Sex Positions Politics: Stereotypes in the gay community
When it comes to relationships, everyone has their deal breakers. For some, it’s smoking as well as for others it could be something petty like snoring or chewing too loudly. However, in the gay community there seems a specified offer breaker which, in my opinion, limits the choices for a potential mate. This, depending on your perspective, could be a good or a negative thing. In either case, things seem to always boil down to what someone loves to do in the bedroom. Actually, what one does in the bedroom in worn like badge or a sticker so that everyone knows upon the first meeting who (what) they’re meeting. Sex positions are no longer just what someone enjoys doing in the bedroom, but is now a way to determine how one should bring themselves. Sex positions have grown to be an identity rather than choice of how one loves sexual pleasure.
“Oh my god, he’s SUCH a bottom…”
Phrases like this speak to this precise concern. So how exactly does one determine whether or not someone is a high, bottom, versatile or none of the above mentioned? It’s quite common for humans to rely on heuristics to shortcut our way through life; things such as stereotypes and profiling are ways we determine, in a moment, whether or not someone will probably be worth our time. In conjunction with applying such shortcuts, people often participate by sticking with such shortcuts via activities and personality traits. Statements such as the one above, “Oh my god, he’s such a bottom” or “Just what a sexy top” suppose so much about someone. These phrases and words are very arbitrary- let’s dissect the words “Top” and “Bottom” from a colloquial sense to comprehend what people really mean by labeling people as such.
A Bottom: a person who enjoys being penetrated during sexual activity.
Being a bottom has been stigmatized in and out of the gay community for quite a long time. This is because bottoming is associated with being the “female” in the relationship (whether it’s a casual, friends with benefits or intimate one). Bottoming requires the recipient to submit themselves to the very best, allowing him or her to penetrate them. There is a certain degree of control one provides up in order to permit such actions to occur and in American society men are supposed to have total control. Bottoming is looked down upon because it is deemed shameful for a man to allow another person to penetrate them as if he were a female.
There are a handful of things wrong with this presumption. One being thought a man gives up his manhood by allowing himself to be penetrated. I’ve often noticed that the male ego/manhood is so fragile. Honestly, if the power one’s manhood is situated about how much control he has over people, then that sounds like quite the problem. That speaks to the molding of individuals in a patriarchal culture. This notion that men have a pedestal to stand on is ludicrous and needs to be achieved away with immediately. If masculinity is threatened credited to lack of control, then men aren’t as strong as “we” think they are.
The other presumption is that bottoming puts men in a female like role in whatever relationship they’re in. Bottoming is equated with femininity often times. That’s, men who bottom level “have” to be feminine, otherwise they might be considered a top and topping a masculine thing. First, I want to explain how sexist and misogynistic this statement is. If bottoming is looked down upon because a man is becoming “the woman” then that is reiterating the message that it is a poor thing to be always a woman. By stating this, not only are you placing men down, nevertheless, you are indirectly saying that women should be ashamed of their functions in relationships simply because they are a woman. Second, bottoming is an intimate work which is not reliant on anything else one might enjoy doing. There are plenty of men who enjoy doing a lot of other things that by societal measures are considered “masculine” yet they love bottoming in the bedroom. Imagine if out football player Micheal Sam disclosed that he enjoyed bottoming for his partner; would he then be looked at “womanly” even though he could rip you in half as if you were a bit of paper?
A Top: One who enjoys penetrating his / her partner during sexual activity.
Although topping is not stigmatized like bottoming is, there are some things to arranged direct about those who enjoy topping. One of these being that the one who tops should be the “man” in the relationship. Piggy-backing off of what was mentioned in regards to bottoming and being the “female” in the relationship, the same reasoning applies here for tops. The take action of topping will not make one any more or less of a man, just as with bottoming.
The other assumption to handle is: the main one who prefers to top in the relationship must be the dominate one overall. Dominance is measured by various things, not simply bedroom pleasure. Just to throw things off a little, there are such things as submissive tops and dominant bottoms. Some might know about the term “power bottom”, which is a person who enjoys bottoming but also is actually the aggressor in the intimate realm of the relationship. Therefore, topping will not establish dominance.
As for those who choose not to label themselves neither of the, they do that because either they enjoy doing both which is what is called being versatile; they don’t like penetration at all; because they chose not to perpetuate the notion that intimate positions are identities and they may not desire to be defined by said sexual positions.
In a later post, I’ll continue steadily to discuss sexual positions, the tribal aspects thereof and intertwine that with subcultures of the gay community. That’s, markings, extremities and actions that perpetuate the “top” and “bottom” stereotype so that heuristics may be employed to not only spot them, but know to which “tribe” or subgroup they belong.