Two weeks ago on NSFW Sunday we talked about what lesbians don’t talk about when they talk about sex AND YOU ALL HAD A LOT OF FEELINGS.
A few days before the aforementioned post we’d started an ‘anonymous google doc’ wherein Autostraddle team members asked their own questions and gave their own answers so that we could ‘determine’ what people ‘want to talk about.’
Today we continue in that mission. Last week we talked about wetness & orgasms and a lot of you ended up bringing up another thing that we’d discussed in the sex doc! So, this week let’s see who’s on top who’s on bottom now?
What do you think makes someone a top or a bottom? Do you hate those labels? Do you define by them, even vaguely?
* I don’t. They don’t define me or my partner. But if they work for other people, fair enough.
* My only issue with the top/bottom thing is how people assume you’re one or the other because of stereotyped characteristics, i.e. “wears a lot of wifebeaters” or “long hair.”
* I’ve become very toppy in the last few years. And I love women who let me top them. But I don’t think I’d enjoying topping anyone who wasn’t in some way subversive. I think the reason top-bottom dynamics in queer relationship are hot is precisely because of this element of subversion as well as consent. I top women not because I happened to be born with a certain set of junk but because they let me “perform” (in a Judith Butler kind of way) a certain way in bed/life with them.
* I used to find this framing problematic but lately I feel that I’ve identified more with being a bottom or just REALLY liking to get fucked. And that makes me feel kind of like a lazy lover, even though I know I’m not.
* I’ve never felt like this but lately I’ve been wanting to be more toppy.
* I like being a top, bottom, sideways, upside down, standing up whatever don’t confine me to labels!
* I used to think ‘top’ equated to: ‘I do all the work/fucking’. So I identified as a top until I realized it’s fun to switch it up — that this is one of the many things that makes lesbian relationships/sex interesting. I have a thing about control, and I like to have it, and I can hold myself up longer than you, so this might make me default top. THAT’S WHAT I AM: default top. Until someone switches it up, which I am totally down for.
* I switch depending on who I’m with. i can be more aggressive or submissive depending on what the situation calls for.
* I think I like playing with power and can do either way. I like tops who easily surrender control given the option. I can imagine being either/or, depending on what my partner likes, i am flexible. I actually am flexible though, like bendable.
* POWERBOTTOM
* POWERRRRBARRRRRRRRR
* I once thought I didn’t like these labels, and now I think I want to be a bottom for a while. I’m tired.
* A friend asked me if I wanted to fuck Shane or wanted to be Shane and I said I’d never talked
* I don’t really get them. Sometimes I’m lying down being a “bottom” and a girl is on top of me and i’m still fucking her or ‘doing all the work’ but not even? ‘Cause ladies like to move their hips sometimes and I think that’s work. And what if you’re being sneaky and put your hands down her pants while she’s cooking dinner or something, WHO’S ON TOP THEN??
An Unrelated Video:
It’s not ostensibly queer, or queer at all really, but it’s somehow also a thing:
Back to Tops/Bottoms
Alphafemmes produces queer porn about femme Tops and butch/transmale bottoms. Esquire readers want to know: In lesbian relationships, is one partner typically dominant in bed? Sugarbutch gives a sugarbutch star to smut from the femme top. Some lesbians display their top/bottom preferences with a hanky code, as Autostraddle covered briefly in a fashion post not too long ago:
Sugarbutch tries to Define Butch in the Streets, Femme in the Sheets: “I ran across the phrase “butch in the streets, femme in the sheets” (again) the other day, and it bothered me (again, still). So I started thinking: It generally means – and correct me if I’m wrong – that this supposed “butch in the streets,” once taken to bed, liked to or wanted to get fucked. This is operating on an identity alignment assumption: that butches are tops. This notion comes from old-fashioned sexism: that if you are a man – or masculine – that therefore you are dominant.”
On the opposite side of the internet, Esquire readers want to know: In lesbian relationships, is one partner typically dominant in bed? This one time, me and Taylor talked about power bottoms and potatoes instead of finishing the NSFW Sunday. Also this episode of Cherry Bomb allegedly will discuss issues including top/bottom and other sex-related gender roles.
Also, idk if you want to know the top ten most popular places people have sex. Or 8 Racy TV Show Scenes That Shocked the Nation, obviously lesbians are represented. Also Violet Blue has some advice on how to be the best sexual citizen in the world.
