Debunking pro-pan arguments

• Bi means two and pan means all, thus bisexuality is attraction to two genders and pansexuality is attraction to all genders

• Bisexuality is attraction to men and women, pansexuality includes non binary people too

• Bisexuality is attraction to any two genders, pansexuality is attraction to all genders

• Bisexuals have a gender preference, pansexuals are attracted to people regardless of gender

• Back then there was no understanding of nonbinary identities so when bisexuals said they were attracted to people “regardless of gender” they meant just men and women

• Pansexuality was born because bisexuals excluded trans people from their spaces

• The bisexual manifesto is outdated and it actually supports m-spec identites

• Pansexuality and bisexuality overlap but they are not the same and that distinction is important to many people.

• Almost no one uses the old, transphobic definition of pansexuality.

• People calling themselves pansexual does not hurt or invalidate bisexuality.

• I cannot be biphobic, I have nothing against bi people.

• I am bisexual and I don’t think pansexuality is biphobic or invalidating

• Just let people use whatever label they feel most comfortable with.

Bi means two and pan means all, thus bisexuality is attraction to two genders and pansexuality is attraction to all genders

Bisexuality has a binary prefix because in the late 1800 the german psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing wrote a book, the Psychopathia Sexualis, where bisexuality was described as a condition where people experienced both a heterosexual kind of attraction (to the opposite sex) and a homosexual kind of attraction (to the opposite sex), a.k.a. “attraction to both sexes”. Just like homosexuality, it was considered a medical condition to cure rather than a legitimate sexuality.

Using the prefix to prove the fact that bisexuality is binary makes as much sense as using the prefix “octo-” to prove that October is the 8th month of the year.

That is called an etymological fallacy: the linguistic misconception that the present-day meaning of a word should necessarily be similar to its historical meaning.

Historically, bisexuals always rejected the gender binary. The way we define our sexuality will always outweigh a latin prefix chosen by a psychiatrist in the 1800.

Bisexuality is attraction to men and women, pansexuality includes non binary people too

Every sexuality includes nonbinary people, because they are not a homogeneous group with the same physical characteristics, unlike men and women.

Nonbinary people look widely different from one another. Just to give you a few examples:

Saying so is not invalidating their identity: the fact that they look like men and women does not mean that they are men and women or that they should be treated as such.

It means, however, that everyone could potentially be attracted to some of them.

A person attracted to women can very easily be attacted to Indya Moore or Amandla Stenberg or Rose McGowan, because they’re perceived as women.

A person attracted to men can very easily be attracted to Ezra Miller, Sam Smith or Jonathan Van Ness, because they’re perceived as men.

You might object that some nonbinary people do not present neither as male nor as female: while that’s true, there are also many binary people who present androgynously and there are plenty of people attracted to them regardless of their sexual orientation because no matter how androgynous someone is, they will always be perceived (correctly or not) as either male or female.

Obviously this isn’t to say that every single person can be attracted to every single nonbinary person, just like people attracted to women are not attracted to every single woman and vice versa: we are talking about genders, not individuals.

Here you can find two posts and an article by two nonbinary activists, Verity Ritchie and Kravitz M, who talk about why every sexuality automatically includes certain kinds of nonbinary people.

Bisexuality is attraction to any two genders, pansexuality is attraction to all genders

We established that bisexuals can be attracted to nonbinary people. That concept has been distorted to mean “bisexuals are attracted to any of the two genders, it doesn’t have to be male and female”.

That reasoning is still wrong: if nonbinary people are indistinguishable from men and women, how can someone be attracted to nonbinary people as a whole group but not to a binary gender?

Let’s make things more clear with some practical examples.

Which ones of these people are women and which ones are nonbinary?

They are all famous so maybe you already know, but what are the characteristics that make you say “that person is nonbinary” or “that person is a woman”?

Trick question: there is none, they all look the same gender.

So how can someone say, for example, “I am attracted to men and nonbinary people but not to women” when it's impossible to distinguish certain kinds of nonbinary people from women?

It just doesn’t make sense.

Bisexuals have a gender preference, pansexuals are attracted to people regardless of gender

Many bisexuals through the years explicitly stated that gender is not a determining factor in their attraction and that they can be attracted to people regardless of gender, so saying that a gender preference is an inherent characteristic of bisexuality invalidates all those people.

