this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
695 points (98.9% liked)
196
4273 readers
1472 users here now
Community Rules
You must post before you leave
Be nice. Assume others have good intent (within reason).
Block or ignore posts, comments, and users that irritate you in some way rather than engaging. Report if they are actually breaking community rules.
Use content warnings and/or mark as NSFW when appropriate. Most posts with content warnings likely need to be marked NSFW.
Most 196 posts are memes, shitposts, cute images, or even just recent things that happened, etc. There is no real theme, but try to avoid posts that are very inflammatory, offensive, very low quality, or very "off topic".
Bigotry is not allowed, this includes (but is not limited to): Homophobia, Transphobia, Racism, Sexism, Abelism, Classism, or discrimination based on things like Ethnicity, Nationality, Language, or Religion.
Avoid shilling for corporations, posting advertisements, or promoting exploitation of workers.
Proselytization, support, or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome. This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc.
Avoid AI generated content.
Avoid misinformation.
Avoid incomprehensible posts.
No threats or personal attacks.
No spam.
Moderator Guidelines
Moderator Guidelines
- Don’t be mean to users. Be gentle or neutral.
- Most moderator actions which have a modlog message should include your username.
- When in doubt about whether or not a user is problematic, send them a DM.
- Don’t waste time debating/arguing with problematic users.
- Assume the best, but don’t tolerate sealioning/just asking questions/concern trolling.
- Ask another mod to take over cases you struggle with, if you get tired, or when things get personal.
- Ask the other mods for advice when things get complicated.
- Share everything you do in the mod matrix, both so several mods aren't unknowingly handling the same issues, but also so you can receive feedback on what you intend to do.
- Don't rush mod actions. If a case doesn't need to be handled right away, consider taking a short break before getting to it. This is to say, cool down and make room for feedback.
- Don’t perform too much moderation in the comments, except if you want a verdict to be public or to ask people to dial a convo down/stop. Single comment warnings are okay.
- Send users concise DMs about verdicts about them, such as bans etc, except in cases where it is clear we don’t want them at all, such as obvious transphobes. No need to notify someone they haven’t been banned of course.
- Explain to a user why their behavior is problematic and how it is distressing others rather than engage with whatever they are saying. Ask them to avoid this in the future and send them packing if they do not comply.
- First warn users, then temp ban them, then finally perma ban them when they break the rules or act inappropriately. Skip steps if necessary.
- Use neutral statements like “this statement can be considered transphobic” rather than “you are being transphobic”.
- No large decisions or actions without community input (polls or meta posts f.ex.).
- Large internal decisions (such as ousting a mod) might require a vote, needing more than 50% of the votes to pass. Also consider asking the community for feedback.
- Remember you are a voluntary moderator. You don’t get paid. Take a break when you need one. Perhaps ask another moderator to step in if necessary.
founded 7 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Basic answer: Bi likes two and maybe more, where Pan explicitly likes any, which you use just show's your starting point.
Real answer: Those who resonate with using Bi as a label likely started or wants to start on a common level of understanding of LGBT, whereas people who resonate with Pan start deep into LGBT discourse.
True answer: It's which flag you like better.
My understanding is that the bi in bisexual never refered to two genders, it's always been about homo- and heterosexual
My bi ass feels called out by this, so I'm going to say that makes you based
I spent a while trying to find a simple answer to this. I think it's most easily interpreted as:
Bi: Implies you like both of the genders. No real preference.
Pan: implies you recognize there is a range of masculinity and femininity, and of course cis and trans, and thus you are attracted to a range of genders. Not explicitly feminine or masculine, but likes anyone on the spectrum of genders.
bisexuality isn't inherently transphobic!
not saying you're necessarily implying that, but it's a general stereotype which, while it can be true on an individual level, certainly isn't when taken as a whole
here's the bisexual manifesto, also, since it goes hard: https://bitheway.carrd.co/#manifesto
Oooh I had not seen that. With this in mind, I have to just assume that pan came about not knowing that bi had already by definition not limited to the two typical genders.
