I’m responding separately bc I don’t really disagree with OP per se. But I love splitting hairs, and I was talking about this with @yassifiedgollum and a friend of mine (you can read her perspective here. I am the H.S. she refers to). I think I’m rehashing another post kata4a made a while back as well. Shoulders of giants, etc. Again, I agree with OP aspirationally, but I wanted to use this as a jumping off point to talk about encoded sexual roles.
Heterosexual gender roles in large part serve to identify potential sexual partners, and this signaling is de facto indicative of penetrator/penetrated. Many people like penetrative sex, even centrally like it, even outside of the dominant heterosexual culture, so of course queer subcultures have reinvented semantically thick penetrator/penetrated social roles. What’s the fastest way to find someone who wants to be fucked? Check for bottom-coding like long nails or snakebites.*
About using top/bottom not just as agent/recipient or penetrator/penetrated, but as replete with gendered and other social coding, my friend writes:
It just seems so odd to reinscribe the same patriarchal view of sex and gender roles onto something ostensibly deviating from it, and strikes me as another form of assimilationism and conformity to bourgeois hegemony.
I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I reject this framework. Queer subcultures have become more explicit and less secretive due to advances in legal rights and technology. You can just ask someone if they’re gay and would like to fuck you and they probably won’t bash you. You can use queer-exclusive apps and just tag yourself as a femme top. Culturally robust sexual roles are on the decline as the fight for gay rights has progressed. Historically then, I view inscribing sexual roles with personality traits as a survival mechanism: it enables sex in a queer subculture under pressure from a dominant culture to dissolve. Which is to say, it is actually deviant not just ostensibly deviant! Painting your nails to try to get fucked is not assimilationist, it’s subversive.
On the other hand, I agree with what she’s saying…and it’s kinda hot! Yes, semantically thick penetrator/penetrated roles necessarily invoke patriarchal views of sexgender. I confess: being called Daddy turns me on! I am certainly not alone. Being entangled in an inescapable power structure shapes your taboos and desires.
Crucially, the self in the bedroom is not separated from the self outside of it. It both behooves me to signal the kind of sex I’m interested in and sexually gratifies me to do so. Obviously, I have a clear understanding that this is a game, but it’s pleasing to play at offering my arm and paying for my partners’ meals. What’s a little hegemonic roleplay amongst friends, eh? The way to square this circle is to keep in mind that this isn’t inherent. I am an existentialist though, and I don’t believe any trait is inherent. I’m no more a top than I am my job than I am bisexual; except that I am habituated thus.
At the end of the day, it is good to work towards divesting sexual roles from personality traits, and posts like the OP are a part of that project. I think another important part of the project is acknowledging that playing with power relations and imbuing sexual roles with personality traits is simultaneously erotic and not inherent. Tops can keysmash and drink soy milk, even if it’s fun to cultivate a cool cowboy persona. The essentialist attitude is the problem.
