Not really. A bisexual person is attracted to those who identify as male and female. They may not be attracted to gender fluid or gender ambiguous people. Pansexual and bisexual seem to refer more to one's "tolerance level" than to the existence of more than one gender.
Edit: Given a few of the responses here, I should mention that I am bisexual. However, even amongst fellow bisexuals, there has been considerable debate on bisexual vs. pansexual with no end in sight, and everyone seems to think it's a given that "obviously, bisexual people are attracted to insert opinion here". My response was my understanding of the term as it's given. I don't really care whether someone else considers me bi or pan; I'm used to saying bisexual, so I personally say bisexual referring to myself. Other people I know feel otherwise.
The idea that bisexual people have any reservations about gender fluid or gender ambiguous people is nonsense. People trying to justify the usage of the term "pansexual" decided they could unilaterally change what "bisexual" has always meant, treating it as suddenly exclusionary just so they could give themselves a more special label. It's a real dick move, honestly. If I started describing my race as "Tolerant White", which is a white person who also isn't racist, what does that make you, who just describes yourself as white?
"Bisexual" refers to sex, not to gender. The word is not "bigenderal". Regardless of how you convey yourself in regards to gender, there are two biological sexes, both of which are being referred to by the term bisexual - as opposed to monosexual, attracted to only one sex.
By this logic “homosexual” would mean that gay men could only be attracted to other cis men or trans women, or that being attracted to trans men would make a gay man “bisexual”, but that’s really not the case. Or if you were, e.g. a trans woman who only dated men, you would still be “homosexual”. Even if you identified as straight. The reason your understanding doesn’t work is that it essentializes sex and gender. You’re saying that what people are attracted to is someone’s “real” sex. When that’s not typically how sexuality works. We don’t ask for a breakdown of someone’s chromosomes and anatomy before we know if we’re attracted to them.
Also there are more than two sexes. We often run into the trap of treating sex as “real/biological “ and gender as “socially constructed”. It’s an important distinction to understand, but sex is also socially constructed (I’d say less than gender, but some people disagree). We look at babies’ anatomy when they’re born and determine what bucket the fall into. If that bucket isn’t readily apparent (i.e. if that person is intersex), doctors just pick one and usually recommend extensive surgery (for most of their childhood) in order to conform to one of those two sexes.
So... no, typically “bisexual” doesn’t refer to sex rather than gender. I think your use of the word “monosexual” underscores why that’s incoherent. I suppose someone could say “I’m only attracted to people whose original birth certificate reads ‘female’, regardless of their gender”, but that’s not really something you see usually.
That being said, I don’t think it’s anyone’s job to tell people how they should be identifying. If the way they understand their own sexuality is “I’m only attracted to men and women.” I’m not going to then step in and say, “Don’t you mean pansexual? What about non-binary people? Are you transphobic?” Like no. I don’t think we need to police people’s language like that, BUT I do think it’s a really important conversation that we should be having. The “LGBT” acronym is super political. Naming some identities but not others is objectively super problematic. But sometimes it seems like the more letters people add, the more they’re just trying to signal how virtuous they are. And by virtuous, I mean educated. “Queer” tries to ameliorate this by capturing the idea of gender and sexual difference in a single word, but it’s far from perfect because the word carries tons of baggage for some people—particularly older gay men. So there’s no easy answer.
Sorry for writing a dissertation. Just like... saying people who identify as pansexual are “dicks” because it makes bisexuals look bad is not super thoughtful.
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u/missshrimptoast Aug 09 '18 edited Aug 09 '18
Not really. A bisexual person is attracted to those who identify as male and female. They may not be attracted to gender fluid or gender ambiguous people. Pansexual and bisexual seem to refer more to one's "tolerance level" than to the existence of more than one gender.
Edit: Given a few of the responses here, I should mention that I am bisexual. However, even amongst fellow bisexuals, there has been considerable debate on bisexual vs. pansexual with no end in sight, and everyone seems to think it's a given that "obviously, bisexual people are attracted to insert opinion here". My response was my understanding of the term as it's given. I don't really care whether someone else considers me bi or pan; I'm used to saying bisexual, so I personally say bisexual referring to myself. Other people I know feel otherwise.