what?

“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.” — Look both ways : bisexual politics, Jennifer Baumgardner, 2007

By encouraging this idea that a word can “just not sound right” or “makes me cringe”, we encourage internalised biphobia, internalised homophobia, and other internalised prejudices. 

Making new identity labels can be an elaborate system of avoiding using words based on internalised prejudices. Are people basing their sense of self on what makes them unique rather than what unifies them with a marginalised group they hold prejudices towards? Those prejudices are going unexamined. 

I’ve found that people who avoid the word bisexual generally know nothing about it. They’ve never read a book on bisexuality, they don’t know anything about the history, about bisexual political activists, about existing organisations or conferences, about whether in reality bisexuals date nonbinary people or not (we do). People don’t reject the word based on educated opinion, although there are people online who do their best to create false definitions to discourage people from using it, which I suppose is in their best interest if they want to avoid analysing their own prejudices. 

bisexual solution: working on changing the public perception of bisexuality and tackling biphobia

From all the people I know, there has been a pattern of bi excluding attraction towards non-binary, while pan includes attraction towards non-binary. Actually, a wile ago even trans weren’t included at bi’s attraction chart.

Joke or not, it bothers me a lot as a pan person to see constant attack from inside the community. I mean, just like non-binary, trans, bi and others feel too. But c'mon, can’t we just accept how others perceive themselves?

Consider this Utopia of mine: people liking people without labels. No such thing as binary gender orientation anymore. No such thing as being male or female, but being your own individual with a body you identify with, with a partner you feel attracted to. Or not wanting a partner. Or even with more than one partner.

bisexuals have been defining bisexuality in trans and nb inclusive ways since at least the 80s, decades before you weirdoes decided to invent pansexuality because you don’t know anything about bisexuality or bisexual history

San Francisco Bisexual Center’s women’s group has explicitly defined “women” as both cis and trans women in the 70s!!!! bisexuals have always been one of biggest trans allies and let’s not forget that a big part of the bi community has always been trans and nb bisexuals

and the fact that self proclaimed pansexuals are now claiming that bisexuality is exclusionary is literally erasing decades or radical bisexual activism and history

like how are you not ashamed

MY ASS. This statement only shows your ignorance on bisexuality and bisexual history.

Extract from the article “The Bisexual Community: Are We Visible Yet?” by bisexual activist Lani Ka'ahumanu, written in 1987

(Credits for all the screenshots except the bisexual manifesto one and the Lani Ka'ahumanu one to @verilybitchie. You can find the original post here)

Here there are some more recent definitions

VOTE YOUR WHOLE BALLOT.

A Democratic President does nothing if Congress is controlled by Republicans. Your local elections are important, too. (It took us 20 years, but you notice we don’t have issues with our sheriff out here in Phoenix now we’ve voted out Joe Arpaio.)