SEXY TUMBLR ALERT:
So someone did this things and it’s called LesbiansANDcats.
The thing about labels is that no one wants to be one but most people like to know how someone else identifies. It helps identify what a person is most akin to. When someone labels themselves as something e.g. top, bottom it’s easier to pick up on who they are, what they like, and what role I initially want to take when interacting with them. That being said it’s very rare when someone is completely the label they give themselves, with no flexibility. Labels should always be taken with a grain of salt… or teaspoon.
I don’t know if I’m getting my point across correctly cause I’m wicked tired and I’m not even from Jersey.
And on a unrelated note but sort of related but not really… I’ve got to stop watching Riese and Haviland’s youtube vids cause I’m starting to dream about Riese and an unrequited love is forming.
One time I totally crushed on this girl cause she looked like Riese.
one time I thought Riese was hot and then I thought Alex was hot and then I found out they were dating
– that’s how things turn out in real life, too.
I’m some weird kind of perfect matchmaker.
one time, i had a dream that the autostraddle team and i went out for brunch and then went to six flags and ate rock candy. when i woke up, i realized that i had an unhealthy attachment to this site that and accepted it
two nights ago i dreamed that riese and i were going to have sex right after we finished editing an article.
omg did you wake up? because if you did that means you’re going to die
I was under the impression that’s always what happens after an AutoStraddle article editing. That and frolicking on a grassy knoll.
yes that is exactly how it works
POWERRRRRRBARRRRRRR
As long as you don’t force me into a box or demand things of me to the point of boredom, I may very well be the dominant personality. However, sometimes I want to throw on a pretty sundress and wear outrageous makeup and enjoy the “gender-bending” of a “soft butch in a dress.” I just feel so awful with that power-bottom guilt tripping. I’ll do whatever you need in bed, baby, just don’t make me feel bad if it’s not my favorite or if I want to try something else.
I don’t really mean to equate butch with dominant, I just happen to be a dominant soft butch. I like pink and kittens! It’s awful when a girl assumes you’re one way because of the way you present and isn’t attracted to you because she assumes you can’t be androgyno-sexy. I can be androgyno-sexy! If I could wear Ripley’s alien stompers with a dress without looking silly, I would.
i think it’s silly if people don’t switch up roles in bed since i get so bored easily. that being said, sometimes i feel like throwing her on the bed and having my way, and sometimes i want to be fucked.
that video looks like a better american apparel ad. endearing AND sexy, who’d have thought that up?!
From literally as early as I can remember (were talking 2nd grade here) I wa struggling with sexual disorders which play a role in the top/bottom dynamic in my relationships.
My GF and I work out so well because we can switch back and forth. If I feel like being on top today and I may want her on top tomorrow, that flexibility just keeps things from getting stale, and keeps the relationship from looking one-sided.
In truth, I was compulsively bottom, but she said she thought I could be more agressive and I found I really like both. Our relationship is very “what do you want most right this minute??” and it works for us.
I don’t hate the labels, I just hate when people think that there are only two options, making out side by side, on equal terms when no one has power is possible and equally enjoyable. Just depends on your mood, amiright??
youareright
I usually am. :P
both!…(ill leave it to the rest of the group to psychoanalyze)
FUCK ME GENTLY THEN MAKE ME A SANDWICH PLZ
i make really nice sandwiches!!! tasty too!!! and i can soooo do gently, also, i can take gently, i like to flip it up as well, but yeah, master sandwich maker right here! ;)
ahhhhh-utostraddle: thank you
This post is very apropos of my life right now.
I find it sexiest when a girl starts off on top and I I spin the tables around on her. But’s really about the moment and the person. Sometimes I feel very dominating and sometimes I just wanna be fucked silly. Then I wanna eat and then fuck some more.
Me and my gf started having sex before we even knew, conclusively, what lesbian sex was (or at least until then no one had explained it to us–we were “straight” to our friends and hiding our relationship from everyone). THEN we had this epiphany moment when we discovered the L word OG and saw a sex scene and were like OMGWTFBUBBLEGUM we are doing it right!!!
And as far as the top/bottom thing goes, we have always always switched off completely equally, I love being fucked but being able to fuck a girl is like, the hottest thing evarrr. In the beginning of our relationship (when we were falling in love and blowing off class and having nonstop sex) we switched off several times in a given day. Now what happens is we generally stay with one person on top and one on bottom in a given night, because at the end of that, we’re both too tired to switch, and have like, responsibilities now, but the next night roles are reversed and it’s just as good.
