Scientific American discusses gay rex roles, top and bottom – cool
How wonderful to see a discussion of gay sex roles and identifications in one of my favorite magazines, scientific american. It’s surprising and heartwarming to see us discussed there so openly and without social censure. It just goes to show you – scientists are HOT! Well some are.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=top-scientists-get-to-the-bottom-of-2009-09-16
“It’s my impression that many straight people believe that there are two types of gay men in this world: those who like to give, and those who like to receive. No, I’m not referring to the relative generosity or gift-giving habits of homosexuals. Not exactly, anyway. Rather, the distinction concerns gay men’s sexual role preferences when it comes to the act of anal intercourse. But like most aspects of human sexuality , it’s not quite that simple.
I’m very much aware that some readers may think that this type of article does not belong on this website. But the great thing about good science is that it’s amoral, objective and doesn’t cater to the court of public opinion. Data don’t cringe; people do. Whether we’re talking about a penis in a vagina or one in an anus, it’s human behavior all the same. The ubiquity of homosexual behavior alone makes it fascinating. What’s more, the study of self-labels in gay men has considerable applied value, such as its possible predictive capacity in tracking risky sexual behaviors and safe sex practices.
People who derive more pleasure (or perhaps suffer less anxiety or discomfort) from acting as the insertive partner are referred to colloquially as “tops,” whereas those who have a clear preference for serving as the receptive partner are commonly known as “bottoms.” There are plenty of other descriptive slang terms for this gay male dichotomy as well, some repeatable (“pitchers vs. catchers,” “active vs. passive,” “dominant vs. submissive”) and others not—well, not for Scientific American , anyway.”
By this article’s standards, I’m a versatile, I tend to top a bit more than my partners, but that’s because they like it, I get the most physical pleasure from letting myself go and really being teh bottom.
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(3) Tops were more likely than both bottoms and versatiles to reject a gay self-identity and to have had sex with a woman in the past three months. They also manifested higher internalized homophobia—essentially the degree of self-loathing linked to their homosexual desires.
(4) Versatiles seem to enjoy better psychological health. Hart and his coauthors speculate that this may be due to their greater sexual sensation seeking, lower erotophobia (fear of sex), and greater comfort with a variety of roles and activities.”
This was interesting – I wonder if I’m a service top lolz…..
“Further complexity is suggested by the fact that many gay men go one step further and use secondary self-labels, such as “service top” and “power bottom” (a pairing in which the top is actually submissive to the bottom). For the right scientist, there’s a life’s work just waiting to be had.”