Sex Questions from the Twittersphere: Top & Bottom?
By Dr. Carol Queen • Apr 22nd, 2009 • Category: Blog, Carol QueenQuestion: What is “Top” and “Bottom”? Does it apply to any kind of sex?
Great question! The terms “top and bottom refer, most broadly, to the “do-er” and “do-ee” of an erotic experience involving at least two people. Most people have never learned to use the words this generally, though; most often they’re used in one of two ways. One, to refer to a BDSM scene, in which the top is the dominant and the bottom the submissive (or the sadist and the masochist, if sensation games are being played rather than dominant/submissive ones). The other common use of the term is among men who have sex with men; in that community the insertive partner (in anal intercourse or oral sex) would be called the top, and the receptive partner the bottom.
Most people who aren’t part of these erotic worlds don’t use these terms, but increasingly, people have learned about them and use them in other contexts: to describe heterosexual penetrative sex, for example (and remember, if there’s a strap-on involved, the guy might be the bottom even here!).
One more fun wrinkle in all this: It’s possible for someone into top/bottom sex to have an open-minded idea about which role or act they prefer, so, especially in the BDSM scene, many people also refer to themselves as “switches” – that is, they switch roles. (Another slightly different term is “middle,” though it’s not used as frequently as “switch.”) A number of people familiar with that scene actually believe the BDSM world is comprised of more people who switch than who want to only top, or only bottom.
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CQ
Dr. Carol Queen >> Carol Queen is a writer, speaker, educator and activist with a doctorate in sexology. First as an organizer in the lesbian/gay community, where she helped found one of the first gay youth groups in the United States, and later in the emerging international bisexual community, as a sex worker and a practitioner of alternative sexualities, she typically teaches and writes from her own experience and that of her communities even as she references academic thought on these subjects. See her website: www.carolqueen.com.
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