Submissive top.
Just wanted to put that out there that not all tops are dominant. Nor is the one with the sorta dominant personality necessarily the dominant one sexually.
These aren’t labels, these are words we use to articulate who we are, what we want, and what we do. We have been left out of heteronormative language, so we have to make our own.
If it makes you feel any better, I tend to be a dominant bottom.
im really both.. idk.. im girly and boyish… i have my days where i want to take the girl out for a date and days where i want a girl to take me out… im like that in bed too… i also have a great hairstyle for this kind of switch up too.. i can wear a cute bikini during the day and switch it up to a fohawk and a wife beater at night.. :)
“These aren’t labels, these are words we use to articulate who we are, what we want, and what we do. We have been left out of heteronormative language, so we have to make our own.”
This is so very true. My straight friends sometimes question my “need for labels,” but the fact is, they are happy with and fully accept and implicitly understand the labels, expectations, and roles set up for them by society. As I am outside society’s mainstream, there is power in naming and creating words and concepts for the things I require to exist.
I realize some pomosexuals just hate certain words the way some Deconstruction critics hate certain words, but Ursula K. Le Guin’s right in A Wizard of Earthsea: words have power. If you know something’s name, something’s identity, you harness a power. For us, that power is self-esteem, identity, place, belonging. If some people find it incorrect for me to name myself or others I have permission from to name, then they need to butt the hell out, because conceptualizing my identity is important for me, not as a straightjacket, but as a comforting guideline and a place to transgress to harness power and affirmation.
If I am butch, wearing a dress is political. If I am femme, not shaving is political. These actions hold power, and while some feminists and activists balk at power, it can be a transformative, healing, helping force and we shouldn’t fear it.
I’m a soft butch and I like topping, but don’t tell me what “butch” or “soft” or “top” means. That’s for me and anyone who loves me to decide. You know?
Dude. I love that you quoted from Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea while talking about top/bottom and gender roles.
Everything else you said is magic. Your brain is win. And I agree.
I find for me the whole switch hitter thing works. What ever feels right when ever it feels right…and sometimes that may change even after things get started. I’ve found this to be true in both the sexual relationships I’m in. Although, it seems more pronounced in the one than the other. I think more because it is a much newer relationship and because that partners sexuality matches mine much more closely. Even the degrees of dominance or submission I feel seem to fluctuate from situation to situation and with in a given liaison a partners behavior can be used to trip my triggers and aim me in one direction or another.
“I dream of sexy butch women and wonder if I want to BE them or be ravaged BY them.” wrote that years ago and still searching for the answer. Perhaps it’s both? Yes,it’s both. Great article and commentary!!
That hanky code + the Emmy opening number = more than I wanted to know about Jimmy Fallon’s proclivities.
I love this article. And I love Autostraddle.
I used to identify as a femme top/dom, then a femme switch, now I’m an andro switch, and becoming much more cozy with my submissive/bottom side, due to a surprisingly dominant new paramour.
Just goes to show that the exchange of power in sex/gender roles/desires fluctuates and is fluid, just like everything else.
tomato, tamato..
acunamatata.
can we just fuck already?
okay..fine..please?
So I def. just found this website. (and love it!!) I know my comments late in the game but I just had to add my say! I am most def. referred to as a “pillow princess”. I for the majority of my life tried to be straight and hated sex and never had an orgasm. Then I found women so to speak. Met a girl in highschool who hated her body (is now transgendered) and would always be the top. Still never came. Then I met the love of my life<3 and the very first time we had sex i had the first (not initiated by my own hands) and most amazing orgasm I'd ever had! 1.5 yrs later, I swear to some greater being, the my woman is able to give me a better orgasm every time we have sex! idk how she does it!
That all being said. i just love being the bottom! I love trying all sorts of new things! And my gf is def a power top.
Of course we DO switch it up alot because she likes her turn and i like being in control occasionally. but to me nothing is more enjoyable than being my girls rag doll for the night!
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the “An unrelated video” is tooo hot :)
So out of curiosity i decided to check out the alphafemmes website… i’m extremely happy to say i am 100000% traumatised. is it weird that i found nothing about their video attractive ? does that revoke me of my sorta gay status ?
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY!! am i the only one who was traumatised by the vid ?