Besides, the definition of sexual orientation is “a person's sexual identity in relation to the gender to which they are attracted; the fact of being heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.”

It means that sexual orientation is based on which genders you are attracted to, not how much you’re attracted to them or if you prefer one over the other. A preference or a lack of it does not justify having a complete separate orientation.

Besides, saying that pansexuals “don’t see gender” is actually quite problematic. 

Back then there was no understanding of nonbinary identities so when bisexuals said they were attracted to people “regardless of gender” they meant just men and women

This is not correct. The bisexual community was one of the very first places where the gender binary was questioned. Here there are some quotes:

• “Many bisexuals minimize the emphasis on sex and gender, and bisexual spaces may be more welcoming to people of nontraditional, indeterminate, or uncertain gender identity than are strictly heterosexual or strictly homosexual spaces (which are often segregated by sex).

Many transgendered people cannot be unambiguously classified in traditional sexual orientation terms because such terms presuppose a fixed binary notion of sex and gender.

Even if they do not identify as bisexual (many feel that the very term is too binary!) they may feel more comfortable in a bi community in which attraction to all sexes and genders is accepted.

Bi spaces tend to be among the few contexts in which people of varied sexual and gender identities can interact with one another socially, sexually, and politically.”

• “Many bisexuals share with some transgendered people the desire to de-emphasize binary gender categories and to deconstruct inflexible gender roles.”

• “Bisexuals who base their attractions on individual characteristics other than sex/gender may feel that the sex/gender of one's desired partner(s) is a bizarre foundation upon which to build an identity, a community, or a movement. For some bisexuals, the real goal is to move beyond dichotomies such as gay/straight and male/female, not simply to add a third box labelled "bisexual" or to re-Iabel one box as "LesBiGay(Trans)." This rejection of the dichotomy between sexualities and genders is the most radical potential of bi- sexuality.”

- “Identities and Ideas: Strategies for Bisexuals”, Liz A. Highleyman, part of the book Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries and Visions, edited by Naomi Tucket, 1995

• “The actual lived non-binary history of the bisexual community and movement and the inclusive culture and community spirit of bisexuals are eradicated when a binary interpretation of our name for ourselves is arbitrarily assumed.”

-“Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out” by Lani Ka’ahumanu

• “Bisexuality is here defined as the capacity , regardless of the sexual identity label one chooses , to love and sexually desire both same - and other - gendered individuals. The term other-gendered is used here deliberately and is preferable to the term opposite - gendered , because other - gendered encompasses a recognition of the existence of transgendered and transsexual individuals, who may embrace gender identities other than [male and female]”

-“Bisexuality: The Psychology and Politics of an Invisible Minority” by Beth A. Firestein and Dallas Denny, 1996

• “As bisexuals, we are necessarily prompted to come up with non-binary ways of thinking about sexual orientation. For many of us, this has also prompted a move toward non-binary ways of thinking about sex and gender.”

- “Your Fence Is Sitting on Me: The Hazards of Binary Thinking”, Rebecca Kaplan, part of the book Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries and Visions, edited by Naomi Tucket, 1995

Obviously the understanding of nonbinary identities that they had back then is not comparable to the one that we have now, but to use Lani Ka’ahumanu’s words: “The actual lived non-binary history of the bisexual community and movement and the inclusive culture and community spirit of bisexuals are eradicated when a binary interpretation of our name for ourselves is arbitrarily assumed.”

So maybe don’t do that, thanks.

Pansexuality was born because bisexuals excluded trans people from their spaces

That is just a lie. The bisexual community always welcomed trans and nonbinary people in their spaces, some of them as early as the 70’s. There is a whole section of this google document dedicated to prove that.

Of course you’ll always find transphobic bisexuals who exclude trans people, but they are not a reflection of the bisexual community as a whole.

Even if the bisexual community had a history of transphobia, how come that it's the only label that should be dropped in favour of a new one?

No one made a new label for lesbians who include trans women.

No one made a new label for gay men who include trans men.

No one made a new label for straight people who include trans men or trans women.

Why is bisexuality the only label that gets attacked for its “transphobia” when transphobes can be of any sexuality?

