I use bi to mean “same and not same” – I am not attracted to “men and women” but to people regardless of gender. This includes genderqueer and non-binary. I first noticed I was attracted to women as well as men aged maybe 12 or 13. I had no idea genderqueer/non-binary people even existed then. Heck, I had very little idea LGB people existed then.
By about 16 or 17 I was comfortable enough to adopt the bi label for myself (at least in my head though not necessarily out loud). I’ve identified as bi for half my life – so in some ways I’m quite attached to the label. At the same time I realise that it can come across as exclusive of people on the genderqueer spectrum. And “bi as in same and not same” is a hell of a mouthful.
I do feel deeply uncomfortable with pansexual as a label. Some of that is a fair amount of internalised oppression/slut shaming. Some of that is that there’s not even a P in QUILTBAG. We’ve done a lot of work educating people about what bisexuality means – and heck, we’re still not even nearly where we need to be with that. Starting from scratch on pan just seems terrifying. I do like the approach of using pan with people who will know what it means and bi with everyone else as an interim solution.
On a typographical note, it’s bisexual, not bi-sexual.
ETA
Fascinating discussions over on Twitter about this. Let me try to sum up.
People use all sorts of labels for themselves, sometimes even apparently contradictory ones. @the_eumelia said she identified as bi, lesbian and gay and especially queer because of the stories and the contexts associated with each. Someone identified as “sexual”. Someone else said they used queer but found people just took that to mean “gay”. We also talked about bisexuality as an attraction to more than one gender vs an indifference to gender. Several people mentioned the way that the labels they use for themselves and the way they think of their own sexuality have changed over the years.
Someone who identified as gay felt they were in the minority in today’s discussion – which to an extent was the point; I am trying to raise the profile and visibility of parts of the QUILTBAG community beyond lesbian and gay. Most weeks those parts of the community will feel in the minority.
Three in-depth discussions struck me in particular: There was a sizeable contingent advocating against the use of labels. Many of those tweets were variations on the theme of “Can’t we just be ‘people’?” I saw a couple of good counter-arguments to this. Using “people” can very easily lead to erasure of minorities like QUILTBAG people – it’s easy to assume that there is a default for people, and that default does tend to be straight, white, cis and male in our culture. Using labels is a way to differentiate ourselves and call attention to the fact that we exist, we are different and we have different needs. And not only do QUILTBAG people in general have different needs, but as @the_eumelia pointed out, each letter in that alphabet soup has different needs.
I also liked the distinction between “label” and “identity” that @GeoffreyBrent made:

I distinguish between “labels” (how we describe self to others) vs “identity” (how we see self) so there are labels I am comfortable using, for convenience in communication, without *identifying* w/ them as such.

The second discussion that went into quite a lot of depth was the distinction or otherwise between bisexual and pansexual. There was a clear sense of discomfort expressed by quite a few people with the pansexual label, not dissimilar to what I described above. It almost feels self-excluding.
@LauraTea linked to this article by Julia Serano on how “bisexual” does not reinforce the gender binary. Interestingly, while I completely agree that it doesn’t, I find very little in that article actually matches my own experience of my sexual orientation. Julia talks a lot about male and female “bodies” whereas I am attracted to people as much as I am to bodies (yes, those are different); also, I have a huge thing for androgyny which doesn’t seem to fit in this framework. Of course the beauty of all this is that we can all choose how we identify and that does not detract from anyone else’s self-identification or experience of their sexuality.
I found this article on the differences and similarities between bi and pan which @the_eumelia linked to incredibly compelling. It argues that bisexual as a label has its political roots in sexual orientation politics whereas pansexual is more concerned with gender. There is a huge overlap between the two and they aren’t actually mutually exclusive. All of this makes an instinctive kind of sense to me.
The third, briefer, discussion was around “living up” to your chosen labels. A few people expressed fears of not being “queer enough” or “bi enough” or “gay enough”. I thought @1nineeight3 put this beautifully:

I guess that is the problem arising from labels. When you give yourself a label, you somehow expect yourself to go through certain experiences. And when that does not materialise, you question yourself and feel guilty because it’s as if you’re using the label “wrongly” or not justifying yourself thru that label.

So if this is you, take heart: you’re far from the only one feeling like this!
Edited some time later to add more awesome things people sent me
@DRMacIver wrote something on labels, some of which I quite like. @Drcabl3 has promised a full rebuttal.
He also shared the Genderbread Person model.
@Drcabl3 wrote up something on queer as a label, and coming out or not coming out as such.
Next: Coming out as bisexual
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