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.

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 I just thought it was perhaps an outdated term that sounds that way.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?