The right reaction to transphobia in our communities is to call it out, educate people and exclude transphobes, not to create a new “woke” label and drop the older ones.

The bisexual manifesto is outdated and it actually supports m-spec identites

The bisexual manifesto was written in 1990, which means that its 30 years old. To put it in comparison, the Stonewall riots happened in 1969, yet no one would dare to say that they are “outdated” and thus they don’t matter anymore.

The bisexual manifesto is part of our history and it still resonates with plenty of bisexuals. Calling it “outdated” just because you don’t like the way bisexual use it means that you don’t care at all about our history, our voices and our activism, which is never a good thing.

Now, I agree that the bisexual manifesto is overquoted and often thrown there without any kind of explaination and in my opinion that’s something we need to work on (especially since there are plenty of other sources proving the point), because it led to some misunderstandings.

One of them is that the bi manifesto is supposed to prove how mspec labels are biphobic.

That is not the case: the bi manifesto is supposed to prove that bisexuality is not inherently binary and that the bisexual community has been recognizing the existance of more than two genders for a very long time.

The specific passage that supports this claim is:

• “Bisexuality is a whole, fluid identity. Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or duogamous in nature: that we have “two” sides or that we MUST be involved simultaneously with both genders to be fulfilled human beings. In fact, don’t assume that there are only two genders”.

Stemming from that misunderstanding, some people objected that the bisexual manifesto does indeed support m-spec identites. That, however, is not the case.

This is the passage of the bi manifesto that people quote to support this claim:

• “Do not expect each magazine to be representative of all bisexuals, for our diversity is too vast. Do not expect a clear-cut definition of bisexuality to jump out from the pages. We bisexuals tend to define bisexuality in ways that are unique to our own individuality. There are as many definitions of bisexuality as there are bisexuals. Many of us choose not to label ourselves anything at all, and find the word ‘bisexual’ to be inadequate or too limiting”.

Let’s analyze this.

• “Do not expect each magazine to be representative of all bisexuals, for our diversity is too vast. Do not expect a clear-cut definition of bisexuality to jump out from the pages. We bisexuals tend to define bisexuality in ways that are unique to our own individuality. There are as many definitions of bisexuality as there are bisexuals.”

This part is about the fluid nature of bisexuality: each bisexual has their own understanding of their bisexuality and each bisexual lives their bisexuality in a different, unique way.

The writers of Anything That Moves recognize this, and they don’t try to force a single definition of bisexuality upon the whole community nor they act as the spokepeople of the whole bisexual community.

However, this passage does not try to give a different label to those people: they are still included in the wide spectrum that is bisexuality and recognized as bisexual, hence the plural “we bisexuals”.

Moving on:

• “Many of us choose not to label ourselves anything at all, and find the word ‘bisexual’ to be inadequate or too limiting”

This part is probably the most misunderstood, but look at the little cues there: that “many of us choose to not label ourselves”

What is the subject of this sentence? Who does that “us” refer to? It's written by bisexuals, so the “us” refers to other bisexuals. 

Try to put it in the sentence: “Many bisexuals choose not to label themselves anything at all, and find the word ‘bisexual’ to be inadequate or too limiting”

This passage implies that while there are people who reject the label bisexual for whatever reason (including finding it too limiting), they are still part of the bisexual spectrum.

It says literally nothing about alternative labels. Not a single peep. Even if you wanted to make this passage about m-spec labels, they would still be considered a part of bisexuality and not completely separate identities.

Pansexuality and bisexuality overlap but they are not the same and that distinction is important to many people.

So we established that bisexuality is not binary, that it includes all genders, that a gender preference is not an inherent characteristic of it. In what ways does bisexuality differ from pansexuality?

Newsflash: it doesn’t. Bisexuality and pansexuality are the exact same thing.

I’ve heard plenty of definitions of pansexuality over the years, and every single one was either transphobic, biphobic or made no sense.

The most common ones I’ve heard are:

• “Attraction to men, women and trans people” (Trans men are men and trans women are women. Considering them a separate category from men and women is transphobic)

• “Attraction to men, women and nonbinary people” (everyone can be attracted to nonbinary people, it’s not a pansexual-specific experience)

• “Attraction to all genders” (literally the same thing as bisexuality. It becomes biphobic the moment its used to say that bisexuals cannot be attracted to all genders unlike pansexuals)

• “Attraction regardless of gender” (we already covered why using this definition to differentiate pansexuality from bisexuality makes no sense)

• “Attraction to people’s personalities” (literally everyone is attracted to personalities. Saying that this is what makes pansexuality different from the other sexualities implies that other people are only attracted to someone’s body).