I had not thought bi to be transphobic, nor that bisexuals actually fit into interest in just two separate genders. I just thought it was perhaps an outdated term that sounds that way. Thank you for the clarification!
There really needs to be more discussion on this stuff. I only recently discovered the terms gynosexual and androsexual. Those could have been super useful when I was younger.
I've heard some people describe pansexuality as being attraction without regard to gender. This makes intuitive sense to me, speaking as a bisexual whose attraction to different genders feels different qualitatively
Isn't that omni? I'm attracted to all people but like you the differences hits different so omni feels like a better fit than pan, but I still call myself pan or bi because nobody knows what the hell omni is.
Is there a label that includes everyone except golfers? Asking for a friend.
Perhaps. Being neither pansexual nor omnisexual, I don't feel especially well equipped to comment on this, but I get the sense that the semantic relationship between "pansexual" and "omnisexual" is probably similar to the relationship between bisexuality and pansexuality. That is to say, effectively being synonyms, except for subtle distinctions that can contextually matter to the people who identify as those things. So like, I would say that "bisexual ≈ pansexual" and "pansexual ≈ omnisexual". Like if I were to think of this in terms of the evolutionary relationships between words, it feels like the concepts of pansexuality and omnisexuality are more closely related than omnisexuality and bisexuality.
Like I say though, I don't have a good personal sense of what the distinction between pan and omni is — though I'm realising that this may be an opportunity to develop my understanding. Are you able to articulate what it is about "omnisexual" that resonates with you more than "pansexual"? My personal experience with labels is that finding a more specific one that feels like it fits better is that the better label hits more of the right notes than the previous label — so what I'm asking is what notes does omnisexual hit that pansexual doesn't (or what notes does "pansexual" hit that don't feel right for you?).
To give an example of what I mean about things fitting better, I find that whilst I still readily identify as bisexual, I find that "queer" better captures my vibe nowadays, because it gets at the fact that my preferred mode of relationships is actively anti-heteronormative (even when in a straight-passing relationship)
You articulated that better than I could. For the pan/omni difference, for me it is the pan "gender blind or not seeing gender" definition that feels slightly dissonant. I appreciate all gender presentations and genitalia in different combinations and find it interesting and sexy and definitely part of the equation and I feel pan misses the mark on that. It's mostly an academic distinction to me but someone coined the term because they felt it was an important enough distinction to warrant a different term so it's clearly important to some. Who am I to disagree?
I think the main problem here is that even people within the community confuse "sex" with "gender".
Sex is a biological concept. According to biology, mammals have two sexes. Period.
Gender is a social/cultural/psychological concept. There's a whole spectrum of genders.
Wouldn't that mean that "bisexual" is someone attracted to the physical/biological attributes of of both sexes, while "pansexual" is someone attracted to the range of social/cultural/psychological attributes on the gender spectrum?
I think you're missing nuance with 'mammals have two sexes. Period' - there's a range of intersex possibilities, chromosomes that don't match organs, chromosomes that aren't xx or xy (e.g xxy), genetic chimeras with more than one set of sex chromosomes. What you mean is 'usually'
This is somewhat of a tangent to your point, but this is a really cool article that looks over how human biological sex is more complex than most realise: https://scatter.wordpress.com/2022/01/30/sex-as-a-social-construct/
I like this approach because it is quite disruptive to the framework that you describe, wherein sex and gender can be simplified by understanding them as completely separate, and sex framed as a simple binary. To be clear, this isn't me saying you're wrong; I like the phrase "all models are wrong, some are useful". I also think that the model you describe is also one that I sometimes find useful in talking about this stuff, even if I think it's an oversimplification. I like things that disrupt this simplicity because I'm a big nerd who also happens to be a scientist in a different side of the life sciences — I used to think of science as something we could apply to the world to get the unruly chaos of life to obey our understanding. Increasingly, I think that we could do with being a bit more humble and realising how many of the things we think we've solved actually have hidden layers of complexity. I think this is very cool and exciting, because I am a massive nerd.