#mspec antagonism
A panphobic dogwhistle is coded/subtle to avoid opposition. These statements aren’t inherently panphobic and not everyone who shares them is panphobic.
“You can identify as pan, if… I support you being pan, but…”
This create hoops for pan people to jump through in order to be supported. But support and respect contingent on us internalizing and regurgitating panphobia isn’t genuine. We don’t trade autonomy for a sliver of pseudo acceptance.
“New labels damage the community. It doesn’t matter if a label is valid, it matters if it’s useful, materially different, and serves a political purpose.” And other anti self-identification/individualism statements.
This targets any label that isn’t The Four. Labels are, and always have been, useful if they help someone understand and communicate their feelings, identity, and experiences. We don’t owe our queerness to anyone, and we don’t have to use our queerness as a calculated strategy for anything.
What damages the community is creating an environment where any kind of difference in identity/language/expression or rebellion against norms/status quo/rules is met with hostility, fostering fear and distrust of the people who are supposed to support and nurture that self-discovery and expression.
“All genders/regardless of gender has always been the definition of bi.”
This often perpetuates the counterfactual ideas that pan “stole” The bi definition and isn’t necessary because “bi already means that”. This is also ahistorical biphobia; there’s never been one “true” definition of bi(this isn’t even the common community one) and it erases bi history/people who don’t relate to it.
Using scare quotes around pan.
Putting pan in quotes when it isn’t necessary is often a way of disrespecting its legitimacy, casting doubt/judgement, especially if pan is the only one in quotes.
“Bi has always included trans/nonbinary people.”
This is often used to falsely claim pan was created because “biphobes thought bi didn’t include trans/nonbinary people, so pan doesn’t need to exist”. (Binary bi texts aren’t universal, but there are plenty that speak to a reality that affected people and contributed to the current more inclusive language.)
“Mspec labels overlap but the distinction matters to some and that’s okay.”
I’ve seen this said so many times in response to people asking what bi and pan mean and how they relate to and differ from each other. What good is it to tell people the distinction matters while avoiding explaining what that distinction is? Ultimately this statement discourages any dialogue about mspec labels.
“Bi is an umbrella term that includes pan.”
The bi umbrella was once genuine inclusion of all mspec people, and activists/orgs use it, so most people don’t see it as anything else. But when bi only content has “bi+” slapped onto it, it becomes meaningless and performative. Panphobes also use it to argue pan doesn’t need its own, specific visibility.
“When a character ‘just likes people’ or is ‘attracted to all genders or regardless of gender’ they aren’t automatically pan instead of bi.”
I’ve experienced this from panphobes who simply assume pan interpretations of pan definitions/common pan explanations must be because of biphobia. But it’s a big, false, and purposely bad faith leap of logic to fuel the panphobic narrative that pan people are always misrepresenting bi.
“Pan people need to let bi people have something and stop making everything about themselves.”
This might seem like advocating for bi only content/events for the sake of bi visibility/community, but it’s often malicious exclusion of pan people who’ve always been included. We aren’t “invading” or “derailing” anythingbybeing in spaceswe’vealways been in, or by sharing a bi post because we relate to it.
“Read the Bi Manifesto.”
A lot of the time, people say this because they think the manifesto states the true definition of bi and proves pan is unnecessary/biphobic. However, the full text explicitly states there isn’t one true definition of bi and the group who published it explicitly supports all mspec people and identities.
“People identify as pan due to internalized biphobia.”
This masks panphobia with concern for internalized biphobia. Pan is being written off as a product of biphobia under the guise of wanting bi people to embrace being bi. Pan people are being equated to bi folks who just haven’t unlearned biphobia enough to embrace being bi, when that isn’t the case.
“All pan people are bi, but not all bi people are pan.”
This appears to be an easy explanation of bi/pan, borrowing from “all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares”. But queerness isn’t geometry and doesn’t work like that. The only pan people who are bi are the ones who also identify as bi. We can’t box queerness into simple, universal categories.
“Analyze why you’re uncomfortable with being associated with bi people or being called bi.”
Of course, pan and bi are associated, but it’s never mere association these people are referring to. Pan people are vilified and wrongly painted as biphobic for criticizing the erasure and mislabeling of our identity.
“Bi and pan people need to stop fighting each other, both are valid and neither is -phobic.”
This implies the “fighting” is equal. But there are popular bi accounts dedicated to panphobia, “battleaxe bi” was coopted for panphobia, a major bi org spreads panphobia, panphobic bi authors/activists are praised, and researchers subsume pan data into bi data. Biphobia from pan people just is not on the same scale as panphobia from bi people.
This is not to disregard/downplay biphobia from pan people. It’s just important to acknowledge the reality, severity, and disparity of the situation. Erasing that by saying or implying it’s just a silly mutual argument about which word is better is disingenuous at best, and malicious misrepresentation at worst.
“I’ve never seen a definition of pan that isn’t biphobic/transphobic.”
Panphobes involved in bi/pan “discourse” saying this aren’t hoping to learn the actual (read: non bigoted) definitions of pan, they’re saying there aren’t any definitions of pan that aren’t biphobic or transphobic, because they believe pan is inherently biphobic and transphobic.
