To everyone who insists bisexuals can only be attracted to two genders because “words have meanings” and “bi means two”:

Somehow, generations of kids have been able to understand that octo- means eight while still accepting that October is the tenth month. Likewise, dinosaur literally means “terrible lizard,” but we now know dinosaurs were far more closely related to birds than reptiles. Unless you’re petitioning for the last three months of the year and an entire category of extinct animals to be renamed as well, methinks you all need to chill.

You know what else uses the prefix bi-? Bicycle, meaning “two circles/wheels.” Yet when you add training wheels to a child’s bicycle, it’s still called a bicycle. Prefixes have meanings, yes, but once new words with those prefixes come into common usage, they acquire and develop meaning independently of what their component roots meant. Which is why dinosaurs can be proto-birds, October can be the tenth month, and bisexuals can be attracted to more than two genders. Funny how that works.

(P.S. If you’re going to insist that terms can never change meanings, then bisexual actually means intersex and pansexuality is the Freudian–and acephobic–idea that the sex drive is the primary mover of all human activity and behavior, because that’s what those terms meant in their original usage. It’s a good thing the meanings of words do in fact shift over time, isn’t it?)

