This post was originally published in full on SameSame.com.au on the 26th of June 2015, available here.
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I should start off by saying this: I am a terrible bottom. Really. I’m awful.
At the best of times, it’s slightly uncomfortable. At the worst, though, it’s straight up painful. I’m often wondering if the guy I’m with has accidentally split me in half. Except… I seem to wind up bottoming a lot.
I’m told there’s a certain way they’ve got to do it, or a certain amount of preparation that needs to be taken, or a certain angle they’ve got to approach from. Or that there’s an ancient talisman, housed somewhere in the jungles of the Congo that, once acquired, and combined with the right cursed chants and essential oils, will make bottoming a pleasurable experience. None of these considerations have worked in my favour.
All self-effacing quips aside, the question I’ve really got to ask myself is: If it doesn’t feel awesome, why the hell do I keep doing it? Why would I torture myself like this? Why do I keep bottoming?
Firstly, it’s not all bad. There’s a psychological element to being ‘taken’ that can manifest in some truly intense feelings. That, and if you’ve ever ‘gotten used’ to the feeling after the onset, you can definitely agree that, while it might not be a religious experience like it is for some, it’s certainly not the worst feeling in the world.
The most prominent reason I keep trying is because, quite frankly, my perceived role in the bedroom seems to demand it. And more importantly: this role in the bedroom seems expected of me as a young, lean and somewhat effeminate homosexual.
So where do these stereotypes come from? Where are we pulling our ideas from about how we’re going to pull each other?
One theory is that our community has, in a number of ways, transposed heterosexual norms into our own homosexual culture, and, too, our own relationships. It’s something we’ve grown up with, and all of these hetero-normative ideas about masculinity and femininity, about power and vulnerability, have quietly crept their way into our subconscious minds, and have influenced how we view others and ourselves.
Masculinity is valued in men by straight society, symbolising power, confidence and sexual aggression, whereas femininity is oftentimes derided when shown by men, because it represents vulnerability, weakness and sexual submissiveness.
“What if I want to be a feminine top? Or a gruff, masculine bottom? Who on Earth decided that certain sex acts were specific to a certain stereotype?”
In short: Femininity and vulnerability are just not manly – and therefore, a lot of gay men feel opposed to it. It challenges their ideas about what a man is, and what a man should be, and what they should be as men. We’ve somehow ascribed these roles of masculine and feminine to sex acts alone – insertive and receptive, masculine and feminine, acting and acted upon. We’ve found ourselves viewing being the penetrative partner as being the more masculine of the pair, and to some, therefore the most desirable.
So it only makes sense that when I meet a man at a bar, who after a few cheeky drinks wants to hitch a cab back to his flat in Brunswick for a bit of a good time, that he might automatically assume my status as a bottom.
It’s because I’m feminine, and femininity represents sexual submissiveness, and even though we’ve discovered our anatomies and found ways in which bottoming can be pleasurable for everyone, we somehow view bottoming as something exclusive to “fems”.
Why shouldn’t bottoming be masculine? And why can’t topping be feminine? What if I want to be a feminine top? Or a gruff, masculine bottom? Who on Earth decided that certain sex acts were specific to a certain stereotype?
There are gay men out there in the world who know what they like, and will explicitly make clear what they want and how they want it, gender roles be damned. I salute those men.
But there are also men out there who feel uncomfortable about the very idea of bottoming, because they view it as feminine. And the last thing they want to be is anything other than the masculine gender they have worked so hard to embody, in spite of homophobia and bigotry that has seen them typecast as feminine by default – by virtue of simply being gay.
More self-identifying ‘masculine’ men should face the idea that something typecast as ‘feminine’ could be something they’re into.
The bottom line for me – the bottom-line with bottoming – is that it’s okay to enjoy bottoming, no matter how you might present yourself. It’s okay to be a bulking mass of muscle and want to take a dick in your ass, just like it’s okay to be an effeminate “fairy” and not want any dude coming near your nether regions with his eight-inch pole. And it’s okay to reverse those options, too.
Sex should be a fun, pleasurable and wholly uninhibited experience. We should strive to be pleased the way we want to be pleased – not in any way that restrictive societal mores might dictate. We should writhe and twist among one another and feel free from gender expectations, and we should aim to understand our own bodies and figure out what we like and dislike as individuals.
Know what you want, and ignore what a culture has planted covertly in your mind that youshould be.
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