and heterosexuality is really fucking rare in reality.
I have to question the idea that anything other than monosexuality is rare, though. Perhaps it appeared to be culturally dominant for much time, but I can’t imagine that the vast majority of people are biologically predisposed to being homosexual or heterosexual. On top of that, (and correct me if I’m wrong) sexuality has been known to be fluid for a good while, now.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s likely that more people are coming out and identifying as being non-monosexual for two reasons: a) society is treating these orientations with increasing acceptance, so for those whom were always aware of their sexuality, it is easier for them to come out; b) the very idea of non-monosexuality (I would say especially in the case of pansexuality) is relatively new, and because the concept hasn’t existed before now, nobody could really call themselves pansexual even though they actually were.
I have to admit that b) is partially based on my own experience, and why I wrote this post. I was only introduced to the idea of bisexuality during my early teen years, and before that, didn’t actually know what any sort of attraction to my female acquaintances might have meant. As such, I went on identifying myself as heterosexual quite happily. But after I was introduced to the idea and got comfortable with its existence, I realized that it was most probably applicable to me, although I spent a good deal of my teen years struggling with the term. I felt like it didn’t properly describe my “I don’t actually really care what you have down there” attitude to sex.
Eventually, I gave up on finding a better term and effectively identified myself as bisexual. It was odd, too: I don’t want to say that I was exactly comfortable with using the term bisexuality; it was more like I gave up on caring about labels, and that I told people of my ostensible bisexuality so often that I almost started believing in what I was saying. (“Welp, there’s heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality. That last one fits the best, so I guess it must be me!”) But you can imagine my surprise when I came across the concepts of non-binary gender systems and pansexuality, and how quickly I changed my identification.
tl;dr language can be extremely important to how one is cognizant of themselves (and of concepts generally), and much of this “increasing trend” in non-monosexuality is not a fad, but is actually a genuine consequence of how our language has grown to become more inclusive. Also, people who say that I’m not really pansexual can eat my shit.
