Hey! Just wanted to thank you for the lil education regarding top and bottom! I guess I didn’t realize there was a specific definition for top and bottom regarding penetration.
Do you think that at this point in the community we’ve strayed from the original definitions of top and bottom? In the way that we’ve come to understand lesbian includes he/they/enby lesbians etc?
Or maybe the question should be do we stick with top and bottom or attempt to move towards more BDSM terms like sub/dom to better understand?
Listening to the definition seems like it skirts the heterosexual world a lil too much, especially when there are throngs of queer people who won’t do penetration in any form of giving and taking.
Love the discussion you’ve sparked!
I mean it seems like the waters have definitely gotten muddied regarding top/bottom, considering how many tags were indicating that those terms depend on the situation or couple dynamic, but that has more to do with confusion around the terms than a redefinition of them. But he/him and they/them and nonbinary, non-woman lesbians have been part of modern queer history from the start. We’re not new members of the community, this isn’t some new age wave — he/him lesbians are some of the foundational identities within the queer community. People getting confused, being misled, or being willfully ignorant about those things doesn’t mean that they’re a new concept.
And top/bottom + dom/sub are not mutually exclusive terms. They very often go hand in hand, and all of them are necessary descriptors in a lot of queer experience. Not everybody is going to have BDSM dynamics in their relationships, and not everybody is defined by hard and fast roles of tom/bottom. But that doesn’t mean that any of those words aren’t important or can just be used in whatever way someone prefers. They’re words with meaning, and that meaning is fixed. Queer sex, queer sexual roles, queer identity, queer sexual experience are all varied and diverse and mutable. But words mean things, and just because someone topping evokes a specific image doesn’t mean that that image is all there is to that word. We don’t throw away words just because they have a stigma or stereotype. We insist on using the words as they’re meant to be used, and we use other, qualifying words and descriptors to expound on personal experience. This is the way with all queer words and identifiers.
There is nothing heterosexual about top/bottom. The assumption that those terms are heterosexual is a heteronormative assumption. Someone being a top says absolutely nothing about them except that they prefer to give penetration during sex. It doesn’t mean they’re dominant, masculine, assertive, or any other stereotypes that heterosexual society has pinned on the idea of a person who is giving penetration during sex. Same goes for bottom. The association of these neutral terms with specific qualities as displayed by heteronormative society is the problem, not the terms themselves. The terms are descriptive about the physical act of penetration, and nothing more. They are also exclusively queer terms. Heterosexual society does not own or understand them, and in fact I’d even say that heterosexual society has bastardized them by making everyone assume that tops are manly and strong and bottoms are feminine and weak. That narrative being perpetuated within the queer community is a problem spawned from heteronormativity and, by extension, patriarchal ideals. But top and bottom are not and never have been heterosexual concepts.
Not all queer people have to be a top or a bottom. Not all terms apply to everyone, they only apply where they’re relevant. And they were relevant in my poll, which is why that was the central topic. My poll was in no way meant to encompass the greater scope of queer sex and all the many ways it can manifest. But it sure has blown open some stuff I wasn’t expecting so yeah, net positive learning experience here I think.