There is a reason why the “official” definition of pansexuality changes every two days, and its because people keep pointing out that the previous one is problematic in some way.

Almost no one uses the old, transphobic definition of pansexuality.

You’d be surprised. “Attraction to men, women and trans people” is still a surprisingly common definition of pansexuality in mainstream media.

Now, of course not all pansexuals use that, but that doesn’t change the fact that pansexuality has been established as the “more inclusive” and “more progressive” version of bisexuality, assuming that bisexuality excludes trans or nonbinary people.

To show how problematic pansexuality is, I like to compare the statements of bisexual activists of decades ago to the mainstream articles about pansexuality (often written by pansexuals themselves)

Note: these are just some of them, if you want to see more definitions of bisexuality and pansexuality you can find them in these two documents.

Notice how differently the same concept is expressed.

Pansexuality is defined as “attraction to men, women and trans people”, implying that trans people are a third gender instead of men and women.

Bisexuality, on the other hand, is defined as “attraction regardless of gender”, without putting trans people in a separate category.

I also want to highlight how the definitions of bisexuality that I used are all older (from the mid 70’s to the early 2000’s) and the definitions of pansexuality are all recent (from 2020 to 2002). Given how today we are a lot more aware of transphobic language, you’d expect older definitions to be more transphobic and the newer ones to be less transphobic, not the other way round.

People calling themselves pansexual does not hurt or invalidate bisexuality.

The thing is, it does. It may not feel like it, it may seem that people are just using whatever label they feel most comfortable with (which is another can of worms completely), but it does hurt the bisexual community.

If you don’t believe me, let’s have a look at some of the most recent definitions of pansexuality (here you can find the full document):

• “It never felt right for me to identify as bisexual,“ she continues. “I know so many people who are asexual or two-spirited, and I’m open to being with someone who is trans. I never wanted to alienate anyone in my sexual exploration”

- “What is Pansexual? A Guide to Pansexuality”, Vera Papisova, Teen Vogue, April 21, 2020

• “Pansexuality basically means it’s about hearts, not parts,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, trans male, trans female, nonbinary — everyone’s hot to me.”

- Boston’s 49th Pride Parade is a bright and colorful affair, Boston Globe, June 8, 2019

“He told me that pansexuality meant you could feel attracted to people of all genders – boys, girls, transgender people, non-binary people”

- My Label and Me, Metro, 21 Feb 2019

• “Those who identify as bisexual may only be attracted to people who identify as men or who identify as women, those who are pansexual, like Monáe, develop a romantic or physical attraction regardless of a person's gender.”

-Singer Janelle Monáe publicly came out as pansexual — here's what that means, Insider, June 2018

• “The meaning of pansexual is clear: someone who is attracted – either emotionally, physically or both – to all genders. This includes cisgender, transgender, agender and gender nonconforming individuals.”

- What’s the Real Difference between Bi- and Pansexual?, Rolling Stone, June 2018

• “However, the existence of the term pansexual sets it apart from bisexuality, in implying that many genders exist, rather than just two (male and female).”

-SexInfoOnline article on pansexuality, February 2017

• Pansexual is basically a more liberal version of bisexual,” Aguilar said. “It means you don’t care about someone’s gender or identity or sexuality, you just like them for them. For instance, I am dating a guy right now, but I would be open to dating a female, or someone who is transgender.”

- SAGA celebrates LGBTQ+ pride, The Shield, October 12, 2017

“As I started to recognize the gender spectrum and dated along the gender spectrum, I was searching for words that connected to that reality, for words that embraced the spectrum. At the time I didn’t feel as if the term bisexual was encompassing of a gender spectrum that I was dating and attracted to.” “

- Mary Gonzalez, Texas State Representative, Identifies As Pansexual In New Interview, February 2016

• “Pansexual individuals can be attracted to cismen, ciswomen, transmen, transwomen, intersex people, androgynous people, and everyone else. It’s generally considered a more inclusive term than bisexual.”

