Straight But Like To Bottom

Straight But Like To Bottom

Recent Posts

5 Best Therapists for Anxiety in Chicago

Fat Gay Men Aren’t Welcomed At Pride

What’s New In The 2022 Nissan Rogue?

10 Hacks For Working Out In Your 30s!

Did Kings of Europe Have Male Sex Slaves?

There’s a ridiculous myth floating around that gay men can’t be rugged – particularly guys like me who identify as bottom. I’d like to set the record straight and get a few things off my chest.
First – I’m just going to tell you that I’m a manly bottom. By that I mean to say I’m an alpha personality type that likes to be in charge.
That doesn’t mean I can’t be submissive. I can. But nine times out of ten, I prefer telling my top exactly how to penetrate me and I do so with gusto.
Second, I like being a bottom outdoors. Getting topped by a guy in a tent , wooded cabin or over a tree-stump is just fine by me. I’m not ashamed to admit that I like it when a guy tears apart my hole and uses his spit for personal lubricant.
If you’ve never chomped down on bark while the guy behind you drives it inside you – I’m here to tell you it’s the next best thing to sliced bread.
It’s also one of the manliest things you’ll ever do.
Don’t ask me why but there are a lot of gay men in our community who seem to think that all bottoms are effeminate. In fact, there’s a term for this called bottom shaming .
To the gays who think this, let me ask you something. Do you think you are man enough to handle a good, thick 8-inch log drilling through your sphincter?
For that matter, could you handle something massive going deep inside without whimpering like a woosy? If you are the type who likes to bottom shame, I bet you totally can’t!
Bottoms come in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes. Our interest varies too. Not all of us fit the stereotypes some people assign to us.
The next time you think you’re in charge because you’re on top, think again. You aren’t nearly as alpha as you think. After all, when you reflect upon it, bottoms are the ones who are truly in control when you’re inside.
My name is Kyle and I’m from Wyoming. I’m a rugged bottom that likes it outdoors – and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Men's Variety Copyright 2022. G-Digital. All Rights Reserved. Sign up for our newsletter