“Behaviorally/scientifically bi.”
“Behaviorally” and “scientifically” bi are used to categorize people based on so-called innate, universal indicators of being bi. Both say pan people are actually bi, hiding identity policing/erasure behind science. Funnily enough, researchers have said it’s hard to determine who is “actually bi” because “individuals determine this for themselves”. In other words, there aren’t innate or universal indicators, we simply are who we say we are.
So. I’m sure there are plenty more examples I’ve missed, and if you have any please send them my way! (I tried to make this as short as possible, so if you’d like me to elaborate on any of these, let me know and I’ll happily do so!)
But I hope this will encourage you to think a bit deeper about the things people say and the possible intent behind it before sharing, as well as be more invested in supporting pan people and trusting us when we tell you something is being said to spread panphobia.
So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”
Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”
So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it.
That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender.
When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.
And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.
But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.
But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I wasalso saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”
And that? That gives me hope for the future.
Similarily: “Dyke/butch/femme are lesbian words, bisexual/pansexual women shouldn’t use them.”
When I speak to them, lesbians who say this seem to be under the impression that bisexuals must have our own history and culture and words that are all perfectly nice, so why can’t we just use those without poaching someone else’s?
And often, they’re really shocked when I tell them: We don’t. We can’t. I’d love to; it’s not possible.
“Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. And until feminism, very, very few women had the economic freedom to choose to live entirely away from men. Lesbian bars that began in the 1930s didn’t interrogate you about your history at the door; many of the women who went there seeking romantic or sexual relationships with other women were married to men at the time. When The Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 to work for the civil and political wellbeing of lesbians, the majority of its members were closeted, married women, and for those women, leaving their husbands and committing to lesbian partners was a risky and arduous process the organization helped them with. Women were admitted whether or not they’d at one point truly loved or desired their husbands or other men–the important thing was that they loved women and wanted to explore that desire.
Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely. Having relationships with men was “sleeping with the enemy” and colluding with oppression. Many lesbian radical feminists viewed, and still view, bisexuality as a fundamentally disordered condition that makes bisexuals unstable, abusive, anti-feminist, and untrustworthy.
(This despite the fact that radical feminists and political lesbians are actually a small fraction of lesbians and wlw, and lesbians do tend, overall, to have positive attitudes towards bisexuals.)
That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces. And part of this is because attempts to build a bisexual/pansexual community identity have met with strong resistance from gays and lesbians, so we have far fewer books, resources, histories, icons, organizations, events, and resources than gays and lesbians do, despite numerically outnumbering them..
So every time I hear that phrase, it’s another painful reminder for me of all the experiences I’ve had being rejected by the lesbian community. But bisexual experiences don’t get talked about or signalboosted much,so a lot of young/new lesbians literally haven’t learned this aspect of LGBT+ history.
And once I’ve explained it, I’ve had a heartening number of lesbians go, “That’s not what I wanted to happen, so I’m going to stop saying that.”
I really hate on this website that we erased the term monosexism as it was a very useful term m-spec people have being using for years but terfs decided it was bad becuse it group them with straight people and all of you believed it.
Monosexism is the belief that people who are only attracted to one gender is somehow better or more superior to those who are not monosexual.
Monosexism seeing everything as only gay or straight and if your not you either lying or making things up.
Monosexism is erasing multisexual people are seeing them as less memebers in tge community.
Monosexism is seeing multisexual people are dangerous and dirty
Monosexism is seeing m-spec men as gay men who havent fully accepted themselves as gay.
Monosexism is seeing m-spec women as either lesbians or straight women depending on who your talking to
Monosexism is not seeing multisexual as a full identity and only half of something or on the way of realizing our ‘true’ sexuality.
But you guys all decided it was bad becuase terfs said it ‘group gays with the straights and that it was inherently evil for that.’ And you believed it.
Bisexual positivity blogs have big problems about throwing polyamorous people under the bus. We are both blamed for creating stereotypes about bisexual people being nonmonogamous and for oppressing them by wanting to have threesomes with them. To set things straight: we did not produce the stereotypes, monogamous heterosexuals who could not fathom bisexuality did and polyamorous people are not the cause of fetishizing bisexuality, it is monogamous heterosexuals treating bisexual and pansexual people like human sex toys who did. We are not the enemies of the bisexual community and they need to stop throwing us under the bus.
This is so important, folks. We need to always make sure the blame is placed squarely at the feet of heteronormative society, rather than throwing others under the bus.
We can be upset about the stereotypes without implying that it’s dirty or wrong to fulfill stereotypes. The problem is always with people who assume things about you due to stereotypes and ignore you as an individual, not with the stereotyped thing itself.
So do polyamory, have threesomes, be promiscuous if that floats your boat. Because really, no amount of “respectability” will make straight people stop hating us. WE don’t have to prove that we’re good bis and we’re just like them - THEY have to learn to respect our differences and treat us like human beings even if we’re not like them. Liberation, not assimilation, and no leaving anyone behind.
