As a pansexual I feel that Bi and Pan have enough differences to both be justified while the others are micro labels (not invalid, just less useful as labels).

But I recognize I’m drawing that line very conveniently for myself.

Here’s an unpopular opinion: you don’t need any labels at all. You love who you live, you fuck who you fuck, you can advertise what you’re looking for if you want to but all this identity business obscures the reality that humans are far more diverse and interesting than the boxes we build for ourselves.

Most people who call themselves straight would fuck someone from their own gender if there weren’t cultural expectations against it hammered into them from and early age. Most people who call themselves gay would wander if they found someone they connected with. Very few of us rest at one end of any spectrum or matrix. Most of us are somewhere in the middle, and far more mobile than we might realize.

Atheism isn’t a religion, likewise asexuality is not a sexual orientation, but the lack of one, I say.

Why asexuals?

I think this thinking falls into the common belief that “sexuality” and preference within “sexuality” are actually distinct things. I really think everyone’s sexual preferences are unique, and so even microlabels don’t do them justice. But I don’t think the purpose of labeling your sexuality is meant to be perfectly descriptive, it’s a way to connect with people over shared parts of their experience with sexuality and that can be as coarse or fine as you want it to be. You say there should be only straight, gay, and bi, but we could go even more broad and say there should only be cishet and queer.

Upvoted, but I have a slight disagreement. I think bisexual should actually be a label under pansexual. Bisexual doesn’t necessarily account for anyone outside the gender binary.

Out of interest, why? Shouldn’t it be the other way around, that bi is a subset of pan?

subsets of bisexual

What does bi cover that pan doesn’t :-)

If we’re splitting hairs, bi should be a sunset of pan.

Also, there is some need for a fourth “none of the above” label…

Agree. I understand expressing acceptance of non hetero love so kids know that there are other options and they’re valued, but i don’t need to know what labels everyone has chosen, who they’re having sex with, or what is under their undies. And i believe that many people who are medically trans are chasing a masculinity or feminity that they feel is not allowed as a male or female and it’s sad that the stereotype is what they’re moving towards or away from instead of individuality. Also, kinda drunk, so probably disregard.

Exactly, words that are synonyms to other words but have different linguistic backgrounds, history, and nuance should just be discarded.

Now please, help me burn these thesauruses.

And here I thought pansexual meant you really like cookware.

I agree. All the little bitty addages don’t make sense. You can be bi and still have preferences. Just keep it simple gosh dangit.

they are all made up

Not understanding what words mean isn’t an unpopular opinion, you’re just wrong

Not about the first bit, that’s arguable

You definitely DO need more labels than straight, gay, and bi. For example: asexual or sapiosexual, those don’t fit into any of the 3 you listed

And asexual

But I agree. The bi community already collectively decided we are trans and nonbinary inclusive. We don’t need to further separate it out.