Editor's Pick
Politics
Election
Commentary
Culture
Photography
Podcasts

captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected
Error Code: PLAYER_ERR_GEO_RESTRICTED
Video is unavailable from your current location.
Session ID: 2022-07-01:ae4efe7c7a543994d8345ef Player Element ID: brightcove-rightrail-6055361165001
Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque
Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps
Reset restore all settings to the default values Done
Watch Now: Pride Today Trending Stories & News
Being pegged taught me a lot about my manhood.
I was terrified of bottoming before I tried it. Even though I had topped a number of guys, I was convinced that bottoming was going to be pure torture. I know it might sound absurd — given that I’d seen firsthand the immense pleasure my partners experienced from anal penetration.
I had also begun to embrace my identity as a “top.” Inherent to how I perceived this identity — though I didn’t realize it at the time — was the notion that top equates masculine. Being on top was the “manly” position. I felt empowered being the one thrusting. In this asinine way, it fed my ego. Even though I often act more feminine in my everyday life, I liked knowing that I was the “man” in bed.
And then (can I be frank here?) I’d heard horror stories from friends about accidentally “letting loose” on a guy they liked. I didn’t want to deal with any of that awkwardness, so I didn’t bottom for years, even though there were guys begging me to try. That was until I started dating this guy who mostly topped. After a few months, I decided I wanted to bottom for him. I felt like a crummy partner for not returning the favor. I also respected him for never being pushy. He asked early in the relationship if I would bottom, and when I told him I didn’t want to, he never asked again.
So I went through with it, making all the classic first-time bottoming mistakes: I didn’t “clean” prior because I had no idea how, and the whole time he was inside me, I clenched for dear life. I could not relax or loosen. I was on my stomach the entire time because for whatever reason, I thought it would be the easiest way to start out — FYI, it’s not!
I was terrified of making a “mess,” given that was the only sensation I’d previously felt come from my rear end. He kept saying, “Relax,” but I was simply too terrified to really try.
I didn’t let go, but I did decide bottoming was not for me. There were bottoms, and there were tops. Clearly, I was the latter. Besides, lying on my stomach didn’t feed into the powerful, dominant, or masculine persona I had cultivated in the boudoir.
But that all changed when I started dating Jenny.* Like me, Jenny is bisexual. But unlike me, she was a dominatrix who liked being verbally abusive to straight guys while she pegged them. Honestly, I tend to laugh when people start calling me dirty names, so at first, I had no desire to bottom for her. That shocked her. I remember her saying something like, “Honestly, I thought one of the best things about you being bi would be that you liked to bottom.”
Regardless, I loved Jenny and I would do anything for her, including taking it up my ass. I agreed to give it another try, and she told me I needed to practice on myself with fingers and toys. I realized that’s where I went wrong the first time. You have to prepare! You can’t immediately expect to take a whole penis inside you without a warmup or knowhow.
So, I cut my nails the shortest I’ve ever cut them, lubed up my index finger with conditioner, and slowly worked my way up in there while I took a shower — it was, OK-ish. In hindsight, I realized the problem with my little experiment was that I wasn’t turned on. Later, at Jenny’s place, she started fingering me while jerking me off: “Relax,” she whispered.
When I managed to stop clenching, I finally understood what all the fuss was about. It didn’t take long before I became a big ol’ bottom. From then on, we used fingers, she used her mouth, and we used toys. Oh, boy, did we use toys.
Although my relationship with Jenny didn’t last, my love of bottoming did. In the years since, I’ve bottomed for plenty of men and women. But bottoming with a woman, I’ve discovered, is not at all like bottoming with a man. It’s a whole different thing when women play with my anus: It’s kinky. It’s naughty.
Bottoming has now become something that is not only important to my sex life, but to my sense of well-being. It’s made me a better lover and a better boyfriend to men, women, and genderqueer individuals. Not only am I more aware of physical mechanics, but I feel more connected with the people I am intimate with. I’m also definitely no longer concerned with notions of “masculinity.”
In fact, being on all fours and crying for my girlfriend to plow me harder has turned me into more of man than anything else I’ve done in the past decade. *Not her real name.
ZACHARY ZANE is a regular contributor to The Advocate .
Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.
This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button.

