The top shortage is actually due to artificial scarcity. A cartel of greedy bottoms has a strangehold on the international top supply, whereby they bottom from the top
Kay Gabriel, George Dust, and Billy-Ray Belcourt consider what queer memes of a top shortage reveal about the racialized orders of desire an
this piece, an edited conversation between Lou Cornum, Billy-Ray Belcourt, George Dust, and Kay Gabriel about the "top shortage" memes is really interesting.
the way ""bottoming"" is often framed here as virtuous reminds me of how i felt when I noticed "top shortage" becoming a meme. i felt like, no shit, the people in these roles yall loudly want are dehumanized in the very expressions of that desire - I've had people request i simulate some sort of violence to them, completely unprompted, many times over the years.
put me in mind of when i notice again and again how ""topping"" or ""active"" or even ""dominant"" roles are so paradoxically villainized. how as a trans woman (which tells you very little absolute by the way, so why do i mention it) and also now as a butch, I'm accustomed to harassment of a peculiar shape by The Queers wherein my potential for simulated violence is what is in focus.
especially mind-expanding and clarifying for me is the racialization here: "It's not a top shortage, it's a brute shortage" as well the way top/bottom is described as a "gradient of dehumanization" where, in search of a "top," one might think to look down this ladder. I'm also very much reminded of "settler moves to innocence" as it was introduced to me in Decolonization is Not a Metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang.
in this piece they talk about... the way folks talk about "the past" like hanky code and cruising. it reminds me of seeing people go online (because they do not exist entirely online, this is a vehicle) and say shit that amounts to "everyone died in the 80s and now i, a thirty something year old, have to be the elder - isn't that so profound?" expecting everyone to nod along.
of course, the sex negativity piece i previously shared here is fresh on my mind, and it linked this article for good reason. the sexual revolution as they call it is a really weird thing from where i sit.
So there's a terrible New Inquiry article that I've been mad about for years. I did some hate research on it and found this lovely example of academized theory in translation. More of this please!
