Conversational Bottoming And You
or, a transfem guide to conversations for girls who struggle with taking agency
Alright, so there's a post going around about how lots of young transfems have poor conversational skills. It calls specific attention to the tendency to just make animal noises or mindlessly flirt, and how they're an insufficient substitute. This is true, but it's not helpful*, I'd like to try to be actually helpful.
I. Why does the problem exist?
On the one paw, basically all widely shared advice assumes a lot of things that simply are not true for us. "Ask them about their job, their future, their finances, their social lives." Well. Generally, many of us are chronically underemployed, vaguely suicidal, surviving off of scraps, and extremely isolated. These aren't first date questions. A lot of transfems try to bridge the gap by jumping to third date questions like "how's your sex life, what kinks are you into, can I touch your tits, do you want to touch my tits." This has other problems that I will not get into in this post.
On the other paw, a lot of good conversationalism involves taking agency and putting yourself out there. The thing about childhood trauma is you're usually repeatedly punished for taking agency until you stop trying. Plus, agency, if it is a thing you can do, isn't likely to be something you do with strangers. You've been taught that your purpose is to be a punching bag. It's comfortable for you, even, in a weird fucked up way. But, this pushes all the agency onto your partner, which kinda sucks for her. Especially if she has the same background as you.
[ *sidebar 1: "the problem with transfems" and other things not to say.
Unfortunately, we live in transmisogynistic hell world. Unfortunately, you are a part of transmisogynistic hell world. Unfortunately, anything talking about "the problem with transfems" will see increased legibility and get shared more because of transmisogynistic hell world. Unfortunately, this cannot be escaped. Broadly, I highly recommend keeping such discussions to transfem only spaces not visible to the public. Or at least don't write vent posts about transfems. Please. ]
II. Then, what can I do differently?
In this post, I'm going to talk about the strategy that carried me through the first two or three years of my transfem social life, until I had accrued enough experience and confidence to try other strategies.
And, I want to say explicitly: maybe you can't think about it now, but you will get there. It's like immersion, your brain is picking up details from around you and shaping them into your own behaviors. As long as you are around conversations and let yourself pay attention to them, you'll get better at all of this.
I just want to help provide a shortcut.
For me, this was a method to be around people and talk to them when I really needed it. When I wasn't yet a person and didn't know how to talk or make friends or have friends or hang out or any of the shit no one writes guides for because they figured it out in middle school when I was busy discovering suicidal ideation. And it worked for me, so I hope it'll work for you.
III. What is infodumping?
I think most of you are probably already familiar with infodumping. Broadly, I'd define infodumping as a communication pattern associated with autism characterized by one-sidedly sharing a large amount of information with the other party.
There's a lot of memes about it that go something like girl 1: [infodumping about bionicles], girl 2: [not paying any attention, in her head: I'm gonna rail her later]. I don't like these memes.
In an autismphobic society, infodumping is a genuine and vulnerable activity. It's relaxing and fulfilling and kinda embarrassing. It's putting yourself out there. It's taking control of the conversation and not letting go until you're satisfied. In that light, it's kinda like topping†.
But, perhaps in defiance of your expectations, I'm not going to tell you how to infodump. I'm going to tell you how to be infodumped to.
[ †sidebar 2: topping and bottoming.
It's pretty popular in transfem spaces to be critical of the phrase "top and bottom" and prefer "dom and sub", because "top and bottom are more heteronormative". If you think about this for any amount of time, you'll realize that this isn't really true (changing language alone does not feminism make).
While you'll commonly hear top and bottom described as 'the penetrative role and the penetrated role'. This isn't the commonly used definition in bdsm spaces, of which I am from. In those spaces, we use 'top' to mean 'one who does the thing' and 'bottom' to mean 'one who the thing is done to'. In this way, we can generalize dynamics between bondage, discipline, d/s, and s/m.
Of course, these definitions are kinda just a trick of the light, and can go in any which direction if you look at things differently. As long as you can agree that obviously the one giving head is the top. ]
IV. What does the infodumpee even do?
The reason I don't like those memes is pretty simple, they present the receptive role as a non-entity. It kinda sucks to infodump to a non-entity. You're putting yourself out there and being vulnerable and she's just thinking about sex of all things. Bionicles is objectively better than sex.
As I see it, infodumping is a lot like music. And if you're the infodumpee, you're playing a rhythm game.
Just like with normal bottoming, your goal is to take this deeply vulnerable activity and provide consistent support throughout. To be a good recipient and accept what is given to you with an open mind. To illustrate to your partner that you are engaged with the ideas being shared, that you are listening, that you are enjoying the process, and that you're present and there.
What this means in practice is a mix of two things: mhms and questions.
VI. What is 'backchanneling'?
There's actually a lot of skill to mhming. Of course I don't merely mean 'saying mhm'. Backchanneling is the linguistic term for this and it's an essential conversational skill.
This includes phrases such as 'yeah', 'uh huh', 'right', 'I see', and so on. The purpose is to let your partner know that you're listening. This is, most directly, the rhythm game element.
There will reach moments where your partner looks to you to see if you're listening. At this point, you need to indicate that you are listening by giving such a cue. Make the noise, nod your head, send a thumbs up emoji. Sometimes animal noises work here, but generally I think they fulfill a different purpose‡.