It’s Time to Take Your Temperature on Topping and Bottoming
Top? Bottom? Vers? Some combination of the above? Here’s how to figure out what’s right for you.
It’s time to discover what works for you
Realize what’s stopping you from experimenting
Your sexual position isn’t your identity
To be (fucked) or not to be (fucked) shouldn’t always be the question
Related Stories for GQ Entertainment LGBTQ
Since 1957, GQ has inspired men to look sharper and live smarter with its unparalleled coverage of style, culture, and beyond. From award-winning writing and photography to binge-ready videos to electric live events, GQ meets millions of modern men where they live, creating the moments that create conversations.
To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .
To revisit this article, select My Account, then View saved stories
Legend would have you believe that once you’ve earned your gay card, a Harry Potter –like ceremony occurs where, instead of the Sorting Hat, a giant magical butt plug divides all gay men into two houses: tops or bottoms.
This is clearly not the case, especially for those people who consider themselves versatile ( HIYA ). But often, penetrative sex can feel divided into rigid binaries that make being a top or a bottom seem like a cult you’ve signed up to for life, and one that you have to declare as soon as two (or more) consenting men decide to take their clothes off and rub up against each other. These two subdivisions have their own rules, stereotypes, and in-jokes, and can sometimes seem as if they’re at war with each other, rather than both working together for mutual sexual pleasure.
All of this can make trying different things daunting, especially if you’re a baby gay venturing into this world for the first time. But it ought not to be impossible to sexually switch things up. Sure, people have a preference, but now could be the perfect time to escape the top or bottom prison you live in. So, with the help of some experts, let’s take a moment to dismantle what you think you know about topping and bottoming. It could open up a world of possibilities.
Human beings are very good at trying something once and deciding indefinitely that we don’t like it. In the case of anal sex, this is usually because of an experience from when we were young and hadn’t quite realized the importance of lube ( USE LOTS OF LUBE ). So how do you go about testing new waters?
“I believe in what I call taking your erotic temperature,” explains Woody Miller, the author of the books How to Bottom Like a Porn Star and How to Top Like a Stud , “which is basically having a conversation with yourself about what it is you like.”
Miller argues that gay men should examine their relationship with power. Where do you align when it comes to being dominant or submissive? One way to question this, he posits, is to approach something other than penetrative sex.
“Look at kissing,” he says. “If you initiated the kiss, you're the dominant one. If you received the kiss, you're the submissive one. There is no aspect of sex that doesn't have, at its core, an aspect of power. So part of the thing that you have to ask yourself is, 'What am I comfortable with? Do I like initiating sex? Do I like telling my partner what to do, or do I like being told what to do?’ ”
What’s important is that there might not be a right or wrong answer to this. You might like taking your car for a service just as much as servicing it yourself. That’s part of the fun, right?
Clearly, if you’ve tried topping and bottoming a few times and figured out which of them is for you, that’s great. But I believe that many gay men pick one side, stick to it, and that some of those individuals choose topping—you’ll have seen their profiles marking them as “masc dom tops” on the apps—because of its ties to traditional masculinity.
As Miller explains, there are outside forces that, dating back to the ancient Greeks, have prevented gay men from truly digging into what sexual behaviors we might actually enjoy. “What I mean by that,” he says, “is that cultural forces within the gay community prize topping over bottoming.”
The ongoing fetishization of masculinity means that the traditionally submissive role of the bottom is associated with effeminacy. “With bottoming there is the perception that you're giving up your masculinity because receiving a penis is something that women do,” Miller adds.
Dr. Chris White, an expert in health promotion and the director and principal investigator of the Safe and Supportive Schools Project at the Gay-Straight Alliance Network in San Francisco, takes this one step further. “If you're a bottom, you’re sometimes seen as a slut,” he says. “You don't ever hear tops being called sluts, just bottoms. So there's some shaming there. And it's feminine type shaming, as well. Not only are you saying that it's more masculine to be a top, but you're saying that you should be ashamed to be a bottom.”
Basically, it could be time to seriously check yourself and ask exactly why you don’t like bottoming (or topping, TBH). If you believe that topping is preferable because it doesn’t threaten your masculinity, then have a strong word with yourself. Similarly, if you’re a bottom-only queen, ask yourself why. Not getting fucked doesn’t make you any less gay.
Let’s call bullshit on the concept that if two people are tops they’re incompatible, because the positions that you enjoy don’t define who you are. “I think that's part of the problem. We've literally made identities out of sexual positions,” Miller says. “It’s a sexual thought prison.”
Of course, if someone knows that they only really enjoy one aspect of penetration, then let’s not discount that. But as with everything sexual, these things are usually on a spectrum that is often contextual. “It can change depending on where you are in your life, how old you are, how fit you're feeling, and what you're in the mood for,” White says. “If you think about people's everyday behaviors, I don't know if there's a difference between someone who acts or comes across as more masculine and the role that they play in sex. We like to pretend that there are, but they're not necessarily true.”
Sure, declaring a preference if you’re on the hunt for a quickie will save time and energy, but don’t get all caught up in labels. There’s really not an eternal sparkling scarlet letter marking you with a “T” or a “B.”
According to a 2011 study by The Journal of Sexual Medicine that surveyed 25,000 gay men in America about their last sexual encounters, only 36 percent said they had bottomed and 34 percent said they had topped.
So, in reality, we’re not actually fucking all that much. It makes turning someone down if they don’t match your preference, especially if it’s just for a one-off, even more preposterous. “We seem to place more psychological importance on anal sex than physical importance, because we're not doing it that often,” Miller says. “So why are we making such a big deal out of it?”
© 2022 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. GQ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices

