Role Play and Risk
Two timely exposés on gay men, sex and dating
t’s summertime, and those sultry evenings lend themselves to a little added heat between the sheets.
Just Out has received a number of requests for articles on sex and dating, so we thought this would
he the perfect season to, ahem, fulfill some of your desires. In the first of a two-part series, we’ve
asked two queer male writers to riff on what they see as pertinent, pressing issues for gay and hi
men’s sex lives today.
Glenn Scofield Williams explores sex roles between men and makes a case for how the old top/bottom
dichotomy is being replaced by a limber versatility— bottoms on top and vice versa!
Floyd Sklaver reveals the shocking attitudes of a number of sexually active gay men who don’t use
condoms regularly. He then offers some hopeful and helpful tips on how to talk honestly about HIV
when you’re dating and hooking up.
In our Aug. 6 issue, we’ll give women the platform when Gina Daggett tells how to keep the passion
alive in the lesbian bedroom, and Helen Silvis talks to some of Portland’s sexiest single queer gals.
So read on, and stay tuned!
I
The Joy
of Switch
Hitting
queer m en in a Gay.com chat room. Though
the results are only semi-scientific (as a product
of “the milieu o f Gay.com”), they are none
theless interesting.
Yee found that 10.9 percent of the men in
the study identified themselves as “only bottom”
and that only 11.6 per
cent were “only top."
One-fifth of the men
identified themselves as
equally “versatile,” while
26.8 percent saw them
selves as “versatile, prefer
bottom” and 22.5 percent
identified as “versatile,
prefer top.” Still others
couldn’t identify them
selves in any of those ways, either because they
didn’t feel experienced enough or they just didn’t
know. W ith more than 60 percent of the respon
dents identifying as some form of versatile, the
categories of top and bot
tom seem less rigid than
popular opinion suggests.
According to the
study, many of the tra
ditional characteristics
of top/bottom struc
ture hold fast, however.
For instance, 60 per
cent o f those
who identify
as “only bot
tom” pre
ferred their
sexual
partner
to he
their
age or
older.
And what if my
answer to Jon is,
“Id like to fuck Henry
Rollins or get flicked
by Alan Cummings ’?
Gay male sex roles
and how we live now
by Glenn Scofield Williams
y queer colleague Jo n turns to
me during a lull at work and
says, “So, if you could have sex
with either Batm an or Robin,
which one would you chooser*
“C atw om an,” I answer. “You know I’m bi.”
He smacks my biceps with a paperback.
“T h e y ’re cartoons, Jo n ,” 1 say.
Just spend a moment with Charles Silverstein
and Felice Picano’s The Joy o f Gay Sex and you’ll
learn that “the top, for example, would seem to
be the protector, the controller, the one who
does the bulk of the leading and guiding, the one
who takes on the responsibilities.” As well, “You
may find you prefer get
ting fucked” or you “find
yourself evaluating the
men you meet by.. .the
size, shape and hardness
of their co ck .... W hen
this happens, you have
become a bottom."
Top/bottom.
Masculine/feminine.
Fucker/fuckee.
Most o f us homos seem satisfied with some
form o f this. Even as we begin to settle for
strict categories like gay, bi and straight
(though most queer theorists and psychologists
believe in a more com plex sexual structure),
we have accepted the top/bottom roles in our
beds and cruising habits with little debate.
T his dichotomy mirrors what surrounds us in
our heterosexual-dominated culture: the mas
culine and the feminine, the daddy and the
mommy. It would appear that many o f our
queer subcultures have not only embraced
these traditional sex roles but have exaggerated
them for their own purpose and pleasure:
domination/submission, daddy/boy, bear/cub.
W e are a culture that loves dichotomy:
black/white, male/female, straight/gay, top/
bottom. But when we kx>k more closely at our
complex communities, these dichotomies break
down into finer shades o f gray and, ultimately,
prove perhaps more confining than useful.
For some, this top/bottom talk smacks o f
the old phobia-laden com m ent we’ve all
heard: “W h ich one plays the woman?” But
hasn’t the women’s m ovement and the rise o f
transsexual culture taught us more about the
complicated nature o f masculinity and femi
ninity? Doesn’t queer theory have something
more interesting and multifaceted to tell us
about the way men fuck?
A recent study showed that the
traditional top/bottom dichotomy
may be far more complex in prac
tice. Essayist and W eb master
Nicholas Yee conducted a survey of
sex role preferences by polling 3 %
“O K , th en ,” he says, flicking hack his in-
need-of-a-trim hangs with a srmxrth toss of the
head, “Ernest Hemingway or Oscar W ilde ?”
“T h ey’re both dead.” 1 grin.
“Henry Rollins or A lan Cumming?”
I put down a stack o f books and stare at
him . “A re you trying to find out if I’m a top
or a bottom ?”
“Moi?” Jon says, batting his
eyelashes rapidly.
O nly then do I realize why
Jo n ’s questions have been irri
tating me, why I’m reluctant to
answer. I fiddle a hit with the
stack of txxiks and finally mut
ter, “C a n ’t you tell !"
Bottoms up?
p H hese days, in our codi
fied, queer mating ritu
als— in the bars, on
the Internet, at work and espe
cially in our beds— all gay and
bi men seem to fall into one of
these easily identifiable cate
gories, don’t we? Are you a top?
Are you a bottom? T h e types
are clear and recognizable.
Tops are masculine and
dom inant and like to be the
aggressor. Bottom s are fem i
nine and submissive and like
to be passive.