- Go Ask Alice!, “Bi, gay, pansexual: What do I call myself?”, February 26, 2015

As you can see, pansexuality became known as the “more inclusive” and “more progressive” version of bisexuality, which denies decades of bisexual history and paints bisexuality as exclusionary and outdated.

This did not happen 15 or 10 years ago, its happening right now. An awful lot of people believe that bisexuality is attraction to two genders only (or, god forbids, only to cis people) even tho not a single bisexual organization uses that definition.

Yes, probably most pansexuals don’t have anything against bi people, but that’s not relevant (this will actually be addressed in the next chapter).

What is relevant is the general opinion that people have of pansexuality compared to the general opinion that people have of bisexuality: as usual, bisexuality is generally associated with negative characteristics while pansexuality is generally associated with positive ones.

A fair point that some may bring up is “hey, but if you can recognize that bisexuality is not binary even though people think it is then why can’t you recognize that pansexuality is not transphobic or biphobic even though people use it that way?”

The answer is simple. As we’ve seen in the very first chapter, “bisexuality” was originally a medical term that was later reclaimed by bisexuals themselves.

Just like bisexuality, pansexuality too was reclaimed: it was originally coined by Freud in the early 1900s, who believed that “the sex instinct plays the primary part in all human activity, mental and physical”. This theory was called “pansexualism”, and its was later re-worded in “pansexuality”.

The term “pansexuality” was first reclaimed with the meaning “person who was interested in a wide array of sexual experiences” and it was mostly used in BDSM circles.

[SOURCE] // [SOURCE]

It was only in the early 2000’s that the word pansexuality became associated with a sexual orientation: in 2002 one of the very first livejournals for pansexuals described pansexuality as such:

• “ Pansexuals love people of all genders, male and female, but unlike bisexuals, pansexuals love transgendered, androgynous and gender fluid people, people who don't fit into the categories of male or female.”

- I am Pansexual livejournal, June 13, 2002

This definition was extremely common among pansexuals back then and, like we’ve seen, it's very common nowadays too.

Pansexuality and bisexuality were both reclaimed medical terms. The difference is in how they were reclaimed: bisexuality has a history of inclusiveness, pansexuality has a history of transphobia and biphobia.

In conclusion:

People think that bisexuality is binary because they still cling to a biphobic stereotype. People think that pansexuality is more inclusive than bisexuality even though it may not be the case because so far all the definitions that pansexuals used painted it that way.

There’s also the fact that bisexual activists fought loudly against these stereotypes for decades, but on the other side I have yet to see pansexual activists speak up and say “hey, this is not what pansexuality is! We are not more inclusive than bisexuals!”.

Why would they? Their label is associated with positive characteristics such as inclusiveness and progressiveness. Why would they publicly speak up about a stereotype that frames them in a positive way?

One good reason would be to fight against the stigma of the bisexual albel, but if that was the aim of the pansexual community they would eventually need to drop the label altogether.

I cannot be biphobic, I have nothing against bi people.

Disclaimer: most people who are against pansexuality do not think that pansexuals are all biphobes who will jump at the chance to invalidate us. We are against the label itself, how its been used and the forceful redefining of bisexuality in order to validate it. Obviously, discourse sometimes get ugly on both sides and lines are crossed. That should not bring us to scream “biphobe” and “panphobe” at each other without resolving anything.

Biphobia is not just thinking that bisexuals are all promiscuous people who will cheat on you and give you a STD. There are many different kinds of biphobia, some obvious and some more subtle.

Personally, I make a distinction between two different kinds of biphobia: malicious and involuntary.

Malicious biphobia is the one we’re most used to hear: its people saying that we’re fence sitters, cheaters, sluts, half straight and half gay, that bisexuality isn’t real, that bi people are either straights who want to feel special or gay people in denial. You get the idea.

Involountary biphobia is a lot more subtle: it’s invalidating our experiences, asking us to mention only our attraction to the same gender in LGBT spaces, silencing us when we bring up issues that affect us, not considering biphobia as bad as homophobia, lesbophobia and transphobia, all that jazz.

Both malicious and involuntary biphobia come from ignorance, misinformation, stereotypes and prejudice. The main difference is that people who engage in malicious biphobia are aware of the negative consequences of their actions and words, but they don't care and they have no intention to fix that behaviour.