Sex. Celebrity. Politics. With Teeth
Sex. Celebrity. Politics. With Teeth
Born to Bottom? Researchers Report Biological Correlations in Anal Sex Role in Gay Men
Blue States Aren't Necessarily Safe Havens for Abortion
Kim Fields Thinks the Best Way to Do a Reboot Is 'Not Doing One'
Normal Sexual Wellness Products & Course
Blue States Aren't Necessarily Safe Havens for Abortion
Kim Fields Thinks the Best Way to Do a Reboot Is 'Not Doing One'
While a single factor (the elusive “gay gene,” for example) has yet to emerge in the ongoing scientific investigation of what determines sexuality, there are a host of theories. Genetic factors , hormonal factors , immunological factors , and more have been posited as possible biological causes. However, many experts argue that it’s most likely a confluence of factors, as Barbara L. Frankowski and Committee on Adolescence did in a 2004 article in Pediatrics : “Sexual orientation probably is not determined by any one factor but by a combination of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences.”
Regardless of how wide-ranging these studies are, they tend to have one thing in common: they treat gay men as a monolithic group. But now a research team out of the University of Toronto Mississauga (Ashlyn Swift-Gallant, Lindsay A. Coome, D. Ashley Monks, and Doug P. VanderLaan) has investigated variation within the population of gay men based on their anal-sex roles (that is bottom , or receptive, top , or penetrative, and versatile , or both receptive and penetrative depending on circumstance). The results of two of their studies suggest there very well could be biological subgroups of gay men, which is to say that one’s biological makeup could possibly (and most likely, indirectly) influence whether or not he likes to fuck or get fucked (or both).
When it has been studied, anal-sex role has been viewed as a result of social factors (more on that in a minute). Despite every study I’ve read that asks about the anal-sex role of its respondents has found that the majority men who have sex with men identify as versatile (including the two studies at hand from the University of Toronto team) as well as my own anecdotal experience suggesting as much, the top/bottom binary persists in gay culture. It comes with predictable cultural baggage for those who firmly fit on either pole (pun intended—but only for the bottoms). Tops are stereotyped as masculine, taking up the male tradition of putting their dicks in things, while bottoms are regarded as more feminine (despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary in porn, and the preponderance of self-identified “masc bottoms” in sex-app profiles). And with the assumptions of femininity in men come insults (“bottom” as a pejorative amongst gay men) and with those come a specific kind of shame in addition to the shame many gay men already experience merely living in a heterosexual world.
But perhaps if the variation among gay men has biological basis, it could help make one’s desires, not to mention those of others, less fraught or intimidating, for one thing.
“What’s interesting about this work is even among a group of individuals who are pretty similar in terms of their sexual preference—that is, gay men preferring men—there could be a diverse set of processes that lead them to exhibit that same sexual orientation outcome,” explained VanderLaan, an assistant professor in the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Department of Psychology, and the senior author on two recent papers: “ Handedness is a biomarker of variation in anal sex role behavior and Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity among gay men ,” published on PLOS One, and “ Gender Nonconformity and Birth Order in Relation to Anal Sex Role Among Gay Men ,” published in Archives of Sexual Behavior .
It's pleasure weather Get learned up on consent, orgasms, pleasure, sex positions, and more with this body- and gender-inclusive guide to sex. Take 15% off the whole site featuring sex toys, guides, games, and more.
Both studies built on previous research suggesting that gay men are more likely to be gender-nonconforming (“less interested in, say, male-typical activities...and [exhibiting] less masculine personality characteristics,” said VanderLaan), are more likely to be non-right handed tha
Pissed Knickers
Nikki Glaser Nudography
Laura Linney Nudes

Straight But Like To Bottom

Report Page