If you're too late, she'll feel she caught you looking away. She'll think you were distracted and not paying attention, and begin to be distracted from her thoughts by checking up on you more and more.
If you are listening very closely, you'll give the cue before your partner even consciously thinks to check. She'll never even realize she worried if you were paying attention in the first place, the flow will never be broken up.
But if you give it too early, she'll think you're just saying the words without paying attention. You'll disrupt her thoughts with it, and she'll become confused and thrown off.
With each partner, the correct timing is slightly different. Personally, I try to give my 'mhms' when my partner has completed a thought and is reaching for the next one, or when she's asked a rhetorical question or completed a point. But, it takes trial and error. The only way to improve is by practicing.
[ ‡sidebar 3: what is echolalia?
Echolalia is a certain behavior associated with autism generally described as repetitive words and noises. Generally, I tend to understand most "animal noises" as a kind of echolalia (though this isn't always accurate)
Echolalia was first explained to me as a kind of stimming. More formally called 'self stimulating behavior', stimming is another category of autistic behaviors generally understood to aid in sensory maintenance. Flap your hands, tap your feet, bounce in your seat and it'll give you something to focus on to weather the storm.
But, conversationally, echolalia can play other roles. You might use it to hold your place in a conversation. As opposed to where backchanneling says 'pass', echolalia says 'one sec, I'm thinking'.
Further, echolalia can also act as a way of asserting your presence. Meow as you enter a voice call to indicate that it's you and that you're here.
These are useful conversational tools to have. ]
V. How do you ask a good question?
You ask questions to continue the conversation. They indicate not just "I'm listening" but "I want to hear more". They encourage your partner to let loose and just keep talking to you. Turning what could be a simple exchange into a more in depth engagement.
So, ask questions that indicate this. Ask open ended questions that require her to reword things and look from weird angles. Ask analytical questions that reflect your own lack of understanding. Ask silly questions that let her continue her jokes. Ask surface level questions so she just knows you want to hear her speak. Cheat and use google to find more questions to ask but make sure to reword them so she can't tell.
If your partner says "I don't want to get into this, so I'll just say this abbreviated other thing" you better ask about that. But that's when it's really obvious, and only following obvious cues can make her feel like you're just humoring her.
Look at the holes, the thing your partner is skimming over 'to save time' and ask about them. Look at what she's excited about, ask questions about the details that don't add up or that feel weird. Look at what she's interested in, make connections between the different sections and how they relate.
Here, you don't want to just let her go with the same thing as usual. You want to explore new territory. Give her new ideas to interrogate. Plug her back into herself in new ways. Get excited and make her excited about your excitement.
VI. But how do you get someone to start talking to you?
So, we know what to do once we're there, but how do we even get there? This is both the most and the least ritualized element of this.
One way is to simply start asking questions. Most of us wear our interests on our sleeves. On tumblr‖ you'll see us talk about things we like, so you can figure out pretty quickly what to ask about. Generally, someone does not write long posts about things that she does not find interesting to talk about.
But, going in can be hard. If you just say "tell me about X", your partner might think you're only doing this because you want something from her. Or she might care so little about you that she sees no reason to talk to you about it. Being truly purely passive does not work. You need to give your partner something to work with.
One strategy I've seen is the kind of 'instantlossbait' type, where the bottom feigns cluelessness and attempts to trick the top into using them. Here you might ask believably naive questions, present yourself as the 'ideal infodump victim' in a tongue in cheek way.
But, personally, I tend to favor "let's continue this in private". For this strategy, you take a public discussion that someone initiated or led about a topic, you closely read it and synthesize a question about the content, then you ask that question in private or in near-private. Then, from there, you continue to ask more questions. Voila, conversation is happening.
[ ‖sidebar 4: finding a partner on tumblr
There's also a good bit here I could say about choosing your partner. Frankly, I think social media is a bad space for this. If you're going after someone you follow, you're likely going on with some "expectation to perform", and you can't get rid of that no matter how hard you try.
As a rule, if you are meeting someone in a space, you want to meet someone who has the same relationship to the space as you do. Or, at the very least that you both perceive as such.
If this post takes off, I might write one on "finding a discord community", "founding a discord community", or "tumblr dming etiquette", though I'm not really an expert on the last one. We'll see. ]
So, you're being talked to, you're talking to people, you're participating in a conversation, albeit a relatively one sided one.
From here, you have a few options.
For one, you could just genuinely enjoy it as it is. I did, for a couple years. I think that true excellency in conversational bottoming can only be achieved through practicing intrinsic enjoyment of it.
You could also try taking turns. Maybe you do in fact have your own needs, and you want to talk and share too. A well rounded partner will have some skill both bottoming and topping. Though, I think only performing one role because you expect an opportunity to perform the other is bad practice, as common as it is.
Alternatively, you could gradually take more and more agency with your questions. As you gain comfort talking to someone, as you see her personality in how she speaks and learn who she is, you could put more of yourself into it. Bring in your own knowledge and your own ideas. And, slowly, reveal more of yourself as a person, and in the process of doing so you'll become more of a person.
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