"it's harmful to break our community into smaller pieces and create new labels to express how we're attracted instead of to whom."
i’m bored of the argument that pansexual, polysexual, and omnisexual were created in recent years, not because there’s anything wrong with new labels, but because it crumbles to pieces with the slightest bit of research into queer history.
mspec labels such as pan, ply, and omni are not newly created by ignorant kids on online. they’ve been descriptors for sexual identity for decades, since at least the ‘60 and ‘70s.
labels describing how one is attracted can be useful, because we don’t all conceptualize our attraction in the same way and it’s not harmful for people to use different language to describe and define their own attraction.
that said, pan, ply, and omni do describe who one is attracted to, even when there are specifications on the how, because mspec labels are inherently about being attracted to more than one gender.
this argument (which is also used against aspec identities) is likely about “regardless of gender”, but considering others also use that definition (and go as far as claiming it’s The Only Definition of bi), it doesn’t hold up.
arguments of pan, ply, and omni people breaking the community into smaller pieces, forcing the bi umbrella, and rejecting a label they are somehow obligated to use don’t stand up to queer history.
historical and current bi texts/groups acknowledge, support, and include all mspec labels. the variety in mspec identity is not new. the bi umbrella originated with and is largely used by bi orgs/activists.
there is no need to homogenize the community to fight systemic oppression when there are already existing umbrellas that all queer people come together under. this argument is identity politics.
queer people have always expanded our terms to represent what’s important enough to warrant its own term, because it isn’t acknowledged (enough) in other terms, or we just don’t identify with other terms.
are we going to pretend these arguments against pan, ply, and omni aren’t recycled queerphobia? that they aren’t the same arguments bi, trans, and aspec people heard about their places in the community? obscuring the goal? derailing progress? dividing the community? detrimental to the movement?
are pan/ply/omniphobes really just going to uncritically parrot the same arguments that have been used against other queer people, even against their own identities, and think no one will notice?