People engaging in involuntary biphobia are usually just people who have been conditioned by all the stereotypes surrounding bisexuality and who had no way to educate themselves about it, but that are open to listen to us and challenge and correct their behaviour.

People saying “I cannot be biphobic, I have nothing against bi people” more often than not fall into the second category. Maybe you feel like you have nothing against bisexuals, but are you listening to them when they tell you that what you did is biphobic or are you asking them to shut up? Are you willing to challenge your behaviour or will you get defensive about it?

I also want to point out that involuntary biphobic behaviour does not inherently make you a bad person. Everyone had some misconceptions about LGBT identities, even other LGBT people. No one is born perfectly aware of all the words and actions that can be considered problematic. The important thing is to approach the matter with the will to learn and grow and to not feel threatened when someone corrects you, not even if it makes you uncomfortable.

On a related note: please, for fuck’s sake, stop saying that you cannot be biphobic because you have bisexual friends, a bisexual partner or a bisexual relative. That is literally the same reasoning of people who say “I can’t be racist, I have a lot of black friends!”.

I am bisexual and I don’t think pansexuality is biphobic or invalidating

Good for you I guess, but you need to understand that your experiences are not universal and you do not speak for the whole community.

Bisexuals are not a monolith, we’re a wide and heterogeneous group of people. You’ll always find someone that finds something offensive and someone else from the same group that doesn’t.

Does that mean that you can be entitled to tell other bisexuals what they can or cannot be offended about? No.

Does that mean that certain things shouldn’t be challenged or at least discussed? No.

At the end of the day, if some bisexuals talk about an issue that does not affect you you can very easily not talk about it and nothing will change for you.

On the other hand, asking us to not talk about it does change things for us. Or rather, it forces us to stay in a situation where we are invalidated and hurt.

This obviously doesn’t mean that you cannot express your opinion about it, but you have to keep in mind that your opinion is not universally shared by all the people in your community.

That’s also the reason why people should also stop saying “See? This bisexual doesn’t think that pansexuality is biphobic, so it must mean that its not!”. No shit Sherlock, just because we’re both bisexual doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything, and it also doesn’t mean that you can use the opinion of other bisexuals as a gotcha but only when it's convenient to you.

Just let people use whatever label they feel most comfortable with.

I’ve seen people using this sentence quite a lot of times during discourse. At face value, that statement sounds ok. Why would we force people to be uncomfortable, right?

Problem is, if you think about it for more than two seconds you’ll realize how that does not make sense.

If labels were meant to be comfortable, a ton of LGBT people with internalized homo/bi/lesbo/trans-phobia would call themselves straight or cis, cause using labels like “gay”, “lesbian”, “bisexual” or “transgender” will make them uncomfortable.

Does that seem like a good thing? Would you ever say to a gay man with internalized homophobia that its a-ok to be uncomfortable with using the word “gay” and that they can identify as something else instead of addressing the issue?

Labels like “bisexual”, “gay”, “lesbian”, “transgender” all have a baggage. They are all associated with negative stereotypes widely spread by biphobes, homophobes, lesbophobes and transphobes.

If you constantly hear that bisexuals are all sluts, that gay men are perverts, that lesbians only exist for men’s pleasure, that trans people are all mentally ill then it's not uncommon at all to internalize some of that crap and to be uncomfortable with those labels.

With bisexuality this is even more common: we face stigma from both outside and inside the LGBT community. We’re still seen as promiscuous and cheaters by straight and gay people alike, we’re considered too “queer” by straight people and too “straight” by LGBT people.

Does that mean that we should give up that label, with all its history and community, and make a new one instead of addressing all those hateful stereotypes? Absolutely not.

Wanting to opt out of those stereotypes is understandable and pansexuality is a very convenient way to do that, but in the long run that will do more harm than good.

It's like trying to fix a bullet hole with a band aid: instead of prioritizing the comfort of individual people we should work to dismantle the system that makes people uncomfortable in the first place.

Quoting the book Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics:

• “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 

In conclusion: being uncomfortable with bisexuality, a label that essentially describes the exact same kind of attraction as pansexuality, and wanting to avoid it at all costs probably means that you have internalized some kind of prejudice against that label.